so, i was reading the empey's blog...: December 2010

Nicole got really sick Friday night. So she drank some hot chocolate, which usually clears things up. But not Friday night…she didn’t “hold onto” that hot chocolate for very long. It must not have agreed with the soup she had earlier…

The next morning her stomach tried to rid itself of any vestiges of hot chocolate remaining. Whether it was dehydration or just “the time” she soon realized that the abdominal pains she was feeling were actually contractions. She remained in the bedroom while I fed the boys breakfast. When she emerged from the bedroom, her water had broken.

We were going to clean the house Saturday morning, and Nicole was going to attend a cookie exchange. I was going to hang out with the boys—maybe go to the park. There’s a real nice fenced in park over in east Chapel Hill that the boys love. I tried to vacuum the van there once, but—oh, wait, I’m telling a story here.

Not long after Nicole told me what was shakin’, we commenced our phone calls starting at the top of tree and worked our way down. It was a small tree—we were probably going to expand it on Saturday. Some really nice people helped out, and we were on our way to the hospital at 11 am.

Nicole: Since my previous labor was induced, I was worried that I wouldn’t know when I was actually in labor. But to my opposite-of-chagrin (don’t know what word fits there), I was admitted to the labor room. Since I had been feeling sickly, I opted to have an epidural pretty early. It was apparent that I was too exhausted to be messing around with labor pains.

I got really hyper after the epidural and chatted with the nurses incessantly. After that I was able to relax for the next 5 hours before I started pushing (I like pushing--really I do).

Nicole could still move her legs and enjoyed that fact—maybe one of the reasons she was hyper. She started pushing at 8:15 pm and finished pushing at 10:05 pm. Rosalyn was trying to pull a Brookston by looking sort of upwards instead of down like you’re supposed when you’re coming on out—I mean everyone knows that…

She looked pretty bruised up, but she was pretty darn cute.

Credit: Rebecca Mudrick of Darling Art Photography

This beat the trash out of 8 hours of pushing. The room was so calm throughout the entire process, and Nicole was a champ. No crazy post-partum craziness for Nicole this time, just straight to the recovery room with a sweet li’l Roz.

It wasn’t until the next day when we were told Roz’s platelet levels were really low, which probably contributed to the bruising. But look at that picture above. Does she look like she needs anyone to tell her what’s up? Regardless, they took her to intensive care to keep a close eye on her.

A day and a half later, her platelets were normal with no signs of severe internal bleeding. That’s right, Roz, you tell ‘em. That just left her with high bilirubin counts and a kidney procedure (that we had ben expecting since week 18 in pregnancy). But the procedure was a fairly simple one according to the pediatric urologist, so we weren’t to worry about that.

Nicole: I was discharged on Monday feeling really great and not swollen. But with Roz in the NICU it made feeding her a bit tricky. It was like we were homeless people in the hospital. But with the help of a lot of kind nurses and staff we were able to land boarder rooms in the hospital. Each time we secured a room for the night (which was an uncertain day to day thing) I would cry for joy. Just bawl. So that’s good.

We sat in that boarder room waiting for Roz to wake up enough from general anesthesia to get a good meal in. We were hoping to bring her home for Christmas. I thought she’d fit pretty well under the tree.

The boys came to visit once while Nicole was still in recovery. They had a blast looking out the window and calling out every car that passed on the street below.

Friday came, and the nurses told us Roz had lost a lot of weight and was a bit dehydrated. So they started her back on IV fluids to try and get some good stuff in her. She also had a distended looking stomach, which turned out to be a lot of stool just backed up from the lack of GI motility during general anesthesia effects. With a little bit of stimulation to her hind parts and some good meals on Friday she was back up to her pre-Friday weight and her bili counts were markedly lower on Saturday.

Of course, they wanted to observe a good trend in health, so we spent Christmas in the NICU. They let Roz sleep-in with us Saturday night.

Nicole: The day I went into labor it snowed, and the day we brought Rosalyn home it snowed again. Roz made it happen – her middle name is Frost and she likes to arrive in style.

We had fun that night, but are glad to be home. The boys stared in awe and amazement when we brought before them Miss Rosalyn, and I think they’re going to enjoy having her around. I must admit, though, that I’m a bit nervous about what kind of schemes they’ll devise at their sister’s expense.

Welcome home, Roz. Welcome home.