All the details...

Our little girl is beautiful, healthy, and she's finally home.

It was a difficult week for her, and for us.

After my water broke on Sunday afternoon, we happily headed to the hospital, excited that all the waiting would finally be over! The thing is, Allie wasn't quite as excited about coming out. I wasn't having any noticeable contractions, even though my water had already broken. I was started on Pitocin to get things going, but still there wasn't much happening. At 10 p.m. the doctor on call ordered to have my Pitocin shut off and wanted to see if my body would labor naturally. Still, not a lot was happening. I finally started having noticeable contractions around midnight, and at 1 a.m. I was happy to get my epidural going. Unfortunately, my body didn't like the epidural as much as it did the last time. My blood pressure dropped. The room started spinning. I couldn't get deep breathes, and I started feeling really nauseated. They gave me oxygen, but I didn't start feeling normal until I was given medicine to bring my blood pressure back up. The Pitocin was turned back on at 4 a.m. I threw up. Hours passed. Finally, at 9:40 it was time to push. The bad thing is that my doctor had off for the day. Instead I had to have a different doctor, with whom I was not pleased. when I started pushing, he said that he was going to run across the street to the office and would be back in 10 minutes. 3 pushes later, Allie is ready to be born and I am stuck waiting 20 minutes for the doctor to show up again! Let me just say that I was not a happy woman.

Allie was born at 10:16 a.m. She wasn't breathing and was in a lot of distress. The emergency team came in and took a very long time to get her to breathe on her own. It was really scary. I was told she wouldn't be able to nurse because she still had too much mucus in her lungs. I was able to hold her for a short time and introduce her to her Daddy and Nana before they took her away.

At this point, I am told that I suddenly have a fever of 103 and that Allie and I probably got an infection from going so long since my water broke. She had a small fever as well and blood tests showed that she did have an infection. She would need to be admitted to the NICU.

Thankfully, I was able to have her in the room with us for a little while and her brother had a chance to come and meet his little sister for the first time.

She was taken to the NICU at 9 pm Monday night. We were told that her CRP levels needed to be below 1 and hers were 1.84. They also had the possibility of going up before they started going down. If they went down that night, we could still take her home by Wednesday. If not, we were told she would need to stay on antibiotics in the the NICU for 7-10 days.

Well, she didn't go down below 1 as we had hoped. The number did drop, but only to 1.76. I couldn't believe I would be going home without my baby girl. How hard it is to sign discharge papers for yourself that say "going home with 0 babies." Things just got harder from there. Allie had 4 different IV's started during her stay in the hospital. That number does not include the ones they tried to start and were unable to. She had needle pricks and bruises all over her little body. She ended up with an IV in her head when they couldn't find one in her arms or feet. She also had to get a lot of blood drawn. Her poor little heals still have so many cuts in them. It's so difficult to hold your baby when they are hooked up to monitors with wires and there are IV tubes in other places. When we were struggling with nursing, her little wires would sometimes come off and then the beeping alarms go off. Talk about stress. She wouldn't nurse, she's crying, and then the beeping begins. Ahhhh! We also had to deal with incompetent nurses who added to her pain. One nurse injected her antibiotic straight into her IV line rather than dripping it in slowly over a period of 30 minutes like the other nurses had done. We found out later that it burned her vein. Stupid nurse. The same lady wouldn't allow me to wake Allie up to feed her. She said I had to wait until she woke up on her own. She even made me watch a CPR video in the other room so I wouldn't bother my own child! 5 hours after not eating, I ignored the lady and woke her up. She was starting to get jaundiced looking, and I didn't need her getting sicker from not eating.

From the front, you can't see the IV. She looks so peaceful.

Todd and I got a hotel next to the hospital so that we could be near her and still be there for all of her feedings. We didn't know that between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. you can only use the Emergency room doors, which happen to be the furthest possible point from the NICU doors. I felt like I had run a marathon after walking all that way after giving birth only a few days before. It's kind of funny since they make you take a wheel chair out to your car when they discharge you, but then you end up hiking across the hospital the next day. Ironic.

Praise God that Allie didn't have to stay for a full 7 days. She was discharged four days later. It felt more like 4 weeks to me.

Here she is getting her bath to go home. If was difficult to get all the IV tape out of her hair.

Mommy and Allie ready to go home!

God did answer our prayers, though. Allie is completely healthy now. He helped her to breathe. He took away her fever and my fever. He took away her infection. She is nursing better and better every day. And I was never alone. I felt His love every time my husband got up with me to walk to the NICU for a feeding in the middle of the night. I felt His love every time we got a call or a text from friends to let us know they were praying for us. I felt His love when my mommy came to sit with me and keep me company while Todd was out. And, I felt God's love when I thought of my sweet 3 year old at home, waiting for his Mommy and Daddy and baby sister. How comforting it was to know that God allowed Tyler's Grandma and Papa to stay with him while we were away. He was able to sleep in his own bed, in his own house.

Allie wasn't discharged until 8:30 at night, so Tyler had already gone to bed by the time we got home. It was a lot of fun to surprise him in the morning. He wanted to show his sister everything she had missed. He wanted her to try out her swing and her bouncy seat. He wanted her to see all of her toys and wear her pretty hair bows. Tyler has picked out her outfits every day and her jammies every night. He enjoys standing on the little stool beside the changing table so he can help change her diapers. And he has already become really good at saying "shhhh" when Allie begins to cry.

Tyler picked out the outfit and decided she needed these socks to go with it.

I love you, Allie!

I have never enjoyed being at home as much as I do now. I don't even mind waking up at night to feed my baby girl. I am grateful that she is snuggled in her bassinet beside me instead of in a hospital room too far away. And, she looks so much more comfortable in her own jammies instead of those boring hospital t-shirts. Best of all, she gets a lot more hugs and kisses when she's home.