Our little baby

 Our little Theodore Kelly was born on June 4, 2024 at 11:35pm. He was 8lbs 2oz and 22 inches long. 

Birth story: 

I was very certain that I was going to go into labor on my own but the doctor's office still encouraged to set a induction date just in case I didn't. The doctor I had seen the most (Dr. Case) was on call on  Friday May 31st (my due date) so I figured I would schedule the induction for that date, but was 100% certain that I would go into labor on my own before then. So naive. Thursday evening came and we started to feel uncertain as to what we should do since I really REALLY wanted to avoid an induction. Uncertain is probably a generous term - I may have had a small break down and was really questioning why we had wanted kids in the first place. Still, we figured that probably the hospital would call me in late in the day, with still the possibility of not going in at all if enough people happened to go into labor naturally on Friday so maybe I would still be able to avoid it. But lo and behold we got a call from the hospital at 5am to come in. We promptly ignored the call and went back to sleep. Honestly, not sure what our plan was. I guess we though maybe they would call us later and we'd feel better about an induction? Idk. But anyway, once we fully woke up we called the hospital and the doctor's office and decided to cancel the induction and reschedule it for Monday with the hopes that I would go into labor naturally over the weekend. 

Man, we tried everything over the weekend to put me into labor but I don't think I had a single contraction. Maybe some small cramps, but I may have been willing those into existence. So, the weekend came and went and we found ourselves back to another induction. I did feel much better about the whole thing by Monday. I think going past my due date helped me feel like I did everything I could to go the natural route. Monday morning we got a call again at 5am, which we again ignored (I think still hoping that my water would break or something) but by the mid-late morning we called the hospital and asked to be put back on the list. So around 8pm they called me and told us to get to the hospital. We were right in the middle of a curb walk, so we had to run (I use that term very loosely) home and get all the final preparations ready. Note to self: pack much lighter next time. I used like 10% of the stuff that we actually packed. After a quick final meal from McDonalds we finally got to the hospital. 

Once we got to the hospital they hooked me to the Pitocin and got the whole thing rolling. The start with a really low dose and then slowly up the dose until you reach a certain limit. Once I reached that limit they stopped checking me as often and we were able to get some sleep. My contractions started during the night but were very bearable. At like 5am the doctor finally came in to break my water and wow I am just blown away by how much liquid came out of me. It seriously felt like gallons. Once they broke my water the contractions started getting pretty dang bad and by 10am I felt content with understanding labor pains and got the epidural. The epidural was not bad at all and even better because I could still feel my legs, which was something I was very stressed about. But after I got the epidural the rest of the day was kind of a breeze. We watched HGTV and my parents and Nicole came to hang out and we just chatted. I was progressing pretty slow until all of the sudden I was at like a 6 and then like an hour later I was fully dilated. They delayed for a couple of hours because the baby had not descended as much as they wanted, so they were waiting on that. 

At like 8:30 the nurse started to help me push. Pushing was a much slower process then I had imagined. They just have you push every time you have a contraction, which for me (since they slowed down the Pitocin) was every like 7-10 minutes. So I pushed for 30 seconds and then chatted with Nicole, Kelly, and my mom for like 10 minutes. And that went on for like 2.5 hours until finally they could see the head and they went and grabbed the doctor. 

I think it's kind of ironic that I may have had the most chill, low key birth because the last like 60 seconds of it were the most chaotic, traumatic seconds of my life. 

The doctor came in, had me push one time and then told us that the cord was wrapped around the babies neck. He said it happened all the time and he was going to unwrap the cord on my next push. When I pushed again he told me to stop and said the cord was wrapped around his neck two time and was way too tight to unwrap. He decided he needed to cut the cord before he even came out because when I pushed it was just getting tighter and tighter on his neck. He cut the cord right then and pretty much pulled the baby out from there. They put him on my stomach and started rubbing his back but after about 1 second realized he wasn't breathing and they took him away. He was like a dark gray color and the nurses called an apgar score of 2 (which I only found out later) and immediately there were like 15 nurses in the room with us working on him. 

No one would give his a straight answer at the time if he was breathing or alive or going to be okay. Understandably they didn't want to give us wrong information but we were pretty much begging them to just give us something. After it was all over they explained better what happened, but during those few minutes I think I lost years of my life. 

They took him over to the baby station and hooked him up to a CPAP machine and had to inflate his lungs manually. Once they did that, with a little help, he started breathing okay on his own. The nurse said that cutting the cord so quickly, with no delay, was just a lot for his system to handle all at once and his lungs just couldn't get unstuck for that first breath, so they had to do it for him. Apparently, it's quite common. Nevertheless, they still had to take him to the NICU right away and hook him to an automatic CPAP machine and monitor him for an hour or so. Kelly went with him while I was still being stitched up. 

Once we had confirmed that our baby was okay, Kelly came back up to my room and helped me pack everything and go down to the recovery room. Nicole and my parents left and we thought from there we'd be able to get some sleep. Turns out labor is very exhausting, especially when you've been going for like 30 hours and pushed for like 3 hours. But no, the nurses were constantly in our room doing testing and asking questions. I don't know why they felt like I needed to fill out a survey on postpartum depression at 3am when I hadn't even met my baby yet, but I guess it was absolutely necessary. They did eventually bring Teddy back to us that night and I got to meet him and try to nurse him. 

The next day everything seemed normal until the nurse realized that his blood sugar was super low. The did some tests and eventually had to readmit him to the NICU. For the next few days they had to pretty much give him a sugar drip in an IV and then make sure once they weaned him off of that that his blood sugar would stay up on its' own. His was an absolute champ in the NICU, so calm and a good eater. He had to get his IV replaced once since his old one was leaking, and hearing him cry from that literally made my heart feel like it was shattering. It was maybe the saddest thing I've ever seen. I was sobbing watching it. But other than that he was totally chill and pretty happy. The nurses were also just so nice and sweet with him. They all just called him handsome all the time and we were just bursting with pride. But we were dying to take him home and finally on Saturday they let us. 

Having Teddy home with us is just an absolute dream. We just couldn't be more in love with him. I have never been a huge fan of newborns - I prefer when they have a little more personality - but I could just stare at him all day long. 

Here's a list of favorite things about our boy: 

- His sneezes and when he finishes sneezing he does a big sigh 

- His little dimples 

- When we wakes up in our arms and he sees we are holding him he gives us a little smile 

- His little tuft of hair on the top of his head that stands right up 

- All his facial expressions he is constantly making 

- His smell 

- His little scrunchy body 

- How he take like 20 minutes to stretch when he wakes up 

- When he stretches in those 20 minutes he farts like the whole time 

- His big yawns 

- Taking naps when he lies on our chest for hours at a time - he's so snuggly 

- His cry that sounds like chewbacca which is sad but also so cute 

- When Kelly holds his head to burp and his head looks so tiny

- Overall, just seeing Kelly become a dad has been once of my greatest joys. It's not surprising to me that he would be a good dad, but seeing it with our own baby is absolutely the sweetest thing I can imagine. They are just little buddies, but Kelly is already so protective and loving with him. 

 

Honestly there are a million more things that we love about him. Having a newborn is hard, especially once Kelly had to go back from paternity leave, but definitely less hard than I expected. Probably because I just never expected to love him and this phase so much. Every time I think he grows, I feel a little devastated because I'm just gonna miss my tiny, sleepy, scrunchy newborn. But we are so excited to have him in our little family and so excited to get to raise him.