Saturday, July 9, 2011

Birth Story Part 2 and First Few Weeks Home

Before I went into labor, I thought the hardest part would be the labor, and the hospital stay would be a breeze.

WRONG

Turns out labor is the easy part. Why? There are a few reasons:

A) Ibby was a little tiny baby and I felt like if I held him wrong I would break him.
B) I hated my room and the nurse that was attending to me. She was mean. And she wore a steelers jersey. Enough said.
C) Breastfeeding is hard.

When they roll you from labor and delivery to your room, it feels like your walking down the red carpet at some award show. Everyone looks at you and admires your baby. Now when I think of it, Ibrahim looked pretty much like every other baby at that hospital, so maybe those nurses exxagerated a bit, but it made me feel like I had the cutest baby in the world mA. ( And as a matter a fact, I do, so maybe those nurses were on to something.)

I got to my room around 8 AM. When I say room, I mean a tiny little box that barely fit my bed and a chair. I could barely fit in the bathroom. They dropped me off with the baby and left. The hubby had to leave to go get my family from the airport.

Ibby just slept most of the day, but when he was awake, it was the ultimate latching battle. Getting a newborn to latch on correctly to nurse is super hard. It was for me anyways. I had to feed him every 2.5 hours, and by the time I'd finally feed him, it was almost time to feed him again. I spent most of the time trying to keep him awake. The mean nurse kept telling me to strip him down to his diaper, but I was worried he'd get too cold.

After that, my mom came with my bro and sis. It was a relief to finally have my mom there. I wanted to just leave the hospital and go home. That night, after everyone had left, I was getting ready to settle for the night when the nurse comes in and informs us we had to change rooms. I got really annoyed and didn't feel like packing everything up and going, but they had to do construction on the floor above us. So we moved to a different floor on the hospital.

THANK god they moved us! The room was twice as big, and the nurses were sooo nice and helpful. The next day was alot better because I had help from the nurses.

Around midnight on the 2nd night, I decided to change Ibbys diaper. I took off his diaper and he greeted me with a spray of liquid. And he peed, and peed and peed. It would NOT stop. I kept trying to cover it with a diaper and he ended up spraying me and his bed. Frantically, I pulled the emergency cord. The nurse came running in.

"Whats wrong?"

I started crying, " He PEED EVERYWHERE!"

 I had mini nervous breakdown, and the nurse calmly cleaned him up and his bed. She told me it wasn't a big deal. Little did I know that Ibby would continue to spray me occasionally when I change his diaper, but now I'm prepared with a battle plan. I'm probably the quickest diaper changer in the world now.

When I finally got home, It was a relief. It felt nice to be home around all my things and cute baby stuff I had spent hours organizing and folding and washing. Within hours all organization ceased and I was frantically throwing things around, trying to find onsies, towels, and other things I needed buried in things that I'd probably never use. He spent all day sleeping, and I'd wake him up every 2.5 hours to feed him. That night, we had some kabobs for dinner, and some of them were spicy. I didn't think it was a big deal, and I ate some.

big mistake.

Ibby didn't sleep a wink that night. To top off our already difficult nursing sessions, the spicy food gave him INSANE gas. He cried non stop till 4 AM. When He FINALLLY fell asleep I had to wake up him an hour later to feed him. Lesson learned.  To this day I do not touch spicy food.

A few nights later, I started having chills. I thought it was nothing, I was just tired. Then, I woke up with a full blown fever and I felt like someone had hit me with a truck. I diagnosed myself with the flu. I refused to take the flu shot when I was pregnant, and spent all of flu season avoiding people and drowning my hands in hand sanitizer. Right after I had the baby I got the flu shot, but much to my dismay I caught it. I wore surgery masks the rest of the day whenever I nursed him and handed him off to my mom or hubby to change and burp. I was incapable of doing anything else. The fever, exhaustion, and achiness knocked me out. Breastfeeding had turned into a nightmare. Nursing became excruciatingly painful. I called my doctor and she diagnosed me with Mastitis, which is a breast infection you get if your baby doesn't latch on correctly. I spent 4 days in a haze, and took as much tylenol and motrin as possible in order to be able to nurse him. I finally felt better after a few days.

At the hospital, Ibby had a semi high bilirubin level, but it wasn't anything worrisome. He become even more jaundiced when we got home, and we had to get his levels checked out. Thankfully, they weren't that high, but the jaundice made him sleepy for about two . So the first two weeks, he literally just ate and slept. It was pretty easy. After my mom left, he decided hey, I need to make up for all the crying I missed out on those two weeks.

The week I spent alone without my mom was extremely hard. I had no idea what to do with him. I wanted to call 911 everytime he coughed. The idea of bathing him terrified me. And he decided that he didn't want to sleep anymore at night. I analyzed his poop color millions of times to see if maybe he was just lactose intolerant,and that was why he suddenly became so fussy. I probably cried more that week then he did. Thankfully, my mother in law came, and helped me. If it wasn't for her Ibby would have a bald mom right now.

After my MIL left we seemed to get the hang of things. True, he didn't sleep that much at night, but we were in a comfortable routine, and I was able to function during the day alone with him.

1 comment:

  1. bless your heart! this reminds me of when I had evan. I cried ALOT!!!

    ReplyDelete