Recovery

After the delivery my daughter and I, my husband and my mom were moved to a recovery room, which is where we stayed for the next 2 days. As soon as we were wheeled into the recovery room I realized just how hungry I was. My husband called the cafeteria to order some lunch but since it was around 2:30 pm when we called, all that they had to order on the menu was cold cut sandwiches. Since I didn't really have much to choose from I just ordered a turkey sandwich with some chips and a pickle. Even though it was a slow time for food deliveries, I still had to wait for what seemed like forever but was probably no more than 30 minutes. My mom had to leave since she had class that evening so soon after she left my husbands mother arrived to meet our daughter. Shortly after she arrived the lactation nurse came in to help with getting our daughter to latch. She was still pretty lethargic and we were having a hard time keeping her awake long enough to try and get her to latch. Since we were having such a hard time the lactation nurse showed my how to manually express some colostrum out onto a spoon so we could spoon feed her a few drops. After we worked on that our food arrived and I was able to eat. I never had a turkey sandwich taste so good and this was hospital food people. After we ate I had to go to the bathroom, which was the first time doing so since delivering. I was a little nervous. I expected to feel some burning but luckily I think that some of the pain medication was still keeping things numb down there so I wasn't in any discomfort. In the bathroom they had some dermoplast and witch hazel pads sitting next to the toilet. So I changed out my ginormous pad spayed some dermoplast on myself and placed about 4 witch hazel pads down on a new maxi pad. Let me tell you people, this made recovery so much better. The dermoplast really helped with the itching and the witch hazel pads just kept everything cool down there. After I had gotten up and moved around a bit the doctor had come in to make sure everything was good with us and if we had any questions. My blood pressure was still showing high so she wanted me to make sure and keep my pain levels at a minimum that way we can try and get my blood pressure down. Around that time my husbands mother left since she knew that we had a long day and we needed to get some rest. I tried to nurse again but I was unable to get her to latch again. The nurse saw that I was having some difficulty so she called a lactation nurse to come in and help. The second lactation nurse that came in was a different one than we had previously this afternoon. This lactation nurse was a little less hands on and mostly just observed my frustration on trying to get my daughter to stay awake and to latch on. She just advised me to keep trying and to possibly undress my daughter before I tried to nurse her so that it would keep her awake long enough. Instead of unswaddling and undressing her every time I tried to feed her I instead just kept spoon feeding her since that was how I knew she was getting fed. Since the sandwich that I had earlier wasn't fully satisfying, at around 5 pm my husband went down to the cafeteria and grabbed a few more things. After we ate my husbands dad showed up and then shortly after that my husbands older sister and husband showed to to meet our daughter. They hung out for a little while and left so that we could get some rest. At that time we had realized that we had not yet changed our daughters diaper so we checked to see if it was full. Luckily, she had her first bowl movement and there was a black tar like substance in her diaper. Since my husband and I had never changed a diaper before, we call a nurse in to show us how to properly change a diaper. After that I tried to nurse her again but was unable again to get her to latch so we spoon fed her a few drops again. The nurse advised us that we should try and get as much sleep as we can now while our daughter is sleeping. She said that most likely our daughter will be up all night since she has been sleeping all during the day. We took her advice and tried to get some sleep. We set an alarm every couple of hours so that we could wake up and feed and change our daughter in the middle of the night. Luckily after spoon feeding and changing her diaper every couple of hours she went right back to sleep and we were able to get some sleep that first night. That next morning a nurse came in to do some tests on our daughter by pricking her heel and drawing blood out by squeezing her foot. One of the test that they did was to check how much bilirubin was in her blood. Bilirubin is made when red blood cells break down. The liver changes the bilirubin so that it can be excreted from the body. High bilirubin levels might mean there's a problem with the liver. In newborns, it can take some time for the liver to start working properly. High bilirubin levels can make skin and eyes look yellow, called jaundice. Since she was born at 37 weeks, the vacuum extractor was used during