So, the polls are closed now because Squirt has arrived. Before I get to the arrival story and subsequent drama (yes, there is drama, ugh), I'll reveal how Eric and I voted in the polls, in case anyone is remotely interested. There was only one correct vote for his guessed arrival date, and I was that one voter. My vote that Squirt would be early was part maternal intuition and part wishful thinking, ha! Eric's guess was that Squirt would be a few days late. I am sooooooo glad Eric was wrong. As for Squirt's hair, one-third of the voters guessed correctly, and Eric was one of those voters: Squirt was born with brown hair. My vote was that he would be born with red hair. Despite my incorrect guess, I'm still hopeful that his hair might take on an auburn hue eventually...
But enough of that. Here's the arrival story:
At 10:15 pm on Tuesday, September 9, 2008, I was sitting on the couch, cruising around online on Eric's laptop, and watching Law & Order. Without any warning, my water broke. This is the weirdest phenomenon, by the way. It doesn't feel like anything -- I was just very suddenly soaking wet and totally bewildered. I spent a few minutes in the bathroom paralyzed by the fact that, yes, my water had broken, there was no mistaking it, and labor was imminent.... and early!
Eric had already gone to bed and was sound asleep. (He gets up at 5:00 a.m. for work every day, so he goes to bed really early.) So, straight out of a scene from a movie, I had to wake up Eric and let him know that "it's time." This sounds like a total cliche, but supposedly it's pretty rare that it actually happens like this in real life. More often than not, women will get their water broken artificially by the doctor
after they go into labor and are admitted into the hospital. I, on the other hand, was not having contractions (not yet, anyway), and had no other obvious symptoms of labor.
Eric went from sound asleep to wide awake in .05 seconds. We called the hospital, they told us to come on in, and Eric drove like, well, like he had a woman in labor in his car. (There was a big delay between the water breaking and our departure because we had to wait for the hospital's on-call obstetrician to call us back and tell us what to do.)
Now here's where things get a little more detailed. Disregard the next two paragraphs if measurements of labor progression and accompanying medical interventions are of no interest to you. At about 2:30 a.m., I was dilated 3 cm. I was having irregular, infrequent and fairly manageable contractions. But Squirt was facing "sunny-side up" so I was also having some nasty back labor. Because I didn't want to wait until the pain was unmanageable, I told the medical staff that I wanted an epidural as soon as they could arrange it. (I had heard that it can take an hour or more to get pain medication underway.) At 3:30 am, after Eric had been shooed out of the room (spouses aren't allowed to observe the ugly epidural procedure), the epidural was in place and I was feeling awesome.
At 5:30 a.m., I was only 4 cm dilated, so a resident informed me that they wanted to start me on Pitocin. There are a lot of women who are strenuously opposed to medical interventions during childbirth, and that's fine, I respect that, but I'm not one of those women. When a doctor tells me that, in his/her professional opinion, things need to get moving, I'm not going to argue. Plus, I already had the epidural in place, so I wasn't worried about getting slammed by the Pitocin.
Labor got moving at that point, and I had to re-up the epidural a couple of times. My obstetrician, Dr. Keller, happened to be working at the hospital that morning (this was just a fantastic stroke of good luck), and she came in around 10:00 a.m. to see how things were going. I was dilated 8 cm by this point, and Dr. Keller told me to get ready to push in a couple of hours. Sure enough, we got started with delivery at about noon. Involved were Eric, a nurse, my doctor, and me. I had anticipated that there would be more people in the room, since we were at a teaching hospital, but the entire procedure just was the four of us. It was perfect. My doctor was fabulous, the nurse was wonderful, and Eric was way more actively involved than we had anticipated. No stirrups -- Dr. Keller had him holding one of my legs, while the nurse held the other. So, Eric witnessed the whole birth from the business end, start to finish, and then he got to cut the umbilical cord. The delivery didn't require any forceps or vacuum extraction or anything crazy like that, but Squirty came out with a nasty bruise on the top of his head (more on that in a minute).
Aiden James Burt was born at 12:52 p.m., on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. He weighed 7 lbs and measured 20 inches. His APGAR scores were 9 and 9.
Okay, now for the drama. Most newborns get a little jaundiced, so when we were informed that Aiden had a little jaundice, we weren't too worried. We left the hospital on Friday, September 12, and, before we left, the hospital pediatrician told us that Aiden was perfectly healthy, but we should tell his pediatrician that his
bilirubin levels needed to be tested the following day. So we did exactly that, and the test revealed that the numbers were higher than the day before, which is the opposite of good. But Aiden's pediatrician, Dr. Labriola, wasn't too worried, because this is a commonplace enough occurrence. She told us to get his bilirubin levels tested again on Monday. I should note at this point that testing bilirubin levels requires a baby to get a heel prick -- a technician will do a little puncture in the baby's heel and squeeze some blood into a vial. It goes without saying that babies don't like this, and witnessing that is especially difficult for sleep-deprived new mommies whose hormones are raging out of control.
