12:00 am
Well, Day 1 was supposed to be baby’s first day, but I guess God had some different plans. January 17th is a beautiful birthday though. We just got another cervical check and we are up to 5 cm now. The fruit chart on the wall says this is equivalent to a Kiwi fruit in circumference, which is really good. Rachel is resting a ton and getting some good sleep, we’re just gonna keep her right on that. The nurses are saying that the first 5-6 centimeters are the slowest to get, then after that, the body really kicks in on its own and starts ticking them off real quick. Rough window estimates have Rachel starting to push anywhere between 5 and 8 am, then baby coming 1-3 hours after that starts. Getting really close and exciting now, sorry the buildup has been so slow, but we’re gonna have a baby so soon!
1:30 am
Rachel got some good rest, then started to feel really really sick. She had some pain in her back that wrapped around to her front. She was nervous to give herself some more from the epidural, because it made her so sick the last time around. But after a blessing and a prayer, she decided it was the right move to do. It seems to have helped a ton and she is already starting to feel much better.
2:00 am
Another cervical check. Still measuring right around 5cm maybe somewhere in between 5 and 6 cm. Rachel is in a lot pain right now, feeling really sick, and exhausted, but fighting so so hard for this little baby.
Small interjection here cause this is where things started getting crazy, and my free time to live update between things went out the window. So everything after this point is being written much later in the day, trying to play catch up. I have heard that many people were waking throughout the night to check for updates and I failed you all. So sorry, I was busy. But retroactively, here’s what happened:
3:00 am
Rachel couldn’t really manage to get any sleep, she was just in so much pain. We called the nurse in a couple of times, we went back and forth rolling her to her left side then her right side, just trying to find a comfortable position she could be in, and just nothing really did it. She got feeling really really sick and the only thing that helped was the epidural. Which boy did it work. Took away all the pain, as well as any motor control over her legs haha, we did indeed drop her leg off the side of her bed more than once while we were trying to roll her onto her side. Eventually she was able to rest for a little bit, but it wasn’t a whole lot. Her bodies exhausted and really wanted sleep, but the underlying pain and feeling a little sick just kept her up.
4:00 am
Jess came in to do the next cervical check, Rachel was still, right at that “between 5 and 6 cm” point. Nothing had really changed in the last 4 hours, and in terms of labor, that’s a bad thing. At this point, we had been at the hospital for 34 hours, she had been on pitocin for 16 hours, the epidural for 12, and at the pace she was progressing, she was no where close to getting the baby out. Jed talked us through our options and said we really had 2 things we could try to jumpstart it back into rhythm. We could 1) raise the dose of pitocin. We were already at the highest recommended limit, but they said if we kept a really close eye on it we could go a little higher. Or we could 2) stop the pitocin all together, give the body an hour to reset, and then try again. Jess said she’d talk over those options with the doctor and let us know what he thought.
4:30 am
Jess came back with the doctor in tow. He reviewed with us the same 2 options we already knew about, and interjected a 3rd. C-Section. He said that at this point we were what people called an FTP, or a failure to progress. Rachel’s body was contracting and it was pushing on baby, we knew that, but it wasn’t dilating fast enough to stay healthy. You can only be on pitocin and or an epidural or have your water broken for so long before any of those things become dangerous to mom and to baby. We were not at that point with Rachel, but we were close, and at the pace we were moving, we would definitely exceed it. Doctor said we could totally try either of those first two options, and it might work. But gave his professional opinion that a c section was inevitable at this point. He said he would totally understand if we wanted to try something else, but if we wanted to avoid another 4+ hours of pain, and another 4+ hours without baby, then we could just do the c section now. We asked for some time to think on that.
4:45 am
Part of the blessing that I gave Rachel earlier in the night was to bless her mind with the clarity to know what the right decision was, and the confidence to make the right decision when it was needed. Her decision to move forward with the c section when we did was absolutely inspired. Hopefully she’ll be able to share more about this herself. But even beyond inspiration. There were a lot of signs it was the right thing to do. She’d been in labor for 16 hours at that point, and we’d been in the hospital for almost a day and a half. Even if she did fully dilate at that point, she was too weak to even squeeze my hand, let alone strong enough to push a baby out. We knew it was what needed to happen. It was just really really sad to mourn the experience we had anticipated having.
5:00 am
Becky made it back to the hospital right as we were deciding to go forward with it. Then there was another flurry of nurses coming through the room prepping the bed, prepping Rachel, and prepping me for the c-section. As we were all getting ready, Rachel’s sickness finally got to her, and she threw up almost everything she’d eaten the last little while. But felt much better afterwards.
