Jackson's First Days

Day 1: Birthday – October 14th

Stephen and I went to the hospital at 6 am to be induced. After an hour or so of pitosin my doctor came to check me and broke my water. Slowly but surely I made a little progress. By lunch time, I was feeling the onset of back labor and went ahead and got an epidural. The afternoon passed by slowly with slow progress but my nurse was amazing (she is also a youth pastors wife so we had lots to talk about). Sometime around 4:30-5 ish the doctors checked again and I was almost fully dilated. After 25 mins of pushing, at 5:46 our huge chunker of a baby was born. His umbilical cord was around his neck but our doctor and nurses were amazing and we never knew anything was wrong.

Stephen and my friend Beth stayed in the delivery room and my parents were at the hospital and saw Jackson as soon as he arrived. Our friends, Julie and Bucky were keeping Mary Beth and brought her to the hospital to meet her brother. Of course she didn't know what was going on, but she was so glad to see her mama.

Day 2:

Everything was going great, the nurses were awesome they brought Jackson to us every 3 hours but other than that we got lots of rest. The pediatrician thought he looked great and his circumcision went well. We asked for a 24 hour dismissal and they agreed! Awesome, I really didn't want to spend a second night in the hospital. Mary Beth would be so happy to have us at home and have a normal evening. She had already been to visit us, seemed a little more interested in her new brother and enjoyed hanging out with us in the hospital room.

We went through the afternoon knowing that there would be one more test at 5:00 and then we would be on the way home by 6:00. At 5:40, Stephen was literally walking out the door to put our stuff in the car, one of the nurses came in and let us know that Jackson's bilirubin levels came back too high and they would have to keep him. That stunk! I was not excited about a long night of boredom; I could only have him 30 minutes at a time to nurse and other than that he had to stay in the nursery.

Day 3:

Expecting to have new test results by 9 am, we thought we'd be on our way pretty quick. Then the doctor said Jackson did well but they had to keep him for 5 more hours to make sure he was regulating his own temperature after being in photo therapy treatment all night. He was nursing really well and “pooping and peeing like a champ” (Drs words) so we had confidence that his bilirubin levels were coming down.

So we waited – I was getting a bit stir crazy. I straightened our stuff, cleaned the room and actually mopped the floor with a towel. I couldn't sit still anymore, we went on walks around the floor (seriously, laps around the maternity wing), watched hours of HGTV and hung out with Mary Beth. Finally around 2 pm we were released and headed home with our suitcase style bili-lamp. The evening passed quickly as we got settled in, prescriptions filled and got to rest.

Day 4:

Jackson stayed on the light all night and we discovered he doesn't sleep well when he isn't swaddled. We also learned that he really hates dirty diapers (they seem to really bother his circumcision) Poor thing! Anyway, I didn't sleep very well, but in the morning I handed him off and slept really well for a couple hours, too well – I was almost late to our lab appt at 10 am to get his levels checked again. When they stuck him he didn't even cry, just started sucking on his paci like his life depended on it. Too cute!

Back home by 11, Mary Beth and I played, had lunch and got ready for afternoon naps. I slept well, again too well – I forgot to tell anyone to wake me up at 3 pm to feed Jackson. They were stuck with a grumpy baby until I woke up and realized why my little one was screaming... ooopps. Our night passed pretty fast, just enjoying family time, a meal from the Luthers and involving Jackson in Mary Beth's bedtime routine. We did get a call from the doctor saying that his levels were coming down but we need to keep him on the bily-lamp until Monday's appt.

Day 5:

We had a decent night, getting a couple good stretches of sleep. Mary Beth is doing great too, she hasn't woke up once in the middle of the night when Jackson screams for a diaper change! We are having a lazy morning, no plans to do anything today since we don't have to go back to the lab to get more blood work done. I think we might have a few visitors today to meet our little man, but other than that hopefully we will have an uneventful and restful afternoon.

Its getting so hard to just watch him laying on the bily-lamp. There are so many things we want to do with him – put him in his cutest outfits, take pictures with everyone, take some family pictures with him and Mary Beth. We can't wait to let him try his swing, take a nap in his bassinet, and play in his bouncy seat... but I'm trying to be patient, we'll have plenty of time this week to let him try all of his new things.