NICU Nightmare Novel

First of all, I want to thank all of you who prayed for our family during this difficult time. I can honestly say I have never felt so many emotions in such a short period of time. These past few days have held some of the hardest, yet some of the happiest moments of my life. I can't even type this without getting extremely emotional. I guess I will start at the beginning. On thursday night I went into labor. We weren't sure if we should go to the hospital or not, my contractions were not very painful but they were really regular and close together. I decided we should just go and take the chance of getting sent home. When we got there my contractions were every 2-5 minutes apart and they were getting stronger and stronger, so they kept me. We checked into our room at about 11:00pm. During the labor I really didn't have much pain, it was a wonderful delivery much different then my first. Honestly the worst part was getting the IV in my hand. Anyway, my nurse predicted that I would have the baby between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning if I progressed at a good rate. I got my epidural and life was great. She checked me and I was at a 5 so I decided I better try to rest. A little while later Eli's heart rate started going way down with the contractions, it was so scary! So she came in and checked me again and she said, "You know my prediction of 7:00 is not going to happen." I got very discrouaged until she said, "You're at a 9!" Anyway, Rory and my mom had just enough time to grab the cameras and one push later little Eli entered the world at 3:08 am.
I was able to hold Eli for a minute before they took him and cleaned him off and ran all the regular tests. It was then that they found that he was not gettting enough oxygen into his lungs. They decided he needed to go to the NICU to be on oxygen and get it all figured out. They told me it would only be for a little while. This was so hard, I only got to see him for a minute and I could not even see him when they were cleaning him off and then they took him and told me it would be a couple hours before I could go see him in the NICU. Rory and I had a little time just the two of us. We decided to have a family prayer so we had our families come in and then, when they were allowed, Rory, my dad, and Rory's dad went to the NICU to give Eli a blessing. Rory came back and told me about the blessing and immediatly we both felt so much comfort and knew that little Eli would be ok. Then a doctor came in and talked to us and told us that he would need to be in the NICU for at least a couple days, maybe more. I was finally able to go visit him and it was so hard to see him laying in that lttle bed all hooked up to machines and not be able to hold him and nurse him. The same day he was born his lungs were working prefectly and he really had no other reason to be in there. But they still had to keep him in case his lab tests came back that he had some type of infection. We learned that the last result would be Sunday morning but that even if it was negative we still might not be able to bring him home. When they started taking him off the IV they started him on formula which I was not happy about. There was a nurse there who we were unfortunate enough to have most of the time and I could not stand her. She argued with me about everything, she told me how to burp, hold, feed, swaddle, how long I could hold him, etc. It was so hard to sit and watch someone else feed your baby. She insisted she do it the first few times and they would not even let me breast feed. Having a healthy baby in the NICU is extremely difficult. One of the hardest parts was when I had to go back to my room and I would walk by the other rooms and hear all the little babies crying and know that my baby could be crying and I was not even the one who was there to care for him. It was also hard because they would only let us hold him every 3 hours and for only a half an hour so Rory and I would get 15 minute turns. He would usually cry when we put him back in his bed but the nurse would not let me pick him up, she would say, "Just pat his back". It was so unnatural. On Saturday night Rory and I decided it would be best for him to go home and sleep with Kaemon who was abviously sleep deprived. My mom brought me a book and Rory and I headed down to the NICU for our time to hold Eli, Rory stayed for a while then had to go get Kaemon. By this time the doctor had agreed (much because of my persistence and forcefulness) that we could start out his feedings with me breastfeeding him. So I fed him and he ate really well, but I had the annoying nurse keep coming in through my curtain dividers and telling me how to do things. She sat and told me how to burp him, which took most of his feeding time. (They would not let him eat past the half hour he was allowed out of his crib.) So when it came time to put him back he was still eating and I could tell he had to poop. I told her I was not going to put him back yet. She went off on me. I told her I understood but that what I needed her to do was walk right back out of the curtain and give me some privacy with my child. She said, "I will let you have 10 minutes." That just set me off. I went off on her and yelled at her that she had no right to let me do anything because he was my child. She still had the nerve to keep arguing with me so I said, "I need to you to leave." She finally did. I got Eli to eat a little more, poop, I changed his diaper, and put him in his bed. Of course the reason they would not let me hold him was so that he could "get the adequate rest he needed" which was not possbile if he was asleep in our arms. She told me he just might not wake up for his next feeding because of the time I took away from him sleeping. Well, guess what? He woke up way earlier than he was supposed to-rooting and wanting to nurse, of course they wouldn't let me nurse him because I could only do it once every 12 hours. The funny thing is, they wanted him in his bed so he could sleep but every time I put him in there and patted his back until he fell asleep the loud nurse would wake him up, They were so loud that night, looking things up on Ebay, and doing all other sorts of things. Because of them, the loud machines, and the fact that he was probably wanting to nurse a lot like most newborns do, Eli could not sleep. It was then that I knew I had to get him out of that place. He did not belong. I stayed with him until I was literally falling out of my chair then realizng I had a big fight ahead of me the next day, I decided I needed to go to bed. Leaving him that night was the hardest thing I have ever done. Before I left I apologized to the nurse I yelled at even though I was so glad I did, she did not bug me the rest of the night. She told me there was no way Eli would be going home the next day and I knew the nurses had a huge say in that so I started kissing up. I even sent her a flower with a sorry card down with the breast milk I pumped. The next morning there was another nurse, a nice nurse who thought Eli had no reason to be there anymore. The whole morning was tense as we waited to talk to the doctor, we didn't know if we would be discharged without our baby. But finally, the doctor told us we could bring him home! We were so happy I started crying and Rory and I just hugged eachother. They made us watch this CPR movie before we could take him but I said, "That's fine I will just take him in there with us and nurse him."
Right now I could not feel any happier. I am just so thankful for our friends and familiy who did so much for us and prayed for us. Being home with my 3 boys is the greatest feeling in the world.




Here are a few pictures right after Eli was born. He already looks completely different and pictures really just don't show how cute he is. Don't mind the way I look-my eyes are still working on their de-puffing. Sadly, our camera broke in the hospital so I don't have more recent photos but I will get some.