My Mom and Nick had just arrived at the hospital when the doctor told us they had taken Haley to the NICU. Since Nick wasn't allowed in there, Josh took him to the cafeteria and my Mom and I headed down to see her. It was kind of surreal being pushed in a wheelchair to go visit my baby. When we got down there, they took us over to where she was and I couldn't help but start to cry. She was hooked up to an IV and had a bunch of other wires on her monitoring her vitals. The pregnancy hormones kind of washed over me and I lost it for a few minutes. The doctor came over again and reassured us that this is a pretty typical problem for big babies and that they suspected that Haley would be able to go home after just a few days. The plan was to slowly wean her off of the IV sugar they had her on as long as her glucose stayed at an acceptable level after she ate. So, every three hours they would wake her up, check her sugar, lower the IV if they could, and then feed her again.
This went on all day Friday and Saturday. On Friday Josh ended up going home with Nick and my Mom stayed at the hospital with me. We spent lots of time in the NICU in the chair next to Haley's little bed and quite a bit of time back in my room as they had advised me to start pumping every three hours. So, we would go to the NICU in time to attempt to breastfeed (no luck most of the time) then participate in feeding her formula, then back to my room to pump, wash pump parts, chill for a few minutes and then repeat the whole thing. It was exhausting. On Saturday my Mom left and Josh came back and we did the whole thing all over again. Haley did pretty well, would have stable sugars, would get weaned and then would have a few setback feedings where they wouldn't be able to wean. Luckily, on Sunday morning, her body seemed to get things figured out and she had consecutive feedings where her sugar stayed normal so they finally weaned her off of the IV. The next step was to have 3 more "good" readings after feedings before they would release her. I was discharged from the hospital on Sunday and although I could have stayed there with her, I decided that I really needed to get home and have a good night sleep. We called the NICU around 11 pm and they confirmed that she had gotten her 3rd good reading and that she would be discharged on Monday. We were so happy!
On Monday we went back to the hospital for the last time to pick up our girl! They had to do a few more tests- one to make sure her sugar would be good on regular formula (they had been giving her a slightly higher calorie formula) and then a test for Jaundice. Finally they let us bring her home in the early afternoon, we were so, so happy to get out of that place!
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