Madeline and Molly's Birth Story: Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

Once surgery was over I went back to the recovery room where Matt met up with me.  They immediately started the magnesium to combat the preeclampsia/HELLP so this is where my memory gets really fuzzy.  I know my mom and Diana came back to see us and we showed them the pictures we took in the operating room.  After my spinal started to wear off (and I started throwing up from the magnesium) Matt and I were able to go back to the NICU to see the girls.  They wheeled me back there in my recovery bed (much smaller than a l&d bed) and had to really squeeze me into the room.  The girls are in a "twin room" in the NICU: two separate rooms that are divided by an accordion wall they keep open.  We were not able to take the girls out of their isolettes and hold them, so we just looked at them and held their hands through the openings in their beds.  Madeline had the CPAP machine on at 30% which is what was covering her nose.  *Fun fact: I don't remember going to the NICU and talking with the neonatologist at all.  This is all an empty memory that Matt has filled in for me.  

We spent the rest of the day in our room with visitors; our parents were there, Jeff came, Laura and Brooks, and Stephanie and Robby were there that night.  I have very little memory of any of this, but I do know they were all there at some point.  All I can remember is throwing up and sleeping, apparently with my mouth open most of the day.  :)

Saturday, February 22 we divided up our time between the NICU, our room and pumping.  They turned the magnesium off at 10:30, but I stayed in bed most of the rest of the day.  Matt was such a great help washing all of my pump parts, wheeling me to and from the NICU, helping me to and from the bathroom, ordering meals for me, and fetching everything I needed.  He was so good to me.  That evening I was able to do skin-to-skin with Molly and let her try to nurse.  The first time I pumped I got around 3 ounces, but after that I was only getting drops.  Since the girls were splitting anything I got they doctor felt like letting her nipple would help stimulate my milk production.  She latched right on and suckled for a few minutes.  Such a good girl! It was the sweetest moment to hold my little girl and snuggle with her for the few minutes I got to hold her for.  Madeline was on the CPAP (oxygen) machine so we were not able to hold her for several days.  Mama Jo and Auntie Carol came to visit us and bring Chuy's for dinner. That evening Nana brought Carter up to see us.  As much as he loves to spend time with his Nana and PawPaw, he was super excited to see us, even if we were not at our own house.  Even though he was now a big brother, he was still my little baby boy and I could have laid in my bed cuddling with him all weekend.

Sunday, February 23 my mom stayed with me while Matt went home to spend the day with Carter Man.  I was able to get up and take a shower and get dressed that morning.  It was glorious and I felt like a new person to get out of the hospital gown and get my IV taken out.  We had a long list of visitors on Sunday, including the Eckhardt family and the Cathey family.  Brooks and Laura came again and Brooks always got so upset when she couldn't go with her mom to see the girls in the NICU.  Bless her heart, she is so excited to see "Madewinn" and "Mowwy" and was not allowed into the NICU since she wasn't a sibling. Matt came back to stay with me Sunday night after a nice, long day with Carter.  On Sunday Madeline was taken off CPAP and moved to a nasal cannula.  The girls also were having some tummy troubles after receiving some formula and so their feeds were temporarily suspended.  Molly's jaundice levels were too high so they started her on phototherapy.

Overnight on Sunday we had some excitement in our room.  All day Sunday I had been working on getting my bowels going (sorry, TMI.)  About 3:30am I had some success and a short while later I got really, really cold laying in bed.  Up until now I had been really hot all weekend and Matt was complaining about how cold I was keeping our room.  When I woke him up and told him to get me a blanket and turn the air up and get in bed with me he knew something was wrong.  My teeth were chattering so hard it was making my entire body shake.  We finally called for the nurse who checked my vitals and my BP was way up, temp was 101.6,  and my pulse was in the 170's.  She called a "rapid response" team to my room for evaluation.  During a rapid response they sound an alarm over the entire hospital "May I have your attention please.  Rapid response room 4018.  Labor and delivery."  I'm sure everyone in the hospital loved to be woken up to that at 4:00am.  This sent doctors and nurses to my room from various departments (ER, respiratory, etc) so they could help determine what was wrong with me.  I was running a fever so they assumed I had an infection somewhere.  They ordered an EKG and x-ray, both of which came back normal, except for my tachycardia.  They started me another IV and gave me some antibiotics and I instantly started to feel better.  The team stayed in my room until 7:00am running test after test after test to try and determine what was wrong with me.  They even ran a sepsis test that two of the nurses administered and commented in all of their years of nursing their had ever done a sepsis test.  They actually had to take out the directions and read them out load to be sure they were doing it correctly! Thankfully I wasn't septic.

