Hospital Stay

Once the C-Section was done and I was all stitched up we were moved to a new hospital room in the section recovery wing which was unfortunately about half the size of our original room. We got there a little after 2 am and Leah and I got a good couple hours of skin to skin time and had a successful first time breastfeeding. My mom left to get some sleep for the night around 4 am when we finally got Brian's cot.  Around this time Leah started crying and wouldn't stop. I didn't want to send her to the nursery at all while we were at the hospital but Brian convinced me around 5, when she was still crying, that we wouldn't be 'bad parents' if we let her stay in there for two hours so we could at least get a little sleep.  

    Skin to skin snuggling 

    In her Peach onesie Aunt Bri made for Leah. Since it took me until the day after she was born to decide on a name she was called Peach throughout the second half of my pregnancy. 

   Brian's first Fathers Day! 

Saturday was a very busy day full of visitors. We had both sides of the family in a tiny hospital room at once. Talk about chaos! Then Sunday morning we got some bad news, Leah had jaundice and would need to be under bililights for at least 24 hours. She was only allowed to come out to eat so she was basically in 'jail'. It was really hard to not be able to hold our baby girl after we finally got to meet her! Sunday was also the day that the feeding/latching issues started. Since the way babies kick jaundice is the bililights and by eating and then pooping it was really important that Leah was getting enough to eat. I refused to give her any formula so we ended up doing a combination of pumping and using a nipple shield to help her latch. Luckily it only took a week and a half to break her of the shield once we got home. She ended up being under the lights until Monday evening. Then Tuesday morning she had to go back under them for a couple hours due to her levels going back up. 

    In her 'jail'

Her Tuesday morning, 3 days after she was born, her Biliruben levels were down enough that the pediatrician cleared us to to take her off the lights and to go home!