It’s been almost a week since we welcomed our baby daughter into the world, and we have been kept on our toes! Besides the conventional challenges of adjusting to parenthood and the sleep deprivation associated with the feeding and sleep schedule of a newborn, we’ve had a couple curveballs thrown our way to add to the mix.
We were discharged from the hospital on Sunday evening. Normally, we would have been discharged from the hospital 24 hours after birth (provided you had a regular vaginal birth without any complications) so we were expecting to leave Sunday morning, but I had actually had a fever break out towards the end of my labor that continued to persist for a few hours after the delivery. The nurses at the hospital continued to monitor my temperature and blood pressure in the postpartum recovery room, and they didn’t want to discharge us until it had been 24 hours since my fever had gone down. By the time 6pm of Sunday rolled around, Dan and I were both packed up and eager to leave the hospital and get home. As nice as it was to have the nurses running around and taking care of us, we just wanted to have some privacy and freedom to get our new little family settled back at home. Mio had been incredibly peaceful during our time at the hospital, doing great with breastfeeding, sleep, and diaper changes, rarely crying in her first 36 hours out of the womb. It had us thinking that perhaps this whole life-with-a-newborn deal wouldn’t be too difficult after all.
And of course, as soon as we returned from the hospital, we were proved wrong. On our first night home, we were kept up for virtually the entire night because of Mio’s shrieking and crying. We tried everything we could think of — feeding, burping, diaper changes, swaddling, rocking, changing her into different clothes to see if she was too hot or too cold… nothing seemed to work. She finally went to sleep in the early hours or the morning, but by that time, we only had a couple hours before we had to wake up to take her to her first pediatric appointment at the clinic in Richmond.
So Monday morning, we drove bleary-eyed and harried to the clinic for Mio’s checkup. We first went to the lab to get blood drawn for a bilirubin and hematoid test. When they stuck the needle in Mio’s foot, she screamed and cried uncontrollably, as you would expect. We then went to the pediatric unit to have her weight checked and to hear the results of the tests. The results were not very good. Mio’s weight had dropped since birth, which is typical of newborns, but the pediatrician told us that she was concerned that her bilirubin was pretty high — a sign of neonatal jaundice. 🙁 The pediatrician told us to put her in indirect sunlight by the window, and to come back for another blood draw test the following morning. We followed her directive and did just that, and that night was yet another rough night with bouts of inconsolable crying. Despite our efforts, Tuesday morning’s blood tests (through which Mio cried once again) showed that the bilirubin was still high and that Mio’s weight had dropped even more, losing close to 10% of her birthweight, which is considered borderline dangerous to the baby’s health. The pediatrician noticed that Mio had become increasingly lethargic, and told us that she wanted us to start supplementing her feedings with formula temporarily, and come in the following morning for yet another test. The best way to get jaundice to go down is to make sure the baby’s getting fed enough to flush it out of her system, but my breast milk hadn’t completely come in yet and so Mio was still only getting colostrum and some transition milk at that time. From the outset of my pregnancy, I had really wanted to try my best to breastfeed as much as possible and not have to rely on formula so when I was told that, I felt like a failure that I already wasn’t able to give Mio enough to keep her healthy in her first few days. Of course, by this point we were desperate and willing to do anything to help bring the jaundice down, so we started feeding Mio formula along with whatever breast milk I was producing. Wednesday morning’s tests showed that the bilirubin had gone down and that Mio was gaining her weight back, and the pediatrician told us that things were definitely looking better and that we didn’t have to come back for any more tests, provided that we didn’t notice anything abnormal in the coming days. My breast milk finally started to come in yesterday, so I’m hoping that I’ll soon be able to get Mio back on solely breastfeeding so I won’t have to depend on formula to keep her well-fed.
It was a stressful and worrisome few days for us new parents with the whole jaundice issue, but it is finally going away and Mio seems to be doing much better in the last couple days. She’s also been doing better at night, only waking up for feedings and diaper changes, and there has been a lot less of the colicky crying that we suffered through from the first couple of nights. (Thank goodness!)
Dan has been on paternity leave this week, so it has been really helpful to have him around during this first week — without him, I may have lost my mind with Mio’s health complications. Dan’s mother has also been incredibly helpful and she stayed with us through Thursday, helping make meals, clean, and take care of Mio when we were at wit’s end and needed some extra sleep. My own mother is flying in from Virginia tonight and will be staying with us through next Friday, so it’ll be really nice to have her here as well. I’m so grateful for all the support and help we are getting from our family and loved ones — the transition into motherhood would definitely be a lot bumpier without them!
As for myself, my recovery from childbirth has been going pretty fast and smoothly, much to even my own surprise. There’s still some pain here and there, and I am definitely taking things easy and napping occasionally while the baby sleeps, but I’ve been pretty mobile and have been able to go out and about every day since returning from the hospital without any issues. I’d say energy-wise, I am almost back to my usual self! I am definitely feeling a lot more able-bodied than I was towards the end of my pregnancy a week ago.
Here are some photos of Mio from her first week at home with us…
