The Miracle of Surviving Childbirth

I'm finally able to update about having Little Bit. I have always been afraid of the actual labor part of having a child...and now I know why. As much as I studied up on what will happen during the labor process and things I can do to make the process not as traumatic I was pretty shocked as to how it actually went. I've had several friends who have recently had children and experienced either no pain or 3 pushes and the tiny child was born. Not so with me. I should have known that you usually have the type of labor that your family members have...rough. My mom and Martha had a tough time with it and I should have been hooked to the epidural before I even went to the hospital. I guess the main issue was that the epidural only affected one side and not the other. So, 15 epidurals later I was finally feeling good. Then...dun dun duuuuuuuun...it wore of about pushing time. Thankfully, I only pushed about 2 hours. Even though it seems like a long time, time itself doesn't register when you're in the moment. John passed out right after the epidural. He never saw them do anything but Karen things it was the smell of the sterile pads they were using. Plus, tired and low blood sugar didn't help. He was ok and thankfully sitting down anyway but it still scared me. We had an awesome doctor that night. She was the one I was hoping would deliver us. We had a scheduled appointment with another doctor for an induction but we went into labor on our own along with everyone else in the state. The labor and delivery unit was completely full and people were waiting for rooms in triage. Praise God we didn't have to deliver in triage. The whole hospital would have heard me have that child. Debbie told me that babies know their mom's voice from the start but I was able to experience how cool that really was. They handed him to me right after he was born and he was crying. As soon and I spoke to him he looked at me and the crying was done. Neatest experience ever. Duncan was born with jaundice issues. Different blood type and my body attacking him meant he had to go into the blue light bed the day after he was born. They first put him in the open bed with the blindfold on him. This was a no-go. I told the nurse this from the start. (Begining Rant) They wheeled him into the room in the little bed and he was already screaming and clawing at his eyes. He is really sensitive to sound and alarms went off all stinkin' night in the hallway so he would flail his arms and start screaming again. I sat on the side of my bed, held him in the blue light bed and cried with him all night. The nurse came in sometime early in the morning and I crawled all over her. I told her it wasn't working and something had to change. My newborn had scratches all over his face because of the blindfold and no one had slept all night. I was ticked. She got the message and went and got another type of bed (second photo). This was a little better but really didn't work. He would scream, we would pick him up to calm him down, the nurse would come in and tell us to put him back in the bed yadda yadda. This continued until I let one of the nurses know that when he cried I was going to do something about it. They backed off. His counts kept going up so we had to stay an extra few days. We were so ready to go home! We have wonderful families who brought us food every night and clothes. Finally his counts started dropping and they told us we could be discharged. Actually, a very sick doctor came in...sneezed...picked him up and told us we could leave. All I could thing of was, well, we'll be back soon for a raging cold. But, God is good. Our last 2 nurses fast tracked the discharge process and we were outta there before lunch. I hate to complain because we really did have a wonderful and healthy baby. We did a lot of praying to get him here safely. I'm just not in love with hospitals and we did have some serious issues while we were there. However, my momma bear personality kicked in right after Duncan was born and that paired with crazy hormones made me go into hyperactive protect my child mode. At least I know how do deal with things should we decide to go down this road again. Child is crying...must go....