She's already one week old, but it seems like it's been a short and long week at the same time. Miss Dot arrived into the world with some drama. She was due on April 26th, but chose to show up almost 5 weeks early. I definitely never thought I'd have a pre-mature baby; I was expecting a 9 pounder instead!
Here is a brief recap of her birth story:
Luckily, I made it to my last baby shower at work. My coworkers went out of their way to make me feel special and we joked at the shower about guessing when the baby would arrive. I went home exhausted that day, and then told James that I wasn't feeling great.
At about 3 am, I woke up and thought that I felt my water leaking, though I didn't have a big gush of water. I went back to sleep and each time I got up, I thought it was still leaking. Luckily, my doctor's office got me in first thing the next morning and sure enough, as soon as I was examined, my entire water broke in the office!
We had planned to deliver at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, but I found out that my doctor was currently on call at Reston Hospital (which was our second choice, but we had not visited before). We took a gamble and went to Reston. We arrived around 10 am. My doctor was there, and it was nice to see a familiar face.
The doctor gave me some drugs to get the process moving along, since my water had already broken. Fortunately, the labor progressed pretty quickly and after a lovely epidural, I was ready to get her out! She arrived quickly, at 9:16 pm, and without much drama. It was a long day, but she was healthy, I survived, and James was amazingly supportive through the whole thing!
Miss Dot was whisked off to the NICU pretty quickly to be checked out, since she was 5 weeks early. She weighed in at 5 lbs, 9 oz and was 19" long. We got to visit her in the NICU that night, and then went back to our room to get some sleep. The doctors assured us she was doing well, and we were exhausted.
Fortunately, the hospital let me stay one additional night so that I could visit her and get caught up on her status. She didn't need any assistance with oxygen or temperature, which was good. Two days later, the hospital thought about discharging her, but then she had a small setback - she didn't want to eat because she was too sleepy and had some jaundice creeping on. We were assured these two symptoms were totally normal for her gestational age, and sadly we checked out of the hospital without her. It was hard, but we knew she needed to be there, and didn't want to take her home and have to take her back to the hospital later. We visited her frequently over the next few days and got the house ready for her arrival.
Dot in the "tanning bed" getting her bilirubin levels down!
Daddy and Dot on Easter!
Car ride home!
She was discharged after a little less than a week in the NICU. The NICU nurses were great, and taught us a lot, which was another benefit of her being there. We came home prepared and with detailed schedules.
She had her first night at home last night, and did well! She's eating like a champ now, and her color looks good. Her umbilical stump fell off unexpectedly last night, and she has a tiny belly button in its place. She's eating every 3 hours, which has been hard on us, but we're keeping up with it. While she is too small to breast feed right now, I am pumping milk for her and she is eating almost exclusively breast milk, which she thinks is tasty!
She's mostly just sleeping and eating right now, but she seems happy. She's sleeping with me in the guest room for now, in her bassinet. James is sleeping upstairs with Kala - who was very excited to meet her new human sister. We have a good schedule down to split sleeping and feeding, and hopefully Dot will gain some weight in the next few weeks and start sleeping for a little bit longer at night. We shall see!
Miss Dot will have her first doctor's appointment tomorrow, and we're hoping that everything checks out as healthy. Stay tuned for now, I will post another update in a few weeks.
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