A Stratton Life: Hospital Days

Hey y’all! I hope everyone enjoyed my last post. I know there are things I forgot to put in there (I’m kicking myself in the butt for not writing it when it was fresh on my mind). It truly was the best day of my life. The days following seem like a blur. I will write what I do remember.

After everyone left the hospital I don’t think Lucy laid in her bed once for the first several hours. We just couldn’t get enough of her. I can remember calling the nurse every time she showed signs of being hungry because breastfeeding was very new to me and I was scared I was going to somehow mess up. I felt like her and I were both doing well with it. She would latch for about 5 minutes on each side. The nurse assured me we were doing something right. Lucy would do really well latching on during one feeding and then the next feeding she wouldn’t, so, I would have to hand express my colostrum. I would only get a few drops in a spoon (I remember thinking “there is no way I will ever be able to fill up a bottle”) and give it to her that way. She was eating about every 2 hours. The nurse gave her a bath and we got her dressed for the day (in my favorite gown). We started getting visitors, which made it hard to hand express/nurse every time I needed to (don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed seeing everyone). We had lots and lots of visitors (I will post some photos now). Joseph also changed her first poop diaper! (Picture below). I was trying my hardest to get out of the bed and do it but by the time I got up he was already done! (picture posted below)

I thought this was so sweet

Is this not the cutest!?

Daddy talking to his little girl

Daddys first diaper change

I could just eat her up!

I don’t recall getting much sleep on the first day. I do know I would be sitting there and I would doze off and wake myself up. For some reason I felt like I wasn’t supposed to sleep while Lucy was in the room. That night I was having a hard time getting Lucy to stay awake during her feedings. With this being my first baby, I just thought that was normal and went with it. Joseph and I decided we would let Lucy go to the nursery for a few hours so we could rest. Well, this momma couldn’t sleep. 2 hours into it I was calling the nursery wanting her back in my room.

The next day my midwife came and checked on me. She told me I was getting around a lot better than she thought I would be (and that’s one thing I regret a little.. I wish I would have rested more, but I thought I had to be up and do everything for myself). A little later Lucy’s doctor came in and said that had tested Lucy for jaundice (they didn’t tell us, but I guess they don’t have to?) and her levels were really high. They advised us she would have to be under a special kind of light. Well, up until this point my emotions had been fine. When she told me she had jaundice my mind started racing. I told myself it was my fault, that she wasn’t getting what she needed from me. I was able to hold it together for a little bit, and then my mom called (I don’t know if I’m the only one that does this, but if something is bothering me to the point I may cry, hearing my moms voice just brings it all out). She was just calling to see how things were going and she could tell in my voice something was wrong. I started crying before I could even answer her question. Poor Joseph was sitting on the couch holding Lucy, he looked up and I’m so upset that I can’t even talk. He kept saying “Lauren, what happened? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I finally calmed down enough to tell him and my mom both that I thought it was my fault she was “sick”. My mom was telling me it wasn’t, and that a lot of babies get jaundice (which I knew, but it’s a lot scarier when it’s your baby). While my mom was calming me down Joseph grabs a camera and starts taking pictures of me while I was crying, he said he wanted proof that I got a little “crazy” there for a minute (don’t worry, those pictures were deleted!). That day we spent at least 4 hours with the lactation specialist trying to figure out why Lucy wasn’t latching. It turns out she didn’t know how to suck (which kind of assured me that she in fact, wasn’t getting what she needed from me.. which hurt even more), that’s when we decided to start supplementing with formula. Her daddy got to feed her for the first time. The specialist told me I needed to pump every 2 hours for at least 20 minutes to get as much colostrum as I could and to help my milk come in. She also told me to do skin to skin as much as possible. Once again, that’s hard to do when you have so many visitors (like I said earlier, we enjoyed our visitors) so I hardly got to pump while in the hospital. I don’t think it understood how important pumping every 2 hours was to my milk supply. I feel like I’m still struggling with my supply because I didn’t do what I was told. Lucy was only under the light for less than 24 hours. We were able to go home the next day.