Kylan Edison

Kylan Edison Smart

Born on February 18th 2011 at 3:07pm

6lb,15oz & 18.5 inches

What a wild ride this labor and delivery experience was. You never know whats going to happen when you enter the hospital and really even before that! Every baby experience is different. With that being said, I had no idea what I was getting myself into this time, but I'm so grateful that our family of 5 is home and healthy!

If you want to know the deets, here they are. You can skip this whole part if you really dont care, but clearly Im about documenting for memory's sake on my blog so I'm going to try and write most of it down. Thursday night I was having contractions all night that were a little painful, but they werent timing close enough together or getting progressively worse so I did my best to sleep. At 8am friday morning I was bleeding and concerned so I called my doctor and as I'm in the process of this I'm realizing all of a sudden my contractions just got really serious! Painful and consistantly 4-5 min apart. Dr. Apgar told me right away to go to the hospital. When I got there and they checked me at around 10am I was 4cm. I decided to wait to get the epidural because I HATE catheders and wanted to be able to get up if I wanted to. Then the doc tried to break my water and it didnt work, which was odd. But he said he'd just wait till I got my epidural to try again so I wasnt being bothered. They checked again and I was almost 5cm so they put me on the list for an epidural and I waited for maybe 20/30 min or so. At this point I wanted it bc I really wanted him to break my water to get things going faster. To speed up this part, I got my epidural, we waited for it to kick in...nothing...still nothing. The nurse's were standing around waiting for it to take to put the catheder in and at this point im 7cm! The anesthesiologist kept upping my dose and then testing my skin to see if I was really not numb and sure enough...I was NOT! Only a small patch of skin on my upper right abdomen was numb. The rest of me...feeling it all. You hear this stuff happen to women back in the day when epidurals were new, so honestly this was a bit of a shocker to me. The anesthesiologist was getting so frustrated and was so disappoined in his lack of success and was running around all frantic, and all of a sudden I had a contraction that I felt pushed the baby's head far down. I told them this, they checked me again, and I was 10cm...ready to go! That last bit went so fast I couldnt beleive it! Then I prayed that God would give me the strength to finish it out. I'm not gonna lie, I dont understand why anyone would purposefully not want an epidural. But there were some positives. Number one being no catheder...yes!, and I knew what was going on and I could feel the progress I was making everytime I pushed. Yeah it hurt but it was pretty cool at the same time. I didnt have to wait for them to tell me what to do, I just pushed several times and there he was! It was over! All those months of carrying a baby, the hrs of labor, and all of a sudden I'm holding a little body, big eyes wide open staring at me. Incredible!

It was after he got here that things got a little complicated. I've waited till now to explain, because we just got home last night from the hospital. And clearly my attention has been on my baby and getting him home. When he was born he wasnt crying. He was making this grunting noise. They kept trying to pat him and get him to cry and its like he didnt know how. So they let me hold him for a minute and then the took him for a chest Xray for precaution. Member how I told you the doctor tried to break my water and it didnt work? Well labor happened quick and he never tried again to break it. But when Kylan was born there was no gush of water at all. This is kind of a mystery because I had a sonogram just the day before on my due date saying I had plenty! This brought up concern that there could be fluid in his lungs, which could equal possible infection. So he was emitted to the NICU for a 48hr antibiotic just to be on the safe side. THEN, we get the results of the chest Xray. Theres an air leak in his chest. This happens to 1% of babies and in this case it was not, but a small amount. So luckily it wasnt putting any known pressure on his organs that they could see. But it was bordering his heart. Its more common that an air leak would occur in the lung cavity. So they we are told we have to stay longer so they can monitor it for a couple days to see if it gets better. Thankfuly the air slowly went down like they thought it would, but then there was the concern that Kylan was getting dehydrated bc my milk hadnt come in yet. Normally thats something we'd deal with at home, but because we were already at the NICU they had to monitor this too. And because they were worried he wasnt getting enough fluids they were waiting to give him a circumcision. Whew, very long and drawn out 5 days. When my milk came in he was doing fine, so they finally gave the ok yesterday morning for the circumcision. At this point I've been discharged and refusing to leave the hospital, so I'd been sleeping on the waiting room chairs/couches, and walking to the NICU every 2 hrs to feed my little man. There was no way I was leaving and thankfully Neil stayed with me. I'm not going to go into the story of my mean nurse and head nurse the last couple days we were there, but I'll say that it made the whole experience much more difficult and emotionally trying than it needed to be. When I walked out those doors with my baby, I was the happiest girl in the world!! This whole experience has made me that much more grateful for all the love and support we have. My Nena and Papa who stayed at my house during the weekdays with the kids, my parents who had them all weekend, my mom in law who came up tues morning (when Neil finall had to go to work) to be with me and take me and Kylan home, all our family and close friends who came and fed us and entertained us while we were stuck in the hospital! I love you all, and you know who you are. Every face that came to say hi brightened our day...clearly we dont like hospitals esp this experience, so you have no idea how much of a blessing it was to have you!!!

The kids were so excited to have him home! Especially Ryder because he wasnt allowed in the NICU to see his little brother. You have to be 3, so Ryder had to wait till we came home to meet him. He held him this morning for the first time. He asked me to hold him and when he did, he smiled and said, "aww mommy, soo cute!" He just kept saying it over and over :) so sweet. Nyah of course is already jumping at any opportunity to help, and my Nena is awesome and has offered to help with transporting Nyah to and from school for me right now. She actually took Ryder out to do something, and baby is sleeping, which is how I'm able to update right now. Thanks for everyone who kept us in their prayers!!! It has meant a lot to us! Now time for me to begin my new chapter as a mommy of 3!! ...and sleeping in my own bed!