Hospital Days with Avery

Our hospital stay with Avery was much different than it was with Gavin. Not having the epidural made the recovery much quicker. It was nice to be able to get up and walk around right away. I also felt a lot more energized and emotionally put together. It was great to be able to really enjoy those first few days together. 

(This post is really long, but I want to record everything that happened while we were in the hospital so we can remember it all!)

I love this picture. Her face is still pretty swolen from the delivery.

Here are a couple of videos from those first few hours.

One story I forgot to include in the delivery post was that Andrew really wanted some Haribo gummies to eat while we were at the hospital. He was planning on going to the store to get some on Thursday while Gavin was napping. But Gavin never went down for a nap. Then we ended up going to the hospital and Andrew never got a chance to get his gummies. He complained about it the entire time I was in labor!! So as soon as we were in our room, he went to the car to get our bags and took a little detour across the street to get some gummies. He was finally happy. He now had a baby girl and some Haribo.

When we had Gavin we used the nursery at the hospital. He stayed there at night and they would bring him to our room every couple of hours to eat. It was nice to be able to get some sleep and to not stress about how he was doing. I think I would have stayed awake the entire time just staring at him, making sure that he was breathing and doing okay. It worked for us. We definitely planned on doing the same thing this time around. But sometime in the last 2 1/2 years the hospital switched to a room-in philosophy. When they did all of Avery's tests in our room and then told us to call them if we needed anything, I was a little surprised. When I asked her about having Avery stay in the nursery she gave us a "oh, you're one of those terrible parents that don't want to stay with your baby" kind of looks. She said that she wasn't going to say that the nursery was not available, but that they strongly encourage you to keep your baby with you in your room at all times. Partly out of guilt, we agreed. It ended up being really nice to have her in the room with us. She slept so well that we were also able to sleep. I also was a lot more relaxed and didn't feel like I had to hover the whole time. I knew she would be okay.

We received these beautiful flowers from one of my favorite swim team families, the McCrarys. It was so nice to have something to really brighten up the room!

Annette made this cute hat for Avery to keep her warm in the hospital. 

I tried to do a little photo shoot with her, but she was less than cooperative. She just covered her face the whole time. I'm afraid it's a sign of things to come. I can just see her in 10 years not wanting to ever have her picture taken!

I finally got her to cooperate a little bit.

I love this super chubby face! She really isn't as chubby as the pictures make her look! (I am hoping that is the same for me!)

We spent all of our time at the hospital relaxing, sleeping, eating and watching TV. For some reason the show "Phineas and Ferb" was on all day long, every day. Andrew loves that show so he was so happy! We also watched the movie "Notting Hill" and "Airbender."

When we had Gavin we spent a majority of our time in the hospital trying to decide on his name. This time we had decided on Avery's name within the first 12 hours. We didn't know for sure what we were going to name her when we went in to the hospital. We had it narrowed down to about 4 or 5 names. But Avery was always the front runner. Once she was born we both just decided that we really wanted that to be her name and so we made the decision! It was great to not have to stress about it but to be able to relax and know that she had a name that we loved.

I took this video of Andrew with her. So sweet.

One of the things that I love about our hospital is the room service! I am able to order breakfast, lunch and dinner and they bring it all to my room. It's nice because they have a pretty extensive menu and you can order as much as you want!! We would always order enough for Andrew and I to share. The second night we were there we went to order dinner at 7:15 and they had closed at 7:00!! Who ends dinner at 7:00? Luckily our good friends, the Devere's had ordered a pizza for us. They had brought us a pizza at the hospital with Gavin so I guess it is now a tradition! We were also able to finally convince the charge nurse to give Andrew a voucher to go to the cafeteria and get more food. They had given us one the night before because we didn't get down to our room from the delivery until about midnight. But this nurse did not want to give us one. She made Andrew go with our nurse assistant and really limited what we could get. The next night the nurse called us at about 6:00 to remind us to order our dinner. I guess we really made an impression on them! That night the Eckersley's had also brought us some food from Rubios. We have the best friends!

The Eckersleys: Avery's first visitors!

