Thoughts on the NICU

Got his idea from Babycenter.com, and thought it was pretty funny.

You know you've been in the NICU for too long when --

"You try to turn the water on at home with your feet."

"You know how to run down the 'Cares' checklist like a champ."

"You know what 'Cares' are."

"You start dreaming you're a NICU nurse."

"Whenever you're hungry you start thinking what you're own 'readiness score' is."

"The nurses don't ask 'who are you here to see' before buzzing you in."

"You know the metric system better than the US system."

"36.5 Celcius just doesn't come fast enough."
"You're not concerned when the oxygen monitor is going off, as long as it says 'Low Quality'."
"You understand how to read your baby's charts, and check his 'orders' for the day as soon as you walk in."

I can't take credit for these... Thank you dharmabummer and Forum contributors from Babycenter.com.

"You hoard plastic bottles and labels for your milk."

"You think it's completely normal for complete strangers to walk in on you when you are topless and breasfeeding/pumping."

"You go home and hear bells ringing in your head."

"You know every nurse by name."

"You don't have to look at the clock to know when five minutes scrubbing time is up."
"You start correcting the nurses when they forget to do something."

Lt. Reid got moved to a twin bed so he could have the boppy pillow in the bed, and be elevated more. 

The monitoring system that goes off whenever his oxygen sensor moves off his foot. Luckily, it hasn't legitimately gone off from his oxygen being too low. 

The work of a true pumper. Pump, bottle, label... my routine every four hours., but I got it down to 15 minutes. 

Where I sit all day and my trusted pumper... I've never been so close to an inanimate object. 

The weight station. Used for nightly weighs and whenever we attempt breastfeeding.

The greatest baby in the world. 

The Story of Lt. Reid - Part 1

To get the full story of Lt. Reid coming into the world, it really needs to be broken into two parts (and possibly be quite lengthy):

Part 1 - Labor and Delivery

Part 2 - NICU and Recovery

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Part 1 - Labor and Delivery

It all really started to feel real come June 12, 2013. My parents drove across the country to get to Utah by June 12th, just in case Lt. Reid decided to make an early arrival. He was due June 16th, so we used the time from  June 12-16 to go shopping, finish setting up the house, etc. It was really nice. Then June 16th came...it stopped being nice. From June 16th to June 25th (9 days!!) I tried to distract myself with cleaning, watching Netflix, reading, then started to get desperate with organizing my iTunes music, digitizing paper utility bills, and eventually alphabetizing my shoes. I tried suggestions for inducing labor that ranged from marathon daily walks to eating eggplant parmesan. 

On Monday, June 24th I went in for my then weekly doctor's appointment, to disappointingly find out that I was dilated a whopping ONE centimeter! After much discussion, we decided to induce Wednesday, June 26th if he hadn't come by then. It was looking like that was going to be the big day. I went home excited at first, but then came what I didn't expect... fear. I wasn't scared of being a parent or the labor/delivery process, but suddenly I was terrified of being induced. I went to lay down, and found myself lost in my emotions. As I bawled my eyes out (in hindsight I think my loss of emotions was also tied to the fact that 12 hours from then I would be going into labor and I think my body was releasing a lot of hormones), I started begging that I would go into labor naturally and that everything would be okay.

Luckily, God listens to the prayers of overdue pregnant women and I awoke Tuesday, June 25th at 2am with a new feeling... contractions! I moved quickly through the initial labor process. I woke Dr. Reid up by 2:30am, and he started timing my contractions. I went from about 8 minutes apart to 5 minutes apart by 4am. Come about 9am they were jumping back and forth from 3 minutes apart to 5 minutes. We were convinced we would have the baby by noon. We called the midwives, and went down to the clinic to see if I was really progressing. I told the midwife not to tell me if I wasn't more than 4 centimeters, to my delight I was 6.5 centimeter. We were off to the hospital to have this baby.

By the time we got to the hospital at 12:00pm I was 8 centimeters! We were so excited. I had lost my ability to stay focused with hypnobabies, but was trying hard to deal with the pain. I found having Dr. Reid press on my shoulders and back, focusing on relaxing my stomach, and screaming $H*T! as loud as I could very helpful during this process. It was more intense than I could've imaged, but I was starting to feel confident I could handle it. Then something unfortunate happened... 5.5 hours passed by. By 5:30pm I was pretty sure I had gone insane. I felt I had lost my ability to control myself, stopped feeling any relief between contractions, and sadly I was still at 8 centimeters. Part of my cervix had appeared to attach itself to Lt. Reid's head, and I wasn't progressing. I was put on oxygen (which I hated, and became a battle between the nurse and I of ripping off the mask and her having to put it back on), and was told later Lt. Reid's heart rate was starting to decrease at this point and the nurses were working to get in contact with the on call doctor.

