Hotel MRMC: Lincoln's Troubled Beginnings

I shared my birth story last week in a link up with a fellow blogger, Jessica Lynn Writes! What I didn't share was the following week, one of the most stressful weeks of our lives. Hands down. I decided that I would write it down in it's own post, separate from the actual birth.

After the excitement of the birth was over (but not the excitement over our new babe!) we were wheeled into our recovery room. It was a pretty nice room, very large, big window, the TV could have been bigger but that's my only "complaint". Little did I know that we'd be staying there much longer than anticipated. We settled in and turned on Monday Night Football. Priorities, people, birth the baby in time for some Green Bay Packer Football! Mission Accomplished!

Mitch and Lincoln watching the Packer's game

The night was a fairly normal one, who am I kidding, I didn't sleep a wink and every sound I jumped. I had no idea what normal was but we survived! The nurse came in early to take Lincoln to the nursery to be seen, as is standard care. She came back relatively quickly with the news that Lincoln was extremely jaundiced and would need to be cared for in the NICU. Our hearts fell. In my mind I thought jaundice is a fairly common thing, we'll have him back in no time at all.  Apparently, Lincoln's jaundice was very severe and somewhat baffling to the neo-natologists that were on staff. His levels were at 14.9, they needed to be at about a 4, tops. It was an immensely stressful time for us to say the least.

We were able to spend as much time as we could with him in the NICU and we came to cherish our time spent just standing next to his little oasis. He was undergoing phototherapy that was administered by a light blanket, a massive light box, and a concentrated lamp. His levels would drop each time they were checked and then he spiked again, up to 13. The older he got the higher his bilirubin level could be but that was still way too high.

Lincoln all hooked up to monitors 

One of the hardest things for me to deal with, aside from my brand new baby being away from me, was that I wasn't able to breastfeed but the hospital was amazing and provided a bad ass Medela breast pump and boy was that thing awesome! I missed it when we finally left! The NICU staff was amazing and froze all the breast milk and packed it up for us when we finally left. I still have quite a bit in my freezer, 2 months later!

One of the cool things and one of the things I am most thankful for was the hospital's policy on NICU babies and "Stay Overs." I don't know if this is a norm for hospitals to do this but Munroe Regional Medical Center's policy (and I'm stating this loosely so don't quote me for sure)

Lincoln taking a bottle from Grandma Skramstad (my mom)

was to allow the parents, after the mother's discharge, to stay in the room (or a room if that one is needed). We were informed that it was a day by day decision but that if there were rooms available (as in the entire county didn't spontaneously go into labor) then we would be able to stay. FREE of charge. That last bit was a huge surprise for me because even though we have amazing insurance and it most likely would have been covered I felt a huge relief for all of the other mothers out there who had that extra worry of "how am I going to pay for this hospital stay" or those that left because they knew they wouldn't be able to afford it. I was discharged at about 6 or 7 PM Wednesday, December 10th and we stayed over the 11th. The next day things weren't looking great, he still had very high levels, too high to send him home, so I began to worry about what we'd do. I was so anxious that we'd have to leave him there and I knew I would not take getting into the car with an empty car seat while he stayed in the hospital very well. I voiced my anxiety to one of the amazing NICU nurses and she let me know that the hospital also talked with them about the parent's and the cases and if parents with NICU babes were "doing what they should" in order to be approved as a stay over. Meaning that the parents were visiting and caring for their child as much as was allowed and weren't using the hospital as a place to stay and watch TV. We were there for every feeding, took control of diaper changes when we were present, we even knew where everything was so the nurses could focus on the others while we were in. We were parenting our baby the best way we could in the circumstances. They said there should be no problem staying there as long as room was available. 

This was a chart, originally shown to me by our neonatalogist, that I went and downloaded from the internet after. Each arrow corresponds with the blood draws that he had and where those results landed him on the chart. You can see where he jumped back up and finally came down enough to go home!

Exposing the back to the lights is a way to help boost the absorption of the lights into the body because it is the largest uninterrupted patch of skin.

You can see how yellow he was by looking at his eyes where his "baby blinders" were. This was a huge surprise to us, we arrived at the NICU fully intending to stand by his side and feed him his bottle. This was the first time I was able to hold him since they had taken him into their care. 

We ended up staying the night of the 10th, 11th and 12th and most of the 13th before little Lincoln was discharged. We were truly blessed by getting to stay for so long, I don't think that was the norm. We were discharged and left the hospital on Saturday, December 13th and made it home in time to watch the Army v. Navy football game (again, we're a football family)! 

Headed home! Finally!