If you missed it you can find the first part of Rose's birth story
here.
After finally making it up to our room, we were welcomed by a nurse who immediately said "your baby is grunting." Without asking, she then took Rose out of my hands and said she needed to be looked at in the nursery. Matt looked at me and asked if he should leave me to go with her and of course I said "yes!" I was left in the hallway with a man from transport alone and I went from the highest high to the lowest low all in about two minutes. The nurse returned without Matt and Rose and asked me to move myself (3 hours after my c- section) from my recovery bed to the bed I would be staying in the remainder of our time in the hospital. I was shocked she even asked me, but I did it. I slowly used my arms to move myself from one bed to the other as she just stood there and watched me. Each move gave a burning sting in my fresh incision. After enduring what felt like a marathon, both the nurse and man from transport left.
I was alone in the room without my phone (Matt had it) and with out my baby girl. Just alone. I started to cry knowing she was going to be taken to the NICU. The nurse came back in what felt like hours later and said what I already knew she would say from the moment she took Rose "Dad and baby are going to make a trip down to the NICU to monitor her a little longer." I burst into tears and she asked if I wanted to be alone and to be honest I didn't, but I would have rather been alone then been with her. So I said yes, within ten minutes I called the nurses station to ask for a breast pump since I knew even if Rose was going to be staying in the NICU I wanted to breastfeed her. They said they will be right in. Fifteen minutes pass I am still alone without my pump. I call again they said they are now doing a shift change so I needed to wait. So I sat there alone waiting not knowing if Rose was okay was ripping me up inside. How could everything go from being so perfect to so horrible so fast? How could I go from feeling so full to so
unbelievably empty?
Matt finally came back to me after about an hour of me being alone and terrified out of my mind. He said that they have Rose under an oxygen hood just to give her a little more oxygen until her breathing slows down. At this point in time I STILL didn't have a pump, my eyes were swollen from crying so hard, and I was in a lot of pain from my c-section. Matt was very upset that the nurses had been ignoring me and he went out to find one and demand we be helped. He was also shocked I was asked to literally move myself from one bed to another with
NO help hours after getting a c-section. The pump arrived finally and I did all I could do at that point and pumped. After a little while I asked Matt to wheel me down to see our girl and it was hard to see her there the one place I didn't want her to go my whole pregnancy, but I knew she was in the best hands and I was glad she was doing well.
That night in the hospital was lonely. I woke up every few hours to pump and Matt would wake up to help me and to clean the parts for me then hold me after. I would lay there in the dark thinking about Rose and how she was doing. I would call the NICU and check on her status. I missed her incredibly, it didn't help to be there listening to all the new babies crying for their mommies when all I wanted was to be back in recovery holding my little girl. The one I dreamed of since I myself was a little girl.
The next day we went to visit Rose, her doctors in the NICU said she needed to stay for a while to be monitored and to have her lungs mature some more. They wouldn't give us a length of time that she would be staying there. I told Matt "I can't stay here another night. I just want to go home to our boys. I want to sleep in our bed. I want to leave." So I got discharged just over 24 hours after my c-section which may seem crazy, but I needed to get out of there. The hospital I delivered at is 45 minutes away from our house so I knew leaving Rose was going to be one of the hardest decisions of my life. But that was just it, it wasn't a decision I got to make. Rose was staying and I was going.
We got home and my parents had put the boys to bed which worked out well because I didn't know what we were going to tell them yet. They knew we were at the hospital to give birth to Rose but coming home with out her was going to be very confusing to them. Luckily, they handled it pretty well the next day and pretty much forgot about the fact that Rose wasn't physically there when we gave them the presents Rose had for them!
Landon and Oliver had their first day of school where Landon drew Rose still in my tummy. I knew he didn't understand completely, but seeing her as this little blob he drew in my tummy reminded me so much of the first time we saw Rose at our ultrasound just a little blob, with a fast little flicker that was her beating heart. I fought back the tears.
The days kept rolling by and she was still there. I was still pumping away and Matt and I would bring my milk in every evening after putting the boys to bed when my mom would come and watch the monitor. The drive was long and dark and sad.
I didn't keep this information from anyone for any other reason than because I wasn't ready to talk about it. I hope you can understand that this was a very hard time for us.
We are blessed beyond words to have brought our daughter home she's healthy, beautiful and more perfect than I ever imagined. Sure, my last birth didn't go as I had hoped or dreamed it would these past nine months. But most importantly she's home, she's healthy, she beautiful and more perfect than I could have ever imagined.
