I feel like the NICU should come with a warning--"DO NOT ENTER UNLESS PROPERLY PREPARED (and sanitized)". First of all, Charlotte was doing spectacular in the NICU. No issues--heart rate, oxygen and respiratory were all within range. I was so happy that she was doing so well. However, she still hadn't mastered bottle feeding and my hopes of having a bottle feeding savant were quickly diminishing. I really thought she would pick it up in a week and they'd let us go home. I was so wrong! I struggled with two main things during Charlotte's NICU stay; her feeding and my own health.

Twinsies--matching IV pumps! 

My Story - Delivery!

Delivery! After a week of being on bed rest since my water broke, I finally went into labor. I began laboring at 11:00am on February 5th. It started pretty calm, and I convinced my nurse to let me shower before sending me down to L&D. [I never realized how good I was at negotiating until I was in the hospital, haha]. Once I was down there, I was pretty comfortable for a few hours. I could certainly feel the contractions, but I wasn't in a ton of pain--yet. 

Ok, so this is kind of embarrassing. I didn't know ANYTHING about epidurals. I thought you got one shot, and if it wore off--too bad, so sad. Therefore, I didn't ask for my epidural until I absolutely could not stand the contractions anymore. No one ever told me that an epidural is a continuous drip! Once I figured this out, I requested one ASAP. I had back contractions--which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. They were so painful. I finally got my epidural around 6:30pm on February 5th, and it was heaven. 

Post-epidural relaxation

My Story - Surgery

I was lying in bed the night of January 14, 2015 when all of a sudden I felt what I describe as a small explosion in my right lower abdomen. I had felt this in a much smaller scale every time I had my heartburn episodes. I instantly ran to the bathroom and began getting sick. Once my stomach was empty, I got into the bathtub. I drank water and Pedialyte to try and rehydrate myself. Because I had been to the hospital twice in the last few weeks, I refused to go again. Both Chase and I thought I was just dehydrated again and continued to drink water. As the night progressed, I was getting short of breath and wanted to throw up but I couldn't. I tried so hard to sleep, but I literally couldn't even close my eyes I was in so much pain. After a few hours of this, I talked to my doctor who immediately told me to go to the hospital. I had never gotten a call back so quickly!

Again, my back was in excruciating pain and I couldn't walk. After a speedy admission, I was seen by the doctor on staff. She wanted to put me on morphine, which I bucked for about 30 minutes. Then she told me that if I continued to be in so much pain it wouldn't be good for me or the baby, and that the risks of pain medication were minor compared to what my body needed. I agreed reluctantly. I was scared, they barely suggest you take Tylenol while you're pregnant, and now I was on morphine! I was terrified I was hurting Baby C.

Ultrasounds showed the baby to be fine, but there was some concern that they found while examining my images. They couldn't exactly tell what was going on, but it looked like I had fluid in my lower right abdomen. At this point, it was business hours and all the day doctors were coming to check on me.  A wonderful doctor from Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Dr. Ramirez, came to talk to me. She wanted to bring over a surgeon/oncologist from Baylor College of Medicine to review my scans. I also had my OBGYN, Dr. Shultz, come talk to me to break the news. He told me he was almost certain I would need surgery.

My Story - Pregnancy

When Chase and I first decided to try and have a baby, we were planning (are you moms out there already chuckling?) on a fall baby. We had been using the Natural Family Planning method, and were lucky enough to get pregnant the first go around. So there went our plans of a fall baby--but who could ever be upset with that?! Due March 31, 2015, we were beyond ecstatic! Our families were thrilled! We would have a nephew born in December 2014 and our best friends were also pregnant with a due date only a few days after ours. We couldn't have timed it better, and I relaxed because I had two pregnant and veteran moms to confide in alongside my pregnancy. 

The first trimester, ugh! I never got physically ill, but I'm not sure which is worse: feeling sick or getting sick. Probably both. I was so tired too...napping in my car at work and making up "errands" to run so I could go home and sleep without anyone at work knowing. Slowly but surely, we made it to the second trimester with good reports from our doctor. 

The second trimester came around and we were anxious to find out if we were having a boy or girl. Chase's family is notorious for having boys, so we both put our money on boy. Surprise! Baby C is a girl!

About 5 weeks later, I really started to struggle with heartburn. It was so bad that I would get physically ill from it. I thought this was some cruel joke because I had never expected to be throwing up in the second trimester because of heartburn. I also wasn't gaining a lot of weight, but my doctor reassured me that the baby looked good and I was just on the low end of normal weight gain. At 25 weeks, I had only gained about 8 pounds. I was also really struggling with back pain, which of course is a completely normal and common complaint among pregnant women. 

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6 months!