We were supposed to go home sometime on Saturday. That morning they did the bilirubin test for jaundice. The results were a little high so they ordered the blood test and were waiting to hear back from the pediatrician as to what she wanted to do. We went to the discharge class where they teach us how to take care of the baby, etc. While we were there the nurse came and pulled me out. She told me that the pediatrician wanted us to keep Avery there an extra day/night. Because I was being discharged that day we would have to go home without her. They immediately took Avery to put her in the bilibed to help with the jaundice. I had to go back in to the class and sit there, trying not to cry. I knew that jaundice is a very common thing and I knew that she would be okay. But the thought of having to go home without her, having to leave her there at the hospital, just tore me apart. It was everything I could do to not break down in the middle of that room. Luckily I did make it to the end of the class before that happened.

After the class we went back to our room and they brought Avery in with us. She had to stay in the bed at all times, except when I fed her. They said that even if she started crying that we couldn't take her out. Luckily she never cried because I don't think I could have just left her there being sad. We had to be out of our room by midnight that night. So we were planning on staying until midnight and then coming back first thing in the morning.

Because it was Saturday, Dr. Matsuda was off and one of his partners was supposed to come discharge me. She came earlier that morning and I was in the restroom. She told Andrew she would be right back. We waited for her to come back and she never did. Finally about 6 hours later the nurse called her and she said that she forgot to come back! She said that I could just go home. It made me glad that she wasn't my doctor!

We enjoyed the last few hours that we had in the hospital with Avery. We were so tired and wanted to go to sleep, but we wanted to stay as long as we could with her. I fed her one last time at about 11:00. Then the nurse came in and took her and began all the paperwork for us to leave. We were finally ready to go at 11:40pm. I was exhausted and just wanted to go home. Because of hospital policy I had to wait for them to get a wheelchair to take me out. Andrew left so that he could carry all of the bags out and pull the car out to the front. I sat in the room and waited for the wheelchair. I waited and waited and waited! After 30 minutes I started to wonder if they were ever coming. I didn't want to be annoying and bother them, but I felt like it had been way too long! I was so tired and just wanted to go home. About 5 minutes later someone knocked on the door, but it was the cleaning crew! I told her that I would happily leave and that I was capable of just walking out. She said she would go see what was going on. I followed her out in to the hallway. She was at the nurses station and then I see my nurse come rushing down the hallway. She was super apologetic and said the charge nurse had told her that she had called transportation and that it was taken care of. Again I told her that I could just walk out by myself. She said she would do it herself. So she grabbed a wheelchair and took me out. So 40 minutes later, I was finally leaving the hospital. I was so tired, frustrated and sad to be leaving Avery. I tried to not cry until I got in the car, but I only made it about half way there. The nurse was reassuring me that Avery would be okay, and I tried to tell her that I knew that she was fine, that wasn't the issue.

Everyone told me that the silver lining in all of this was that we would be able to go home and get some good sleep. I knew that was not going to happen though. We came home, had to get situated, and then I had to wake up every few hours to pump since they would be supplementing Avery in the hospital. We called the nursery when I would wake up to make sure that she was okay. They told us that she was doing great, so that was reassuring. We planned to be there for her 9:00 feeding the next morning. We had told the nursery that we would be there. When we spoke to them before we left the house they said they had redone the test and that her numbers were now in the intermediate low risk so that was good news. They were just waiting for the pediatrician to come do her rounds to decide what she wanted to do, but it looked like she would be able to come home that day. I was so relieved. I did not want to spend the day in the hospital waiting room, only seeing Avery long enough to feed her. When we were about 5 minutes away from the hospital the nursery called us and said that the Doctor had checked her out and was ready to send her home!! We told her that we were almost there so she said she would wait for us to talk to us.

We got to the hospital and it was so great to see Avery again! She never really looked yellow so we didn't notice a big difference in her. I fed her while we waited for the Pediatrician. She came and gave us instructions and told us that she was very happy with the progress that Avery had made. We were so happy!! I wanted to get pictures of getting Avery ready to take home. Because we were in the nursery with other babies we weren't sure if we could take pictures, so I had Andrew try to take them very discretely with the cell phone.

I was so completely exhausted here, but at the same time so incredibly happy!!

We wrapped up our little baby girl, put her in her car seat and we left the hospital, together!

I am so grateful for all of the wonderful doctors, nurses and everyone else at the hospital! We were all very well taken care of. We had great care and we knew that Avery was safe and loved by everyone.  I am always impressed by health care workers and their dedication. Thank you to all of you!!