So on Monday we subjected Aiden to yet another heel prick, and then went home and waited to get a phone call with the results. Aiden was looking pretty yellow at this point, but we still weren't worried because we hadn't been given any reason to be concerned, and the consensus was that this is so commonplace and benign.
Well, Monday's results weren't good. Dr. Labriola called to inform us that the bilirubin levels had shot way up, and she was arranging for Aiden to be immediately admitted to the nearest hospital for phototherapy. She told us to get an overnight bag ready for me, because the rooms can accommodate one overnight visitor (the only reason I was the overnighter instead of Eric was because I'm breastfeeding, which is a piece of info that becomes very significant later).
Phototherapy is not physically painful, but the baby has to be isolated in a chamber, under special lights, naked except for a diaper, and with googles on to protect the eyes. It's really hard to watch. We were told that the more time he spends under the lights, the faster the bilirubin will exit his system. The light chamber is equiped so that you can put your hands in there, so I decided to change his diapers in there instead of removing him for each changing.
Also, I didn't take him out to breastfeed. We fed him formula only, which was a little heartbreaking. We learned that breast milk has an enzyme in it that can bind with bilurubin, and essentially makes the bilirubin recycle through the system rather than exiting. Aside from how difficult it was to put Aiden in the light chamber, it broke my heart to think that my breastfeeding him was potentially toxic to him. Upon admission, the hospital pediatrician told us that the big bruise on Aiden's head at birth was the probable explanation for the excessive bilirubin levels. So, the bruise caused the excess bilirubin and the breast milk kept it circulating in the system.
I did not sleep a wink that night; I couldn' t take my eyes off Aiden. A heel prick at 3 a.m. revealed that our efforts were working, and the numbers had gone down a signficant amount, but not enough to take him out of the light chamber. Dr. Labriola made her rounds at about 8:00 a.m., about an hour after Eric returned to the hospital. She said she anticipated Aiden being released the following morning, but she'd certainly release him earlier if the bilurubin numbers drop low enough beforehand. In the meantime, she said I should keep breastfeeding! She said I should alternate breastfeeding and formula feeding. She's the doctor, not me, and I like her a lot, but breastfeeding makes me feel like I'm poisoning my baby. I'm still doing it, but not without some reservation.
Anyhow, another heel prick was done at 2 p.m. that day, and the numbers were low enough that Dr. Labriola told the nurses to take Aiden out of the light chamber. She didn't discharge him, though. We waited around until 8 p.m. to make sure the numbers didn't go back up once he was out from under the phototherapy.
A heel prick at 8 p.m. revealed that the bilirubin had decreased by a fraction of a point (not very much at all), but it was enough for Dr. Labriola to discharge us. What a colossal relief that was. We were told that once the excess bilirubin gets flushed out of the system, jaundiced babies are generally on the road to recovery. We scheduled a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician's office for Thursday.
Thursday's appointment went well, the doctor we saw was encouraged by Aiden's appearance (less yellow) but we were told to go get another heel prick done that day to make sure that the bilirubin was still decreasing. We did, and the results were totally disheartening. The bilirubin levels had rebounded and were climbing back up. The doctor told me to keep breastfeeding, and we were told to get yet another heel prick done today.
So, Aiden, the little trooper, got another heel prick done this morning. Dr. Labriola just called me with the results. The numbers have gone done a tiny little bit, and she told us to just keep doing what we're doing and come in on Thursday for a standard 2-week check-up.
And so that brings us up to date. Poor Aiden has been subjected to so much crap in his first ten days of life, it breaks my heart. After we found out on Thursday that the bilirubin had rebounded, I made the decision
not to breastfeed exclusively, and have been instead alternating with formula. This is nice because Eric and my mom can feed him too, but the whole process is very psychologically and emotionally challenging.
Anyhow, we have been taking tons of pictures, and I'll spend some time today posting more pictures than anyone could possibly want to see! Aside from his yellow hue, Aiden is adorable and very entertaining.
Aiden isn't quite comfortable yet with all of the bodily functions he needs to master outside of the womb (pooping, farting, burping, etc.), and the above picture captures one of the expressions he gets when he is struggling with one his new bodily functions. In this picture, is sitting in his baby papasan with a mean case of the hiccups. He gets the hiccups a couple times a day, and we have discovered that the baby papasan is very soothing to Aiden during these episodes. The baby papasan was a gift from my sister. (Thanks again, Queenie!) It plays lullaby music and vibrates.
By the way, Aiden had a pediatrician appointment last week. His jaundice is finally in retreat! His pediatrician is confident that this issue is now totally behind us. Aaah....
