Feeling Broken

-Precious Milk-

The first week home was tough. Incredibly tough. I’d had the cradle ready and waiting in our bedroom since I was five month’s along and we hadn’t moved it, so it stared at me every day, empty, as a reminder of what was missing. I was ready for my daughter to be in that cradle crying, sleeping and cooing. Instead I sat in bed surrounded by pillows with my top pulled up to my collar bone pumping. It is 3am and I’m crying. The only light in the room comes from my iPhone that I’m trying to read to take my mind off the fact that once again I’m pumping instead of breastfeeding Lydia. The cradle is there to my left mocking me and Jordan is to my right sleeping. 

My back aches from the epidurals and spinal block, the ibuprofen doesn’t touch that at all. I’m also experiencing back pain from some nerve damage which must have been caused by the awkward position I was in after the c-section. My tail bone is killing me from all the pressure Lydia put on it during labor. My ibuprofen must be wearing off. Did I mention I was allergic to narcotics, so the only thing I’d been taking was over the counter ibuprofen. 

So I’m sore. I’m pumping. And I’m crying. I’m heartbroken. The idea that I should have my daughter here with me is overwhelming, crippling even at this point. I have yet to cry throughout this entire week. Tonight, is the night that I finally cry. 

I finish pumping and wake Jordan so he can package up the milk and clean my flanges. He comes back upstairs where I resume crying while snuggled into him. I’m miserable, I just want her home. He comforts me and reassures me that everything will be okay and that she will be home soon. It just isn’t enough for me. I need her home, now. When trying to explain this feeling it can best be described as feeling broken. I’m a swollen breasted, sniffling, unfinished puzzle. 

-Lydia after being taken off the Ventilator- 

I’d love to tell you that it got easier, because in general things get easier with time, but this did not become more manageable as the days went by. Each day was met with a new tearful moment, being seen in public by people who are surprised to see I’m no longer pregnant and then immediately want to see the baby; explaining to the checkout lady that you are not pregnant and that your baby is in the NICU; going to your OB office for check up’s. Leaving the hospital at night is agonizing. I cry the entire walk back to the car and home most nights. Christmas music plays in the car as we make our trek home. Now eight month’s later I still tear up if I hear certain songs. 

I don't know it yet, but it will be another two weeks before we bring her home.

The Root of the Problem... my first UTI

At this point in my life I'd never had a UTI, or at least not known of it. After Lydia was born my catheter was kept in until after my transfer, so somewhere around 18 hours. I didn't have a bit of pain, just the lovely puking my guts up part. We got to the Emergency Room around 6:30am on November 23rd and we were there until around noon that day. I had to have a chest x-ray and oodles of blood work, fluids, and anti nausea meds.

We were exhausted

My Bell's Palsy was at it's height 

Our BabyCake

Lydia was up on the fourth floor, but the Emergency Room was so disgusting that we just didn't want to risk transferring any germs to her. So we left the hospital, without seeing her, and went home. We showered, slept for forty-five minutes and then were back on the road to my ob/gyn office so that I could get my staples removed.

After the ob/gyn appointment we drove over to the hospital where Lydia was to visit. We were absolutely exhausted. Neither of us had ever felt so much like collapsing as we did that evening. We ate dinner, I pumped, and we went to bed.

That night was rough, I slept through several pumping sessions and was very engorged the next morning.

Lydia was now five days old.
We hadn't held her.
 I hadn't breastfed her.
We hadn't heard her cry yet.

Being discharged, without your baby.

Day Three in the NICU

Leaving the hospital without a baby is sad and everything about it just feels wrong. The maternal instinct does not tell your body and mind that this is how things are supposed to be, and even if you know it's for the best your body and mind reject it at every turn possible.  I left the hospital on November 21st minus my daughter. This was not how I had imagined coming home from the hospital to be in the least. Instead of leaving with our new baby we got to leave the hospital with a hospital grade breast pump. We had yet to hold her, or hear her tiny baby voice cry out for food and comfort. This wasn't the typical experience that new parents have.

