On Monday, Sept 16th, we went in for an ultrasound and non-stress test to make sure everything was going okay with our late sleeper MiniChaos. The docs said that MrsChaos had low fluid and so we should move to labor/delivery, because we would be leaving the hospital with a baby. It was surreal.MrsChaos wasn't in labor or anything, but they were going to induce.
The Pitocin started up around 2am Tuesday morning and pretty quickly full power contractions started going. Pitocin is a tough labor. Rather than having a gradual ramp up, you just get smacked with full strength contractions. So MrsChaos was basically stuck in bed with full power contractions from 2am until around 4pm. At that point our doctor told us she had made progress, but wasn't close. So rather than run the marathon, we paused for the night to eat, walk, sleep.
At 5am Wednesday we kicked off again. It didn't take long for MrsChaos to get an epidural. After what we had been through Tuesday, there was no way she could take another twelve hours of that and still have any strength or will to push at the end. After the epidural things became very relaxed and could talk, nap, etc. Wednesday was night and day compared to Tuesday and so much better. Modern medicine and science, you are awesome.
Around 6:30pm it was time to push. 7:48pm or so we has a baby. When MiniChaos came out the doc said "his umbilical cord is wrapped" and I got scared. But it was wrapped around his arm. Then "his umbilical cord is wrapped," but it was wrapped around his leg. Then "his umbilical cord is wrapped," but it was wrapped around his other leg. What a gymnast.
We moved to post-partum by around 11pm and they said we would stay 24 hours and could do a late discharge Thursday. It was a super unrestful night. People kept popping in to take vitals from MrsChaos and MiniChaos. I feel like we got woken up every 2-3 hours.
We asked the daytime shift about our evening departure and they said no. MrsChaos had one high temperature on Wednesday, so they wanted us to stay through the night to make sure all was well, but we would leave first thing Friday.
Friday... ohh Friday. During the shift change the night nurse said we were ready to leave and they should give us the earliest checkout time. The day nurse said, "hmm... we'll see." We'll see? Our pediatrician came by and said things looked good. He just wanted the nurse to run the jaundice numbers.
The nurse came back 15m later and said that MiniChaos had a lot of risk factors for jaundice and needed to stay another day. And... we... broke... down. It was such a horrible experience of one nurse saying we would be able to leave, and then a shift change, and the next nurse saying we couldn't leave.
I pushed the nurse to explain the risk to me and she showed me the numbers. Did MiniChaos have jaundice? No. Was MiniChaos' bilirueben levels in the high risk area for jaundice? No. He had some of the risk factors checked: asian, male, breast feeding. Yet we couldn't leave. We felt like we were being held hostage by a proactive nurse. Boy and breast feeding seemed like it should be super common, it was the asian heritage that was pushing us over the edge. (Note: my later research shows the Asian factor only applies if the father is Asian... sigh...).
So we spent one more night there with MiniChaos naked and blindfolded inside the bili light machine. If you search, you'll find pictures of babies soundly sleeping under the lights. Those are lies. When you strip a baby naked, blindfold him, and cannot comfort him - he cries. He cries constantly. So we had 16 hours of MiniChaos screaming. Oh man... oh man...
And it seemed like every nurse/doctor who checked levels was confused why we were there. Ya know, because he didn't have high risk levels. I even walked over to our pediatricians office Friday afternoon and said, "please - is there any option that let's us go home? Anything at all?!?" He tried to get us a home biliblanket, but it didn't work out. After the doctor cleared us on Saturday morning, he said he wanted us to stay until 4pm to get as much light as possible. We decided we were done with the big contraption and just cuddled together as a family with the blanket.
Anyway - we went home Saturday. Finally. Would he have ever moved into a high risk zone? Who can say.