Rachel got taken back into the OR first, she was wheeled out still on her bed, I was told to dress up in a hazmat suit and hairnet and mask and wait for them to come get me. A little bit later they did, and had me just sit and hold Rachel’s hand while they continued to prep her for surgery. We were both really nervous, and just held each other while they got her all set and ready. She did tell me that while they were prepping her, before I got there, she felt sick again, like she needed to throw up. By that point they had already strapped her to the operating table though and they couldn’t get her a bag in time, so she ended up puking all over her own face :( honestly a laughing moment looking back on it now.
5:40 am
Once everything was ready, they started operating. I held her hand the whole time, though it really wasn’t all too painful for her at this point, she was even more drugged then the epidural had her. And it went pretty quickly.
5:52 am
Peter Landen Bailey (Rocky) was born. As they pulled him out, they had me stand up to see the gender, and I got to lean down and whisper to mom that we had a perfect little hairy headed boy.
They cleaned him up, had me finish trimming the cord (yes, I held it together in front of the blood, somehow) and weighed and measured him.
8lbs 10oz / 21.5 inches long.
After cleaning him off, I got to take him over to Rachel while she was still getting stitched up. And mama got to meet her baby for the first time.
They got Rachel all stitched up, and back onto her hospital bed, and mom got to hold baby Peter while they wheeled her back to her room. That’s where we both got to do some skin to skin with the baby, Becky got to hold him too. They came in a couple of times to check vitals, but for the most part, we just got a full hour of alone time with baby before they were planning to move us downstairs
7:40 am
Just before they were going to move mom and peter downstairs, they checked Peter’s blood sugar levels. He was 36. Which is very low on the adult scale, and moderately low on the newborn baby scale. Low enough for it to require an urgent response. So I super rapidly gathered all of our stuff, shoved it in bags, folded blankets and got the room all ready to ship out. Then they took away Peter first, to take care of his blood sugars. I went with him and had to leave Rach behind.
Rachel got taken down to the recovery wing and settled into her new room and bed.
8:20 am
Peter and I went with a nurse to the mother and baby nursery, where another nurse spread cotton candy flavored sugar goop onto the insides of his cheeks to get his sugars up. After that she fed him a tiny bottle of donated breast milk. He struggled at first to take the bottle, but once he figured out sucking he gobble that milk right down. We waited an hour to let the food settle before testing his blood sugars again. In that time I jumped back over to Rachel’s room to check in on her and settle her into her new place.
8:40 am
I got to spend a lot of time just sitting by baby’s side this morning, and got to take some good photos
This is as good a time as ever to share the winners of our guessing challenge:
- Jared
- Becky
- Luke
- Maelynn
- Sadie
- Miles
- Emerson
- Kristine
- Brynn
- Christian
All guessed boy!!! Good job guys
- Sadie
- Sophie
- Seth
- Kristine
- Leo (technically)
All guessed within a half inch of his correct height, Seth got it right on the nose.
- Maelynn
- Luke
Both got the exact weight
- Leo
- Luke
- Becky
- Brynn
- Seth
All guessed brown hair, which I’m pretty sure is right. But we’re also gonna count Zach’s guess at Auburn cause it might, just might, have a tint of red in there too. I’ll let you decide:
So our overall winner, the only person to go 3 for 4 (even though he was waaaay off in the 4th category) was Luke!!! Congrats!!
Now back to our previously scheduled program
9:10 am
Like I said, I was just sitting at Peter’s side in the nursery this whole time. We retested his blood sugar after almost an hour, and it has come up to 49. Which is still really low for adults, but apparently really good for 4 hour olds.
While we were in the nursery though, the nurse that was helping him out (Kimberly) took notice that his breathing was pretty labored. He was grunting and flaring his nostrils with each breath which usually means he’s having to work extra hard to breathe, a sign of respiratory distress.
To be safe, she decided to have the pediatrician on the floor come take a look. He agreed that it looked like some distress, mentioned that it is actually very common for c section babies to struggle breathing early on and said the usual treatment for that is to get him on a cpap machine to breathe. He wanted to avoid that if possible though, because getting him on a cpap meant having to admit him to the NICU, which we understandably wanted to avoid. So he called over one of the NICU NPs, to come check him out too and see what she thought.