 I handled saying good-bye to her that afternoon in the NICU rather well, no tears or distraught feelings at the moment; I had no idea what exactly lay ahead of me. I knew she needed to be there, she needed the doctors, NP's, nurses and medical devices. She needed to get well so she could come home and receive all the love and cuddles that we were so ready to give her. At the time her estimated stay was still only a week to ten days, this seemed doable to me in those first few days. So I recited this and took note that we had already been there for three days, we could handle one more week I kept telling myself.  I'd have her home right after Thanksgiving and everything would be wonderful then. For now she had to recover and so did I. So I focused on pumping and healing with the knowing that tomorrow I'd be back at the hospital to see her and hear how her blood oxygen levels were and what level of medicines she was at.

 So we went home. Alone.

The morning of my discharge;
seeing her eyes for the very first time

My first pumped milk. I was quite proud.

Throughout the entire hospital experience Jordan had stayed by my side. Thankfully, our Mom's were able to hold down our fort, care for our pets and make us food for when we came home. My Mother in law even went out and got me granny panties to wear while my c-section healed. When we came home we had a fridge full of food to eat, and so we ate. We ate ham, macaroni and cheese and sweet potato casserole and finished it off with pumpkin pie while we watched a comedy special (Donald Glover) and we laughed. We tried to put it out of our minds exactly what was happening. This was our life for now and we just had to roll with it. It felt really good to laugh after so much trauma over the past several days. I pumped and smiled as I saw my first bit of milk had come in. I remember holding that first bottle of glorious gold milk out and being mystified that my body had produced this to nourish our baby. Something was going as planned, well sort of. 

Coming home without your baby you are met with the responsibility of pumping around the clock, just as you would feed a newborn baby. This was time consuming and exhausting and much more difficult than dealing with an actual newborn. Sometimes I missed a pumping which caused me to leak like a faucet non stop, oh the leaking! Nobody tells you just how much fluid is going to drain from your breasts as they figure out their new job, but let's just say they like to pretend that they are glorious, Italian water fountains running non stop. So you pump and the more you pump the more your body produces and pretty soon you wake up with cantaloupe sized breasts and a soaking wet bra, shirt and mattress. 

So we are home now attempting to figure out our new routine. I pump and drink water while Jordan eats. After he eats he washes out the parts of the pump so that I can eat. We are only home for a few hours when I start to feel ill. Before long I'm throwing up and just not feeling well, so we go to bed. A few hours go by and I wake up feverish and throwing up. I'm only a few days out from my c-section and this is the second time I have found myself throwing up in the middle of the night. I feel awful and immediately my mind starts to think of all the awful possibilities for why I am throwing up. Blood poisoning is the first thing that comes to mind that night. Jordan got a trash can and helped me while I threw up all the delicious food I had eaten earlier in the night. 

At 2 o'clock in the morning we call my ob office to get their opinion on what I need to do and they recommend that I go back to the hospital where our daughter is in the NICU. We are far beyond exhausted at this point in the night and one of the worst thunderstorms of the year is happening outside. I decide to go back to bed until the storm passes and we have gotten some sleep so we can safely make it back to the hospital. 

Before long the sky is beginning to lighten outside,  I crawl out of bed and into the shower. I still feel awful but no longer throwing up. I'd also missed a few pumping sessions because of being sick so my breasts were gigantic. It was not a great first night home from the hospital, definitely not what I had pictured just days before. I shower and wake up Jordan so he can take me to the Emergency Room. We both feel and look like death warmed over. 

I've been home a total of 18 hours and we are on our way back to the hospital we just left. 

The story & birth of our post term NICU baby

It was 5 o'clock in the morning, March 1st 2011 and I eagerly awaited to see two lines as we prepped for our flight across the country. There looked to be something and I couldn't help but just hope my eyes weren't playing a game with me. I took a quick pic and we left for the airport.

