Welcome Miles Wayne!

Miles Wayne

5/24/21 10:59 am

19.5 inches long, 7 lbs 8 oz

We welcomed Miles to our family on May 24, 2021.  Having a scheduled induction versus spontaneous labor was so different.  With all the ups and downs of this pregnancy and not even knowing if we would make it to term, it’s crazy we made it to 39 weeks and got to have a planned delivery.  It worked out really well to be able to have child care for a Hailey and somewhere for Dakota to go.  Joel and I were able to go out for all you can eat sushi the night before and have a semi-relaxing evening. 

We had to call at 6:30am that Monday to make sure that there was still room for us (I had been so nervous they wouldn’t have room!).  They told me to come on in.  We stopped and got Caribou on the way down. I didn’t feel like eating very much but definitely had my coffee. 

We got to the hospital and went right in to be admitted at 7:30am.  They hooked me up to the monitors and I was having a few contractions that I just assumed had been him moving, but they weren’t very regular. Our nurse (she was fantastic! She’s been L&D since 1988) checked me and I was still a 4ish, station -1. I told her I wanted and epidural so she got my IV hooked up and started.  My first BP was 150/80 so they had to check my platelets as well before calling anesthesia.  Dr. E came in and broke my water at 8:15am and then headed out. 

My platelets came back normal so I got the green light for an epidural. I was starting to feel contractions at this point prettt significantly. The anesthesiologist came in around 8:45 and was so awesome. He used to work surgeries for the one that Joel had at Children’s. The first stick he did wasn’t in the right place so he had to try a different level.  They got the drugs going and I stopped feeling contractions in my belly but felt everything below that, unfortunately - way different than with Hailey. 

Around 10ish, our nurse came back in to put the catheter in and I could feel all of that… not a fan. She checked me again then and I was at a 7+ station 0.

At 10:35, she came back in and did another check and I was almost a 10 so she called Dr. E back over to start pushing. At 10:45, I started pushing - the nurse had me feel his head before he came out, so cool!! - Miles came out crying at 10:59am (apgar scores of 8 and 9). 

My placenta didn’t want to come out and then the cord detached so Dr. E had to do a lot of sweaty work to get it out. When it finally came out my uterus was soft so they finally started the pitocin and about 6 other meds including a shot in my leg and some meds in my bum.  Things finally seemed okay about half hour later but I had bled quite a bit. With all the meds and everything, I got the baby handed off me to start puking. I got some zofran and ordered food - that seemed to help. I ordered a grilled cheese with fries from the cafeteria and was underwhelmed with that, but it was good to have food in my belly. 

We were wheeled into our postpartum room around 1. The room was smaller than last time (couldn’t even fit a nursing chair) and it was soooooooooo hot. The air handling just couldn’t keep up and when the sun hit the window, it got gross in there.  Didn’t help that my hormones were out of whack. 

Joel headed out to pick up Pizza Luce for dinner and grab some snacks and a pair of shorts for him for the room. Thankfully they allowed him to leave and come back, that wasn’t the case for most of the pandemic.  We weren’t allowed any visitors and Joel wasn’t allowed to go anywhere on the floor except straight out the door and back. We had to get the nurses to fill up our water since they didn’t want people touching machines. 

The nursery was closed so we had Miles in our room the whole time. At bedtime, he wanted to nurse (so different than Hailey!) for an hour and a half, so I caved and got him a pacifier. At about 1am, I woke up to a contraction similar to what it felt when I was pushing him out and took my breath away. The nurse couldn’t find anything wrong and as she was scrambling to get me oxy, the pain stopped and I went back to bed.  🤷‍♀️ 

Around 5am, all of a sudden I hear him spit out his pacifier and then a gurgling choking noise and he wasn’t breathing. He was choking on his amniotic fluid, so I got the bulb and started sucking while Joel ran for the nurse. He got it out but definitely not a fun way to wake up. The nurse we had was so awesome though and made me feel validated in how scared I was with something that seems to be common.

The next morning, Joel went to get coffee and Edina Grill. Dr. W stopped in and thought it would be a good idea to stay one more night (they were trying to get people out of the hospital 24 hours after birth because of covid) due to the high BP reading I had the day before. That started the stream of people coming in the room. I got the baby down for a nap while Joel was gone so I could shower but then maintenance came in to fix our light… and then I realized I didn’t have a towel… and then the person came in to draw blood and check my hemoglobin.  I didn’t get my shower until later. 

Around 10, the pediatrician came in a wheeled him down to get circumcised - it was weird to just hang out in the room without him.  He passed his congenial heart defect test and his hearing test (in 33 seconds - she said that is tied with her record for how fast a baby passed).

Cassie brought us crumbl cookies and Joel went and got a laptop from Tucker so we could watch a movie.  He went for a walk by the creek by Tucker’s house to get some movement in and then picked up people’s organic for dinner. 

He finally peed at around 1am after his surgery, that was exciting! (It’s the little things) Little guy did not want to sleep at all unless he was in my arm so I only got to sleep maybe 1 total hour. Our nurse was AMAZING - 4am I still hadn’t slept so she came in and got him and hung out with him even though the nursery was technically closed. I thought I would only have half hour or so of her watching him but then woke up 2 hours later feeling like a new person! 

We saw Dr. E (Joel was excited to see her! During delivery, she asked Joel if he had been working out a lot because he looked significantly stronger than the last time she saw him). The pediatrician came back and lactation did as well.  He was down to 6 pounds 15 ounces that morning and everything looked good so we were discharged at 10am! Miles slept the whole way home in the car seat! 

While delivering a baby is not fun… I would say this experience was SIGNIFICANTLY better than with Hailey. Everyone we interacted with was fantastic! It also helped that he was not premature and not in need of as constant of monitoring. I also think that not having visitors helped with nursing - it would have been nice to have people come up and see us and it did get boring just sitting around, but it was good to bond with him and keep trying to nurse whenever I could and not worry about visitors coming in.