ruby's arrival pt. last

...Yeah, so I guess I lied about posting later that night.

Anyway, so they took Ruby off to the nursery for further testing and as I was laying there getting stitched up (TMI? too bad) I overheard my doctor and nurse discussing her APGAR scores. A 5 and 7. BOO. I knew something was wrong. The stress of the 20-hour labor plus my water being broke and a slew of breathing and blood pressure things (caused by that d*** epidural) made Ruby a not-so-happy newborn. She spiked a fever of 101.7 and her blood work showed there were possible indicators of an infection somewhere in her tiny little body.

I was promptly told she would be in the hospital for at least 48 hours.

I was devastated. I cursed myself and my stupid body for not progressing quicker and thought of how selfish I was to try for a VBAC when a c-section would likely have not resulted in the same outcome.

The next morning we went into the nursery and met with the pediatrician who told us it would be 72 hours. He lied, by the way. He neglected to tell us she would be closely monitored for 72 hours and stay until the following Tuesday. TUESDAY?? Oh. My. Gosh. Ugh. I hated hearing that. I started bawling because I'm selfish and I just wanted to take her home and she had a stupid brain slug thing attached to her head and we could only hold her with a billion wires hanging off her.

I had a little pity party.

I know things could have been so much worse and I needed to be grateful she was healthy (because she really was--all of this was a precautionary thing). Her fever went down after an hour, by the way, and never again went above a 98.6. So then we played the waiting game.

For 6 days.
Well after I was discharged.
as Ruby's hospital guest (what the heck??).

My milk came in about 20 hours after I had her. That was awesome (not).  I was so massively engorged that I would feed her and pump for 3-ish minutes to alleviate some of the pain and would easily get out 6-8 ounces. I was like a cat, producing enough milk to feed 15 kids. In fact, I filled up the nursery's mini-fridge and freezer. Haha. Then I had to start dumping it, which made me slightly uncomfortable.

Anyway, we got discharged early Tuesday morning with flying colors (and a 12 ounce weight gain!) and couldn't have been happier to be home. Ruby is a great baby and nurses exceptionally well--which is great because Oliver wouldn't latch. The past couple of nights she went 6 hours without waking up. Hallelujah! She much prefers to be in her swing or to be rocked which frees up lots of my time to play with Oliver. Speaking of Oliver, he totally loves her and will periodically go up to her throughout the day and rub her head. However, he kind of hates us and throws things at us when he gets mad.

Oh the joys of a toddler and newborn.

I posted an album on FB, but I wanted to do a comparison of Ruby at 1 day and 11 days (today):

 

Little cutie-pie. :-)