After I had Aliceana my husband and I got to hold her. I remember asking him if it hurt his hand to hold her (he had carpal tunnel surgery earlier in the week), and his response was “I don’t even care,” while he smiled down on her. My mom, Grandma, and Grandpa got to come see her that night, we still hadn’t told many people that I was in labor. I didn’t want a lot of people visiting because I didn’t know how I’d be feeling. My mom had gotten me some food and a really pretty arrangement of flowers. My grandparents brought a few gifts for Aliceana including a handmade blanket that matches the bookshelf my Grandma helped make for Aliceana. Aliceana’s name was a complete secret until she was born. It was such a great moment when we my Grandma Priscilla, was holding her and we told my Grandma that her name was Aliceana Priscilla. She definitely cried when she heard her middle name, and she repeated quite a few times that she couldn’t believe someone would use her name. It was definitely the sweet moment we were waiting for, and why we didn’t tell anyone her name before she was born. My Grandpa, who is more like a father to me, hugged me and held my hand for quite a long time and told me how proud he was of me. That was pretty special too. After visiting with family, it was getting really late and the nurse wanted to take Aliceana to the nursery to get her examined and cleaned up. I didn’t mind because at that point I really had to pee!
I had to change into a different gown and took off my bra so I could breastfeed more easily. It was tangled in the IV though, the nurse was going to unplug everything so we could get it off, but I didn’t care. I just hung my bra on the IV stand. As I was wheeled through the hallway I commented on how it looked like my IV stand had just been to a frat party. I think that bra will forever be known as the IV bra. After a while we got to have Aliceana join us in our recovery room, I was in the bathroom at the time she was put in our room. So when I came out my husband was holding her and talking to her about the baseball game he was watching, and telling her that they would see many of those together. I got to breastfeed for the second time, Aliceana was awesome at breastfeeding she was a little pro. After we fed her and held her for a while we let her go back to the nursery for the night.
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| A picture of her when she was in the recovery room with us that night. We had no idea that this would be one of the only times we’d see her without being hooked up to oxygen at the very least and definitely the only time we would feel like a normal healthy family. |
At 1:00 AM we got a rude awakening, literally. The pediatrician on call woke us up. He told us that Aliceana had a heart murmur, and judging from what he heard it wasn’t the kind that would close up on its own. He talked about the possibilities of maybe needed medications, a procedure with a catheter, or a slight chance of having her go through open heart surgery. He was going to talk to a cardiologist at U.W. Madison in the morning and schedule an ECHO to take a closer look of her heart. He also told us that Aliceana had an ABO incompatibility. Meaning Aliceana and I have conflicting blood types and she had a pretty bad case of jaundice and had to be put under bili lights. So she couldn’t leave the nursery anymore. This was heartbreaking news, and to be woken up to news of this was just terrible. I somehow got to sleep, and was woken up a few times to come to the nursery to breastfeed her again. It was so nice to spend time with her, even though it was unnerving seeing her all hooked up to machines.
I woke up at 6 AM in the morning and asked a nurse if I could go take a bath in the whirlpool right away. It felt wonderful, and it was nice to be alone. I definitely took that time to just let all of my emotions go and cry. I cried my eyes out. At this point we didn’t know much about Aliceana’s condition or what was going to happen to her. My husband was definitely wondering what took so long, I guess I was in there for two hours. After I was out I changed into clothes and we visited Aliceana in the nursery again. After we visited her we waited to talk to the pediatrician, who didn’t really have any news at at that point. He just told us that he was going to get the ECHO scheduled and let us know, and that the cardiologist would actually be in town on Tuesday to see her. After talking to the doctor, my husband decided he was going to go grab us some breakfast and run home for a few things. Later on he told me that when he went home, he just sat in her nursery and cried. A couple of our friends visited while he was gone, but they couldn’t see her since she was in the nursery and couldn’t leave. They barely let me take her out to breastfeed her every few hours.
It wasn’t too much longer after my husband came back to the hospital that we heard from the doctor again. He told us that they took a second X-ray and he noticed some cloudiness in her lungs. Our hospital doesn’t have a NICU, so this was the point where he told us that she had to be transferred to Madison and they had a transport team on the way to pick her up. After we got this news everything happened so fast. We had to get everything together so I could be discharged early, not even 24 hours after I had given birth and had almost no time to heal. It was a flurry of paperwork, lots of nurses were in and out of the room getting all the loose ends all tied up. We had to pack up all of our things, my husband and a nurse loaded the car with all of our things. Then we saw Aliceana off in the transport incubator, we said goodbye and I held her little hand. After that we left the hospital, I remember the elevator ride down with my husband and the nurse and getting in our car. It was so hard to leave the hospital without our little girl, it just felt so wrong.
We headed home quickly to pack some more things, since we would need more clothes. We had no idea how long we would be in Madison. My mother and sister were at my house cleaning, it was such a nice gesture. We also found out that my Father-in-law was replacing our broken refrigerator with a brand new one. It was so nice to know that we had so much support in our family during this hard time. After packing up we had to go to Target to pick up my prescription for a pain medication that the obstetrician on call had prescribed for me. It was so difficult to walk to the pharmacy at that point, it took forever to get there. When walking out of the store with my husband I noticed a dad holding a baby in an infant carrier and I just lost it. I didn’t care who could see me crying at that point. Then we were off to Madison to be with our daughter.
Written by, Brittany, the geek behind the blog. I share lots of recipes, my thoughts on the latest tech gadgets, my favorite geeky games, and snippets of life as a Work-at-home mom.