She also agreed that he was having a hard time breathing, and pointed out that having a hard time breathing often translated to not being able to eat (cause he’s exerting all his energy just trying to breathe). Which is really bad for any baby, but possibly catastrophic for a baby already having blood sugar issues. So she made the call to admit him, so that they could get him on a cpap, and on a glucose IV, and so they could just generally monitor his breathing and his glucose better.
I was pretty nervous about that. But all this while Rachel was back in her room, alone, waiting for me to bring her her baby. I had been texting her updates, but since I didn’t expect the escalation to a nicu stay, I had just said they were running some extra tests. So I told the nnp that we needed to stop by moms room to say hi before we went to the nicu.
10:30 am
Rachel looked so happy to see us as we came in, and we were so happy to see her. I gave her a hug and a kiss first, she was still really tied down in bed, not able to walk yet, and I just told her “Everything is going to be okay” then I introduced her to the NICU NP that was with us. She proceeded to explain everything going on, and what that meant for Peter. She let Rachel hold him close for a second, then we had to leave pretty quickly to get him on a cpap as soon as possible.
10:45 am
We got him admitted to the nicu, room #6, with Rachel’s guardian animal a Moose painted on its door. Another of many signs of divine oversight in this whole process. They very quickly got him all plugged in, got an IV in, took some blood cultures, got him hooked up to all the monitors, on the cpap, and with a vent tube in his stomach. They were all very gentle and careful, but it was still so overwhelming, I just sat down out of the way, and answered questions to the best of my ability.
11:30 am
All while they were getting everything set up on Peter, they were filling me in on the plans for everything. The primary goal was to get him breathing easier on his own. That’s what the CPAP was for. While the cpap was running though, he couldn’t eat, so to keep his blood sugars stable we got him on a glucose IV, plus he got some monitors and sensors to make sure his heart and temperature were okay. She also started him on some antibiotics that would help if there’s any bacteria in his blood stream. This will likely end up being the piece that keeps us in there the longest. The blood cultures take 36 hours to report back that he has no bacteria and doesn’t need the rest of the antibiotics.
Meanwhile mom had been back in her room pumping milk and taking care of her body with her nurse. She wanted to get down to the NICU so bad, they just had to get her own stuff done first.
12:30 pm
Rachel’s nurse brought her down to the nicu to see little Peter. We got to just sit there with him for a good hour+. This part was really hard. Hard to see him all strapped in like that, hard to mourn the experience we anticipated having, hard to be so close to our little boy, just a few hours old, and not even be able to hold him. Hard to hear that visitors had to come one at a time, and they had to be over 18, so Lucy wouldn’t be able to come. Just so many things about that situation made it really hard.
But at the same time, we felt so blessed. Lil Rocky was doing great, he was getting so many people taking care of him, we got to sit right at his side, and hold his hand, we got to be together as a family. And that was the best
2:00 pm
We were pretty settled enough at that point that Rachel wanted to get some of her family coming through to meet him. We were only allowed 2 at Rocky’s bedside at a time, including me and Rachel, so we set it up with the nurses, that I could leave Rachel there with him, and walk in one other person at a time to go see him alongside her. I just had to leave them there and not linger. So Jared came and got to say hi to his grandson, the Champ went back, then Jonah, then Luke.
3:00 pm
Nurses came in to do Rocky’s checkup. He was looking good, but the bigger thing we were excited about was that they were going to set him up for some skin to skin with Rachel. He had to stay on the cpap and the IV and all the other things. But mom was gonna get to hold her baby. So they brought him to her and she just got to hold him for an hour. It was the best part of the day by far.
And we got to take our first family picture:
After he had to go back to his bassinet, we hung around a little longer, then headed back to Rachel’s room for us to both get some rest.
5:00 pm
We had a little stream of visitors, Rachel’s brothers all came by to hang out with her, then her mom and her sister Lucy came. It was really sweet for Rachel and Lucy to get to see each other. Then my parents and baby brothers came by (shout out Emerson) and they brought me some dinner. I also got to take my mom and dad each back to see Peter in the nicu. They took off around 7, then Rachel and I just relaxed for a good little while.
9:00 pm
Rachel needed to get a walk in before we fell asleep, so we walked down to the nicu. I pushed her wheelchair to bring her back in. She made it all the way there!! We got to spend another good hour with him. Said a family prayer together and gave him a blessing. Was a really sweet time full of confidence that he was going to be perfectly okay.
His night time nurse even mentioned we’d probably get him off the cpap by morning. Which had us very excited
We came back and just got ready to sleep.
