Baby Bug Is Here!!!!!!!

Thanks to Baby Bug's fantastic internet aunties, I think most of you know that my dear sweet adorable child was wrenched screaming into the world at 7:19 p.m. on January 2nd. For the gory details behind that story, read on:

Saturday the 31st I went to the hospital for another non stress test, which was just fine, but my head had started to hurt pretty badly. It felt like I had a very tight headband on and the pressure just got worse and worse. Once I got home, Tylenol III with codeine didn't help it at all, so my OB told me to go back to the hospital and be admitted. They started giving me demerol shots, which didn't help too much either but made me care about it less. Ah, narcotics. My BP was nuts (180/110 at one point), but all the bloodwork, etc was fine at this point. My OB came up to the hospital (on New Years' Eve!) to check me out and she decided that things were bad enough to induce Tuesday morning, at 36 weeks and 1 day.

I really don't remember Sunday. Seriously. I do know that Sunday evening they started me on a heavy dose of magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures from the BP (!!!!), which was pretty much as horrible as advertised (it burns badly going into the vein, makes you feel very hot and flu-like and completely out of it) and put in cervadil to ripen my cervix (which was only dilated a fingertip). Baby Bug was still ok on the monitors but the headache was getting worse so they decided to move the induction up to Monday.

Monday morning they started the pitocin drip and I got an epidural pretty early on, mostly because it lowers the BP. I had lots of strong contractions that I couldn't even feel (hurray!) but the headache continued to get worse. It felt like my head was being squeezed in a vice by this point. I didn't find this out until later but my kidneys suddenly started shutting down, BP went through the roof, and I had bleeding that made them think I was developing a placental abruption. All I remember is that my nurse told me that I needed a c-section right away and that it would all be fine.

Baby Bug was born a few minutes later at exactly 36 weeks of gestation. He was the most beautiful boy I have ever seen and hearing him cry for the first time absolutely knocked me out. I never knew that I could love someone so much. That fat little baby weighed 7 lbs, 8 oz and measured 20 inches long and he was perfectly fine at birth with 9 and 9 on his Apgars.

Then, he turned blue. Then purple. He stopped breathing about 30 minutes after birth and went into severe respiratory distress. He was immediately put on a ventilator, had umbilical ivs put in, and a thousand other tubes and gizmos attached to him. I wasn't allowed to see him until I was off the magnesium sulfate, which was 24 hours after his birth. When they wheeled me into NICU for the first time, seeing him splayed out under a warmer with every square inch of his little body attached to some kind of medical device was absolutely horrible. He looked so tiny and alone and hurting and there was absolutely nothing I could do for him. We weren't even allowed to touch him. I just cried. I will spare you the photographic evidence.

We are very fortunate that Baby Bug started to get better pretty quickly. He was taken off the ventilator after three days and then gradually weaned off all the other apparatus little by little. Once he was off the ventilator, we were allowed to touch him and finally finally I was allowed to hold my little baby on Friday, four days after his birth. It seemed like a million years. They also finally started to feed him on Friday, through a tube put down his mouth into his stomach. I was discharged from the hospital Friday night and having to leave without Baby Bug was incredibly hard. I felt like I had abandoned him there.

He finally came home Tuesday night after 8 days in the NICU and he is doing well with just a few little ongoing medical issues. For the most part, he is happy and healthy and we're working on getting his breastfeeding skills over the hump. He's been having some trouble latching on right but I think we're getting there (two cracked nipples later. Eek).

I have attached my favorite picture of our dynamic duo, taken minutes after his birth and mere seconds before his dramatic lack of respiration. I'm just so thrilled that he's here in the world and able to scare me. And if you're wondering--yes, he is worth every last bit of it.