THE ARRIVAL OF MISS HAZEL JANE

I honestly don’t remember too many details about my pregnancy. It was similar to Henrys in that rather than crave food I just didn’t have much of an appetite. I was on Zofran the entire length of my pregnancy. In general I just felt nauseous almost all the time. Since Henry came early (35 weeks 5 days) my doctors had me start weekly progesterone shots when I was 16 weeks along. Painful. especially for me who hates needles with a passion. My sweet Mckay had to give me shots every week and I’m so grateful he was brave enough to do that. If it had been the other way around I don’t know that I would have been able to stick him with a needle and inject him with a liquid the consistency of honey.

My due date was June 16th but they never expected me to last past 38 weeks. During the my last few months of pregnancy we had also started looking for houses in South Bend, Indiana. I have neglected to mention in all these updates that Mckay had been accepted to Notre Dames PHD program! We were so excited. We chose to buy a house because houses are cheap in Indiana and since we would be in school there for a minimum of 4 years we knew we would want the space and we were tired of throwing our money into the bottomless black hole that is rent. We were in contact with a realtor in South Bend and with her help had a long list of houses we were interested in. We knew at some point Mckay would have to fly out to look at houses in person, and since I was a high risk pregnancy I wasn’t allowed to fly. It just so happened that the only time Mckay (and his mom) could take the trip was right at my 36 week mark. We were obviously nervous about him leaving then since that was around the time I had gone into labor with Henry. And since progesterone wasn’t a guarantee that I wouldn’t deliver early we were even more apprehensive. After talking with our doctors it seemed pretty safe to let Mckay go. What are the chances that I would go into labor in the short three days Mckay was gone? Surely you can see where this is going….

I stopped my round of Progesterone shots the week before Mckay left (you take them through 36 weeks). I packed myself and Henry up and we went to stay with my parents. Everything was looking good, Mckay had seen a few houses he liked, I was feeling great. The second to last day of Mckay’s trip (he was to fly home the next morning) I spent a warm day outside with Henry, playing in the pool and jumping on the tramp…in hindsight, probably not a great idea. My mom and I decided to run up to Gardner Village to shop for some fabric for baby girl. (So fitting that I would start going into labor at one of my favorite places on this earth) We started shopping around and I noticed I was leaking water. It wasn’t much so lets be real, I didn’t know whether my water had broken or if I was just peeing my pants a little bit. I kept shopping. Eventually it started to become clear that it wasn’t just a little bit of pee. (TMI??) We started to get a little worried so I texted Mckay. Keep in mind this was the night before he was supposed to fly home. So he was mad I was continuing to shop while being potentially in the early stages of labor. Then the cramps started. I called my doctors office who told me I needed to go to Labor and Delivery ASAP. Not before I ordered some to go dinner from Archibalds. After narrowly missing a pile up on the freeway we raced home, I quickly packed my bag, said a tearful goodbye to my Hen and headed to the hospital.

I was in a state of denial, hoping that I wasn’t indeed going into labor while my husband was in a different state. I got checked into the hospital and it took less than 45 minutes for the nurse to tell me that my water had broke and I was definitely in the beginning stages of labor. I asked how long they could slow the process down, hoping somehow Mckay could make it in time. By then he was thinking of driving 2 hours to Chicago to get on the next available flight. Apparently once your water breaks it isn’t safe to try and delay delivery so I was faced with the reality that I was going to be having a baby without my husband there. And as luck would have it there was no way Mckay could have flown home any sooner than his flight in the morning. How was I feeling? Scared. Still in denial and complete shock that this was actually happening, and happening fast. I was also so sad for Mckay, to be stuck in Indiana getting updates via text.

Labor was quick, I wish I could say painless but it wasn’t too bad. I was actively pushing for less than 5 minutes so that was a tender mercy :). My mom was in the room with me. I love her. Baby girl was born at 10:21 pm and weighed 5 lbs 10 oz.

I kept a pretty detailed journal while in the hospital so I wont explain everything here. Simply put there were concerns about her breathing from the beginning. They kept an eye on her that night, I slept in my room alone, actually did not sleep. The next morning I watched the clock so close, dying for Mckay to get there. I got to attempt to feed Hazel, we had some girl time. But they were still unsure about her lung situation. An Xray showed some gray cloudiness in her lungs which could have been that they were still a little under-developed since she was preterm or pneumonia/infection. Mckay came and had the sweetest little moment with her before they came to tell us they were taking her to the NICU. 2nd baby in the NICU, we weren’t planning on that happening but we kind of knew what to expect. In the end Hazel stayed in the NICU for a week. We made the trip back and forth to the hospital about every 3 hours-day and night. Lots of ups and downs, steps forward, steps back. There is nothing harder in the world than seeing your poor new baby struggle. But sis was a trooper and Mckay and I grew so close during that week. We could not have survived without our families taking care of Hen 24/7. After all was said and done we left with a relatively healthy, happy and seriously beautiful baby girl. She remained on oxygen (mostly to be extra safe) for the entire summer, which was an ordeal in and of itself but we were so happy to have Hazel in our family.

As you can imagine, we didn’t want a million pictures of our baby girl with cords and monitors attached all over. oh and Mckay had our camera in Indiana so I didnt have a chance to get pictures before she was admitted to the  NICU We took very few pictures of her in the hospital and most of the ones we did take were with our phones. So here is our week long adventure in the NICU via Instagram.