It’s been 11 weeks, and I’m just now getting around to writing out a blog post about our newest addition – Brady John’s younger brother, Connor Brady! I’ve meant to write this post for a long time, but it turns out life with a newborn at home is kind of hectic. I wish I would’ve written it down sooner, since I know I am already forgetting some details, but here is my best shot at it:
We made it to our date – 9/18/18, which is a pretty cool birth date. I was scheduled for 9 AM, so Jeff and I showed up at 7. We got all the way to the point of Jeff changing into his sexy surgical suit before they informed us that we got bumped for an emergency c-section.
The surgery went well this time. With Brady, I was super sick during the surgery, but this time, I felt great. I even got to peek over the blue curtain to see him right as he was born. I could barely peek over the curtain to see him, but because Jeff was up further, he apparently got a much more graphic view. Poor guy. Seeing your wife’s insides is probably kind of disturbing. Connor Brady was born at 10:22 AM, weighing 6 lbs. 7 oz. His name wasn’t Connor yet – he actually spent most of that first day nameless. Jeff went over while the nurses tended to him and they stitched me up. Right after that, I got to hold him. It was pretty amazing to get to do that right in the operating room, while they were still working on me.
After surgery, I got pretty sick. I was really nauseous and really dizzy, and didn’t end up being able to get out of bed until that night. That meant that Jeff was left to be the MVP – doing all the diaper changes and giving Connor his first bath. Finally, around 10 PM, I started feeling better and was able to get out of bed and do a lap around the floor. I wish I could say that it was smooth sailing from there, but the real drama was just beginning.
Overnight, our nurse noticed that Connor seemed a little shaky, so he ended up on blood sugar protocol. His blood sugars were a little low, so our nurse started feeding him some bottles to try to get his numbers up. He was holding steady enough until the next morning, when he registered a 30, which is really low, even for a newborn. His new nurse and the pediatrician decided they wanted to take a vial of blood (instead of just the quick heel poke they’d been doing) to make sure his number was actually that low before making a decision on what to do next.
We still aren’t exactly sure why, but the pediatrician ended up not waiting for those numbers to come back and instead sent Connor down to the Special Care Nursery (we’re going to abbreviate that SCN from here on) right away. The SCN is basically a less advanced NICU (level 2 vs. level 4), so this brought up a lot of PTSD for me and Jeff. We were once again being separated from our baby, who needed extra help. Saying that we were thoroughly traumatized doesn’t do it justice.
It turns out that 30 reading that the nurse got was actually a false reading, because the vial of blood that they took ended up coming back as a 50, which was fine and would have kept Connor out of the SCN. Jeff and I were obviously upset. They also wouldn’t release Connor until he’d spent at least 24 hours in the SCN, so we felt really stuck. It turns out that Connor did end up having actual blood sugar issues later on that, so he would have ended up in the SCN anyways, but we had hours of anger and resentment before that happened.
We had also asked people not to visit on the day Connor was born, so that meant that everyone ended up coming to visit on the day that Connor was admitted to the SCN. I am still glad we didn’t have visitors that first day, and got some time together as our own little family, but having everyone visit the second day really ended up not being ideal either. We were overwhelmed, sad, and angry that this was happening to our family again. What should have been a happy occasion was once again filled with stress and uncertainty.
Day 3 was a better day. After the initial post-traumatic stress subsided, Jeff and I started to acknowledge that Connor’s issue was fixable and not life threatening. Up until this point, I had really felt like we might end up losing another child. I was released that night, and had to leave the hospital without our baby. Again. Cue some more PTSD there. Connor was still on quite a bit of glucose via IV when we left, so we expected he’d have at least another full day in the SCN before he’d get to come home with us.
Friday morning, we showed up, expecting to see Connor hooked up to his glucose IV, but he wasn’t. They’d weaned him a bunch overnight and his blood sugars had held steady. His neonatologist said we could take him home! We were totally not ready and didn’t even have an outfit to take him home in (or gas in our car). Jeff left to tie up those loose ends and the rest of the morning was a blur of them giving us a crash course in caring for an infant at home.
11 weeks in, I still find it incredible that we have a living baby at home. No matter how little sleep I get or how stressed out I am because Connor just won’t stop crying, I still can’t believe just how lucky we are. Those trying moments are balanced out by the really good ones, like seeing his huge smiles and watching him figure things out. It’s challenging, but it’s also the best. I go back to work next week and, at the moment, I feel really ready for that. I know I’ll miss him a lot, but it will make me appreciate the time that I do have with him that much more.
I’ll write a little more on the emotional adjustment of bringing home a baby after loss, but I think this post is already long enough.
