Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Rough Start

After a rough start Lauren and I are finally starting to get settled.

Right after Lauren was born she started grunting while trying to breath so they took her to the NICU for a little while. Luckily they didn't have to keep her for very long. The next morning around 4:30 she started to spit up and kind of choke. She kept doing it and once stuff started coming out of her nose we decided it would be best if they could take her and drain her stomach. Apparently the oxygen mask they put on her when she wasn't breathing perfectly caused a lot of the mucus to stay in her stomach instead of coming back out. They took her and got 3 cc's out of her which is pretty much the size that her stomach was.

The Sunday after she was born I started to have heart palpitations. I was pretty worried about them so when Wednesday night rolled around and I started to feel light headed I really got worried and made a trip into the ER. We found out the heart palpitations were PVC's which are when your heart throws an extra beat in and are harmless. Another more concerning problem was discovered when they hooked me up and I had a blood pressure of 198/104. They watched it for a little while and it came back down to 163/100. They sent me home because they knew I had a Dr. appt with my OB the next day. When I went to that appt. my pressure was still high, I was hyper-reflexive and I had a pain in my right side under my rib cage (I think kidney?). My OB said that I was one of the lucky few who get pre-eclamsia postpartum and said that I had to go back into the hospital. Their office is right next door so I went right over. Luckily they were able to get me back into the postpartum floor so Lauren could stay the night with me. Adam got to play single dad for a day because I was on bed rest and I had been told that I couldn't feed her (which I later found out that I could have). He was absolutely amazing the whole week. They hooked me up to magnesium sulfate which makes you feel like crap but protects the brain from stroke.

From my understanding postpartum pre-eclamsia can happen because for 6 weeks your body still kind of thinks it's pregnant after you give birth. It can be sort of an allergic reaction to the placenta. Adam's mom read that it can mean that the placenta wasn't attached 100% correct which would also explain why they thought she might be small all along.

After 24 hours, they sent me home with some blood pressure medication. The last few days have been all over the board for my blood pressure but for the most part it seems that the medicine just runs out too soon in the evenings. I went to the Dr. this morning and we are going to try to just take it sooner. I think this will work and we can finally get moving on to life without worrying about my health.

Adam seems to have picked up a cold though :( Hopefully it doesn't turn into much more.

Anyway, here's some cute pictures from the week!

1st Trip to the pediatrician. She was a little jaundiced but they took her levels and she is ok.


1st movie on the couch with daddy. The movie was My Best Friends Girl


5 days old




Cloth Diapers finally! We didn't start right away because being in and out of the hospital makes it kind of hard to do laundry. Plus we had some that we got as gifts! Very helpful!



9 days old!

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