the delivery and she was being breastfed, she was at a higher risk of developing jaundice. When vacuum extractors are used for delivery, a very large bruise may form over the scalp or head. The body eventually breaks down the blood from the bruise and produces more bilirubin, which is normally removed from the blood by the liver. However, if your baby’s liver is underdeveloped and unable to remove bilirubin efficiently then there’s excess bilirubin in the blood that can settle in the skin. This causes a yellowish discoloration of the skin and eyes and can make them sleepy. She did look a little yellow and she was very lethargic so we had suspected that she probably did have jaundice but we didn't know the severity. After the nurse took the blood samples our daughter was awake so we tried to nurse her again without any luck on getting her to latch. We spoon fed her more colostrum. After getting breakfast the more hands on lactation nurse that we had seen the other day showed up to help us try to get her to latch. She showed us some different positions and we kept trying. Later that afternoon we got the results back letting us know that our daughter did in fact have jaundice. At the time her bilirubin was not high enough for the need of phototherapy. Phototherapy, also know as light therapy, is the process of using light to eliminate bilirubin in the blood. Your baby's skin and blood absorb these light waves and change bilirubin into products in which can be passed through their system. We were just instructed to place her by the window without clothes on to try and get her skin in contact with the light from the sun. Since her levels were high they wanted to check her again the next morning. So we were going to stay another night at the hospital. I had not yet taken a shower so I felt good enough to be able to get up and stand in the shower to get myself clean. Since my blood pressure was also back to normal and I no longer needed to have my IV in anymore the nurse came in to remove it. I felt so much better after I was able to take a shower and was able to get all the tape and other crap off of me. Later that afternoon when I was trying to nurse my daughter she was a little more awake. I lifted her up to try and get her to latch and she did! For a short time but OMG was it painful. I don't think she was latched correctly since it made my nipples hurt but that was the best progress we had made on my own. She was able to latch on long enough for me to be able to have a let down. While having the let down I could feel my uterus start to contract which was also painful. After we were able to get her to eat we decided that we should probably try and get some sleep. We didn't have too bad of a first night but since she had been sleeping the while day we knew that she would be up at night. That second night was hard. We couldn't get her to latch to eat every time which caused her to cry. I was tired and frustrated and when I was able to get her to eat I was in pain. I broke down and told my husband I wanted to give up breastfeeding. I was a little naive to how hard breastfeeding really was which caught me off guard. I thought that it would be easy and natural. All I would have to do is just plop the baby on my nipple and she would eat. Regardless of how painful it was I felt like I needed to keep trying. Breastfeeding is free and since I was not planning on going back to work I was determined to make it work and I'm glad that I did. That next morning the nurse came back in to draw blood from her foot to test her bilirubin levels. Later that afternoon the hands on lactation nurse came back in to check how we were doing. Since we were not able to get her to latch consistently and we needed to start to giving her more than just a few drops of colostrum, she brought in a breast pump and showed me how to work it. I was able to fill 2 vials of colostrum and she showed us how to feed our daughter with a syringe, feeding tube and our finger. She instructed me to pump for 15 minutes on each side every 2 hours after an attempt of trying to get her to latch. At around lunch time we were told that we would be able to go home that evening so we started to get things ready for leaving. We still hadn't received the results from her second bilirubin test but since her levels weren't extreme they felt comfortable letting us leave. My husband left to go pick up the dogs from the boarding center and also had to get me a breast pump from the clinic since they closed early on Fridays. While he was gone I tried to pack up as much as I could and set up an appointment with the pediatrician that Monday. I asked for more of the glorious mesh underwear, maxi pads, witch hazel pads, diapers and wipes and packed them up in our hospital bag. When my husband returned we waited for a few hours before we got our discharge papers and then waited another hour or so for a cart an wheelchair so we could take everything downstairs to our car. We were so ready to get home and get settled in with our new family.