That faint line of happiness

That afternoon in the swanky bathroom of our upscale hotel I took another test (or three) and two lines popped up. That second faint line that meant we were pregnant again was there and it was such a joyous moment, I may or may not have jumped up and down on the bed a few times just for good measure. I couldn't help but be excited about this new chance at becoming the Mom I have always wanted to be; of course I was also terrified after our previous experience. I wanted this time to work and have a happy ending. Jordan was a few streets down getting prepared for his conference so he hadn't yet seen this exciting new stick of joy I held in my hands. I sat there imagining what my belly would look like in a few months, would I have morning sickness, would this time be different, would we have a son or a daughter?  I was so ecstatic, and I continued to test the rest of the day (I'd purchased a gazillion internet strips online for dirt cheap) and week grinning from ear to ear as the line darkened with each new test. 

A few days into the trip I popped into a toy shop and picked up this adorable little giraffe for the nursery we had started a few months previous. It's adorable little face accompanied me around the city that day as I explored. It was there when I called to tell my sister in law, in strict secrecy of course, that we were pregnant again. It went to the yarn shop with me while I bought the very squishy, buttery, yellow,  malabrigo yarn to make the baby a hat, and it watched me from my bag while I devoured a juicy In and Out burger that afternoon by the water. It gave me hope that in nine month's time we would finally be parents to a healthy and happy baby that would be the center of our world. That week was full of heartburn and feeling rather tired but it was the best sleepiness I had ever felt, because to me this meant things were going well in there and that the hormones were progressing as they should. Things just might end well this time.  

The first thing I bought our to be baby

I wish I could say that my body enjoyed being pregnant, but it did not to say the least. I suffered a subchorionic hematoma from weeks six through ten which caused me to bleed. Then beginning at six weeks I started to be consistently nauseous every day. In the evenings I'd find myself huddled over the toilet watching the my dinner come back up. I actually kept a yoga mat rolled up in front of the toilet just for these occasion. Over the next few weeks I would lose a significant amount of weight and find myself in and out of my doctor's office for hyperemesis gravidarum. I took zofran as though it was the tastiest sweet to have ever graced my lips. Every few hours, around the clock I would have to take a zofran to lessen the severity of my sickness. It was exhausting, maddening even as my body just worked harder and harder to get every ounce of fluid out of my body. I'd curl up on the sofa when Jordan left for work and only get up to throw up the bit of gatorade I'd drank five minutes prior. My body just rejected -everything- I put in it. Soon I was to the point to where even thinking of food made me vomit. I'd have breakfast and take Pickles (our very rowdy miniature schnauzer) out to potty only to be met with the strongest bout of nausea ever. So there I am, in my pajamas and holding onto a leash with a dog at the end, bent over in my yard throwing up every thing my stomach contained. This continued until around twenty weeks. 

Between weeks twenty and thirty-two I had only two small bouts in the middle of the night of what I thought were hyperemesis. These turned out to be gallbladder attacks, but I wouldn't learn this until  post pregnancy. 

As my belly grew and I felt our daughter twirl inside of me I was the happiest I have ever been. I couldn't wait to meet her and to see her tiny toes, all wrinkly and pink. Her due date was November 13th 2011, just one day past my own birthday. One last hurdle for my pregnancy met me on November 1st . I developed Bell's Palsy, which was more emotionally difficult than I could have ever fathomed. I spent the last three weeks of pre motherhood laid up on the sofa, swollen from pregnancy and steroids and incredibly sad. This moment upon me was to be what I had built up as the happiest day of my life and now I wouldn't even be able to smile without feeling like Tommy Lee Jones playing the role of two face. I felt like a monster, I looked like a monster, my nerve damage was severe and there was no improvement at all those first several weeks. The damage caused incredible ear pain, which meant loud noises would send me to my knees. I'd eat and half of my food wouldn't make it into my mouth, I couldn't spit the toothpaste from my mouth and each night Jordan had to tape my eye shut. I cried over the thought of having the baby and not being able to handle hearing her cry because of the pain in my ear and jaw. I cried because I wouldn't look the way I felt when I met her. I cried a lot in those last few weeks. The steroids used to treat the bell's caused me to gain a staggering twenty pounds in two weeks which led me to experience pitting edema. I felt a bit like play doh, but not in a fun way at all. 

