After Sybil Elise was born, I had no idea what type of recovery I had ahead of me. I was so drugged up and exhausted that my body was numb to what it had just been through. When they wheeled me into recovery my stuff was already there. Andrew came in with our baby girl and handed her to me. I looked at her, cried, cuddled with her, cried some more, and then tried to breast feed. I could barely lift my arms and it was hard to hold her head without hurting her. (She had head trauma from the attempted vacuum extraction). So she got frustrated and cried and then I cried more, so we stopped trying.
Becky came in and held her for about a minute and then she had to leave to fly home. Finally they wheeled us into our official room down the hall from the nursery. My parents were there and gave hugs and kisses and got our keys from us so they could go rest at our house. I was so tired I could barely function, but I did not want to sleep because my baby was finally here. I put Syb in the nursery and gave up and fell asleep. This was at 9am on Tuesday morning. Reminder: I went into labor Monday at noon. That's 19 hours, people. I only slept a couple hours before I was interrupted by doctors and nurses checking on me constantly. I soon found out we had a 5 day stay ahead of us. Bummer...
A pediatrician came in to check a few things on Sybil. She passed all of her tests with flying colors except for the fact that she had a "hip click." As the doctor explained it to me, I still had no idea what was going on. He ordered an ultrasound on her for the following day. After the ultrasound, the doctor called me and confirmed that Sybil had hip dysplasia. He explained that her right hip didn't grow into the socket and her left hip, although not as severe, didn't either. He made an appointment for us the following Monday and told us to put three diapers on her at all times in the meantime to keep her hips apart. I still had no idea what was going on until that Monday appointment.
During our stay, Sybil continued to have difficulty breast feeding. She would not latch and her head trauma didn't allow much time for her patience during a feeding. She kept losing weight. I had to hand express my colostrum and feed it to her in a dropper, like a little bird. It was frustrating for all. On day four, the doctor came in and told me that she had already lost 10% of her birth weight and if she didn't start gaining again, we would have to keep her in the hospital. I was praying for a quick turnaround that night.
That night we had a new nurse named Katie. She just happened to be a lactation consultant too. Every feeding that night she came in a worked with us. She brought a nipple shield and encouraged us to try it. Sybil was able to latch on with the nipple shield! That night she fed many times and we were encouraged. The next day they said they would release us and send a home care nurse to us the following day to weigh Sybil and see if she was gaining. Andrew and I were so exhausted and so sick of being in the hospital. We were ready to go home and rejoicing that after five days, we now could. We loaded up Sybil and all of our stuff and went home. My mom was at our house anxiously waiting for us and was ready to serve us in our exhaustion and time of need.
Finally I was home and now I could process all that had just happened to me. I realized I hadn't even told my close friends or family that I had a baby. I hadn't planned to be in the hospital for five days recovering from a major surgery.
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