At this point I made the request for the second time to sweet Dr. Reid that I needed a break. I begged for an epidural. The fear in me worried he would look at me and say, "We talked about this...no." But to my surprise, he was actually tearing up. He later told me it was really hard to watch me go through that. They called in the anesthesiologist and I got an epidural and it was fantastic. I took a breathe when it kicked in and calmed myself back down to reality. After about 2 hours it was starting to wear off, just enough so I could feel the contractions again and be able to feel myself push. Lt. Reid's heart rate was continuing to fluctuate and the on call doctor was there now as well. They wanted to get Lt. Reid out. With a brief threat of forceps being used, I found the needed strength to push that baby out. It took about 20 minutes to push him out, and it was glorious.

When he was born I held him for a brief moment before he was brought over to the exam area. He was placed on oxygen and they started monitoring his breathing. I was an ecstatic mess and didn't realize at the time the somewhat serious-ness of the situation. I just wanted my baby back.

After a few minutes I got him back. All the nurses and doctors left, and we got about 10 minutes to ourselves as our new little family. After the much too short 10 minutes, a nurse came back to check on his breathing. He was still having some breathing problems. She wanted to take him to the nursery to get checked and put back on oxygen. Dr. Reid and I had already agreed that once Lt. Reid was born he would stay with him. So they all left, and suddenly I found myself left alone in a hospital room. The nurse was so calm when she left with Lt. Reid, I still wasn't too worried and figured within a few minutes I would be cuddled up with my new family once again. Sadly, that didn't happen quite as planned.

A nurse came back to get me after about 20 minutes, and I was wheelchaired to the nursery. Once there I was updated on the situation. With thousands of thoughts racing through my mind, and my emotions frenetic from everything that had gone on, I could barely follow the nurses and doctors explain what was going on. They explained Lt. Reid had a lung infection (later to be diagnosed with congenital pneumonia). They needed to keep him on oxygen, were going to move him to an incubator to maintain his temperature, and start him on antibiotics. I then went with the nurses to my hospital room, while Dr. Reid stayed with Lt. Reid for some other tests and x-rays. I didn't get to see Dr. or Lt. Reid for a few hours, when they were moved to our temporary new home... the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

An Abstract on Patience

The process of parenthood has become a great test of patience for Dr. Reid and myself. As I sit "waiting" on Lt. Reid I've been evaluating the following Phases of patience thus far:

Phase 1 - "Hey, you should have a baby." 

As I mentioned in my previous post, our initial journey to the great adventure of parenthood started January 2010 (3 years, 5 months, 25 days before Lt.'s Birth Day). The hardest part of this phase was not knowing what we could do. There was "nothing wrong" and everything was "normal," so we worked on developing patience and enjoyed the phase we were in. At the time I didn't realize that this would be signs of things to come. 

Phase 2 - "Hey, I'm going to make you wait 9 months."

Phase 2 started in October 2012 when we found out Lt. Reid would be joining our family. While we waited the expected 9 months, we dreamed of June 16th to come. While everyone warned us not to get too focused on the "due date", we couldn't help it and planned our lives around that date. Having a date to focus on helped this phase go by pretty quick in hindsight.  

Phase 3 - "Just kidding suckers, wait 9 more days!"

Being overdue sucks! Not because I was uncomfortable, not because I couldn't sleep, not because I had to pee every time I re-positioned (those things were somewhat welcomed as I found them signs the end was near), but because after about day 5 I had positively convinced myself I was going to be pregnant forever.  

Jokes started to arise that Lt. Reid was going to test our patience as parents, and he would decide what time schedule he would follow. 

Phase 4 - "Hospitals are cool, let's chill here for a bit."

The jokes stopped being funny by Phase 4, as we realized Lt. Reid really was going to call all the shots. In a matter of minutes, he had completely wrapped the lives of six grown adults around his adorable pinky, and we (Dr. Reid, Mrs. Reid and respective parents) focused our attention on whatever he needed. 

And that brings us to where I am right now -- sitting in the NICU of a quaint Level 3 Neonatal Hospital, two weeks after Lt. Reid joined our family.... and we wait. We wait for Lt. Reid to eat, we wait for the lesson we are supposed to learn, we wait for the great day I can be sitting in my bed cuddled up next to Dr. and Lt. Reid, and we wait for Phase 5 when Lt. Reid will test our patience once again. ...