The morning of November 18th 2011 I had an appointment to be monitored as I was now 40+5 weeks pregnant. I crawled out bed and waddled into the bathroom for my morning wee, while going I felt this weird pop, so I sat there waiting for something to happen, but nothing did so I got up. I went back to our bedroom and picked up Pickles where my water promptly broke on the carpet. As quickly as my very swollen body would carry me I ran back to our bathroom where I promptly sat on the toilet for a lovely ten minutes while amniotic fluid drained from my uterus. Within ten minutes of that I was in the shower and starting to feel contractions coming every four of five minutes. We hurriedly got ready for what was to be the most joyous day of our lives. There was no way to know what lay ahead of us. 

40 weeks pregnant

My pitiful legs

Two weeks into Bell's Palsy, attempting to shut both eyes

Looking like a monster. 

So we go to my appointment, I'm confirmed to be in labor and meconium is present in my amniotic fluid, so I'm shipped over to l&d. My labor was rather sad, I was vomiting with every contraction, imagine having no control over half of your face and vomiting every few minutes. I gave up pretty early on the idea of having a natural birth and decided I wanted to just be comfortable. So epidural it was, this first epidural didn't really work and I would be given a second about ten hours into labor. It didn't work very long either so I just felt defeated. Lydia wasn't descending and I had stopped dilating. So at 11:30pm we decide to do the emergency c-section. At this moment there was some amount of fear that took over and I began to cry. Thankfully my husband was there and the very sweet labor and delivery nurse, Vicky, who was walking me through what was going to happen and just how quickly it would happen. At some point while she was shaving me for surgery she mentioned that since I'd had epidurals my spinal block had the possibility of going too far north and I wouldn't feel like I could breathe, but that this was normal and I'd be okay. Vicky will never know how thankful I am that she shared this information with me. 

So before we could say baby I was half way down the hall to the operating room. Jordan had gone to get in his scrubs to be in the room with me, which left me alone with the nurses who would be assisting in my c-section. As they put the spinal block in I felt no pain, but it was mighty awkward being that close to the nurse who I was leaning on while they put it in. Immediately my legs felt numb and just gone and then my lower back, then my stomach and suddenly I was having a difficult time breathing or moving anything else and the strongest instinctual panic I have felt in my life washed over me. I start asking if there is anything they can do to reverse this effect after the baby is out and it is taking all I have to not scream out in tears of panic. The block had indeed gone too far north, and this combined with my bell's palsy made me feel like I couldn't breathe and that I was swallowing my tongue. It was the most terrifying feeling I've ever experienced and I really hope to never live through anything remotely similar again. At some point Jordan joins me in the OR where I am having a complete tearful meltdown, I never saw him though because I couldn't move my head. He did come in and hold my hand, which felt like a thousand tiny knives stabbing me all over.  The nurse behind me was holding a very firm oxygen mask over my face which was the most helpful part of the entire procedure. I remember trying to stop the hyperventilation and breathing as slowly as I could. Next I hear my ob talking about the procedure and all the while I am scared out of my mind that I just might feel them cutting me open to save my baby. The next thing I hear is my ob screeching that my daughter's head is huge and that "this baby is massive". I felt so relieved because I knew this meant she was out. It is 11:56pm and I am now a Mom. 

I never heard her cry, I barely saw a blur of pink in the nurses hands that rushed her into the other room. I remember crying or trying to. I remember feeling a needle in my upper arm, the next thing I remember is the voice of a stranger telling me to keep breathing. Over and over this same voice keeps telling me to breathe and I hear her talking to someone else about how I keep stopping but eventually I correct myself. 