The doctor rounded on me about 9:00am and said there was probably a small infection somewhere along my incision that caused the fever which triggered everything else.  But because of everything that happened I would have to stay an extra night in the hospital, just so they could keep an eye on me.  Since the girls were there it didn't matter to me whether I stayed or was discharged, but Matt was disappointed not to go home.  He was so worried about me during the rapid response! At one point I looked over at him and he had his eyes closed and was visibly praying.  Poor baby probably thought I was dying with the amount of people they sent to my room!

 So Monday, February 24 ended up being more of the same.  We bounced back and forth between our room and the NICU, I pumped as much as I could (my milk had come in at this point), we had a couple visitors, and I got to hold Molly again.  Matt spent some time with Carter again while our parents visited with me and the girls.  Madeline started phototherapy as well so both girls were sporting some pretty cute purple sunglasses. They were so cute! By Monday evening their bellies were better and their feeds were restarted (only taking 1ml every 3 hours at this point.)

On Tuesday, February 25 Matt went back to work and my mom spent the day with me.  Again, I don't know how people who don't live close to their families get by without the help they always provide.  We needed Matt's parents to help with Carter, my mom to help with me, and Auntie Carol to bring us dinner.  Everyone had a job! Dr P was back at the hospital that day so she spent some time with me that morning.  She thinks the rapid response had something to do with my milk coming in.  Apparently it's common to spike a fever when your milk arrives, and she thinks the fever triggered an uncommon response from my body.  The chills and tachycardia were all just a side effect from the fever.  That made me feel a lot better and we made plans to discharge that afternoon! Madeline had her nasal cannula removed and started breathing room air on her own! Both girls were upped to 3ml feeds and also started receiving lipids through their IV's, along with the TPN and caffeine they were already receiving.

I pumped as much as I could that morning and then mom drove me home.  A lot of people have asked me if it was hard to leave the girls at the hospital and, honestly, it wasn't.  For a variety of reasons Matt and I have been really okay with the NICU stay.  First, we were prepared from the start that they would be early and would likely need some time in the NICU.  And after our scare at 26 weeks we were just holding our breath to see how long I could make it.  Each day I stayed pregnant shortened their NICU stay by 3 days.  Second, they weren't our first babies so we knew what we were in for.  Had these been our first it would have been torture leaving them at the hospital, but this time we also had a baby we needed to go home to.  Third, going home allowed me time to heal from the c-section and time with Carter I didn't have while on bed rest.  Those 5 weeks I got to spend with Carter where I could actually pick him up, get on the floor, and enjoy our time together was much needed.  Finally, we knew there was nothing really wrong with them.  The girls weren't sick, they were meeting their milestones, and it was mainly just a matter of them growing before we could go home with them.  Factor in that we were pretty much terrified to be responsible for three kids under the age of two, then we were in no hurry for the girls to come home!

I visited them daily, once to three time a day depending on their bottles and breast feed times.  The hospital was fairly close to our house so the only hiccup in our visits was making sure we had someone to watch Carter for us while we went up there.  I tried to go while he was at school and while the grandma's could watch him during the day.  And then I also went up at night after Carter went to bed and Matt was home to stay with him.  Dr C and her staff of nurses were WONDERFUL and always made me feel like my girls were rockstars.  Without them and their expertise I'm not sure if it would have been as easy to leave.

We are so glad to welcome our girls into our family.  And we are so happy to watch Carter become a big brother!