When I wake up I'm in a generic multi-bed recovery room and I'm the only person in a bed in the entire room. The clock says sometime around 2 o'clock. My ob comes to the foot of my bed, I ask her how much my baby weighed and she tells me 10pounds 6 ounces. I'm absolutely shocked and overjoyed. I want to see her but she isn't here with me, which I assume is because I've been sedated. The want to breastfeed her is there but my arms aren't moving yet. Then another doctor, a rather tall male, whom I've never seen, walks up. He starts telling me he is the Neonatologist caring for my daughter in the special nursery. At some point Jordan is with me and he looks like a train wreck, which spikes my confusion and creates worry. Everyone is very solemn and I can't process what they are trying to explain to me. Somewhere in all of this I gather that she aspirated the meconium and is sick, but all the time I keep thinking, this is common, why is everyone looking so freaked out. 

The First Way I ever saw my baby

Soon they are able to wheel my recovery bed over to the special nursery to see her. This was a scene I was not prepared for. I was so numb emotionally at that moment that I just didn't feel anything when looking at this person that I had loved so much for the past nine months. I can remember thinking, oh okay, that's my baby, and wondering about what each wire and tube did, but it wasn't that typical hollywood image of immediately falling in love and crying over them that you typically think of. My defense mechanism was up and protecting me as best it could just in case the worst did happen. A few hours later our baby had to be transferred to a hospital ten minutes down the road. Right before the transfer was the next time we saw her, she was in a huge plastic transfer case that looked like something straight out of ET with a very sweet team. They wheeled her in to us and I could look at her from my bed across the room. It was very overwhelming to say the very least to see this new tiny human surrounded by so much medical technology. The driver, Brendan, came over and spoke with me about transferring her and told me how they would be careful with our cargo. I felt teary, confused and just sad. I wanted to touch her and smell her and count those adorable fingers and toes, but all those normal new parent things would have to wait.

The doctors and nurses got things started so that I could transfer over to be with her. It would be 2 or 3 o'clock that afternoon before I would get transferred. 

First time seeing her. 

Around 4 o'clock that afternoon I finally got to go to the NICU to officially meet her. I'm actually smiling in that photo but thanks to good ole Bell's Palsy it looks far from it. Being tired exacerbated the droop so I look awful in all of the hospital photos. Lydia had Severe Meconium Aspiration which caused Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn (PPHN). Basically, she had so much meconium in her lungs that she was unable to get that first big breathe at birth so her body tried to revert to in-utero functions. The harder her body tried to revert the less oxygen she had and the less oxygen she had in her blood the harder she tried to revert. So in short, her circulatory system didn't start up on it's own. As one can imagine this was a seriously nasty spiral that almost ended her little life. Thankfully, all of the right people were there to save her for us. Jordan and I were so thankful to live in the age that we do because if we hadn't she wouldn't be here, and well, I likely wouldn't either. Modern Medicine is why we are alive and well today.

The next few days were exhausting. I was learning to pump because Lydia was still sedated and it would be days before I would be able to even attempt to breastfeed her. So pumping and manual expressing it was! I was in the hospital with her for a few days and during that time I alternated between pumping to stimulate my breasts to make the milk and manual expression to gather colostrum for her. On the times where I would manually express Jordan would use syringes to gather it up (yep- it was as weird as you can picture it) then we would tag it with her identification stickers and he would walk it down the hall to the NICU for Lydia. 

The morning after her birth
I watched the sun rise and tried to pretend that
an empty bassinet hadn't been left in my room

Day 1 NICU

The date was November 19th 2011. My newborn daughter was in the NICU and would be for an unknown amount of time, I'd yet to hold her or breastfeed her. I was recovering from my c-section, struggling with my bell's palsy and blocking out all emotions. My husband was the one holding us all together. This was my first 24 hours as a parent.