And now for a little catch-all post.
Post-delivery is still a bit foggy in my memory, but Brad snapped a bunch of pictures, and I took notes about some things from our hospital stay to help with this part.
Hallie was born at 8:59 am on Friday, August 28. She was 7 lbs 6 oz and 20 inches long. I won't post a picture, but you should know that she had the biggest umbilical cord that anyone had ever seen (literally. There was chatter about it. And my dad concurred.). We realized later that they took her birth weight before they fully removed it, which definitely added 3-4 ounces to that weight. It was unreal.
Brad trains the babies to hold his hand early.
I could just die over this face.
Waiting for me to wake up.
I always try to keep notes on the different nurses that take care of us, as they are a very big part of our first days as a new family configuration and are very important in my recovery process. My post-op nurse was Karen, and she was a hoot. She was super sympathetic to my issues with anesthesia, thanks to some personal experiences of her own. She cracked me up after she got me situated in my Mother-Baby room and was briefing the next nurse on my stats. She said, "Oh, and that pasty color? That's her normal color. She's actually looking much better than she was an hour ago."
That's me that she was calling pasty, guys. She was dead serious, and it was hilarious.
I love this picture so much. Plenty of people joke about feeling sorry for Brad being surrounded by so many women, but I think he's pretty fond of all of us.
I think this might have been my first picture with Hallie (where most of my face is showing).
My first nurse in Mother-Baby was Sarah. She was very sweet and really enjoyed seeing the girls during their first "meeting" with Hallie. We were all bummed about the girls not being allowed to visit us in the hospital. In keeping with this COVID life, we introduced all of the girls via FaceTime, which wasn't ideal but was still fun.
They were so cute! Genuinely thrilled to meet Hallie. Claire just could not handle Hallie's cuteness.
Then Brynnie pulled out the big Mr. Potato Head smile to show her enthusiasm.
My next few nurses were:
Vanessa
Courtney
Brittany
Courtney (again)
Vanessa was my first night nurse and was very attentive to me and Hallie. I started getting a migraine during the night, and she worked very diligently to get a hold of a doctor who could call in some stronger medication for me. She also found me a belly binder to use as I was beginning the process of standing and moving (which is zero percent fun post-Caesarean).
Courtney was my second day nurse and seemed fairly All Business at first, but over the course of her shift, we had some good conversations, and I was sad when her shift ended (but we had her again for the next day shift).
Brittany was very shy at the beginning of her shift, but the longer she was with us, the more her funny, witty/snarky personality came out and was really fun. Hallie was rather unsettled that night, so Brittany was very helpful during that stretch.
Courtney was back with us for our last morning and did our discharge work. I really hated that, because of our unexpected timing for delivery, I hadn't gotten to assemble nurses' gifts. And once we were at the hospital, we didn't have a great opportunity to go get anything, so I felt a little bad not having anything for our kind nurses. They were really great, and we were grateful.
Our first family photos! Claire very sweetly told me that my hospital gown was beautiful.
The hospital that I deliver at is not a hospital that our girls' pediatricians have privileges at, so pediatricians from a different practice take care of the babies while we're in the hospital. We saw the same pediatrician both of the days we were in the hospital, and I LOVED her. She liked us, too, and I know this because she told us. :) She was especially taken with Brad and his helpfulness. Apparently, there were some other families on the floor where the daddies were, um, less than helpful and quite unimpressive.
A favorite moment of mine from our hospital stay happened not long after we arrived at the hospital. When I first met Dr. W, I made a comment about how gross the whole water-breaking part of things was. She responded with, "No! It's totally normal and natural. It's not gross."
A little while later when Dr. S came in and asked about my water breaking, I made a similar comment about it being gross. Her response was, "Oh, it's SO GROSS, right??" I laughed so hard at their different answers.
Thankfully, we were only in the hospital for two days. Hallie passed all of her glucose tests handily, which was a huge relief to me, after such a long time of working hard to make sure my gdm didn't cause any problems for her. My blood pressure was still a bit of a problem (and is still taking its time to regulate, actually), but they let me go home on the second full day anyway (I'm still- almost a month later- checking my blood pressure and watching it creeeeeep back down).
Overall, Hallie's birth went really well. We were sad that the girls couldn't meet her immediately, especially Claire, who remembers going to the hospital to meet her other sisters. That said, there was something kind of nice about spending time, just Brad and me, getting to know our fourth baby without any of our normal life activities. Physical recovery from a c-section is incredibly difficult, and time in the hospital post-Caesarean/gdm/hypertension means a lot of poking, prodding, and sleep interruptions, so after our few days of just the three of us...we were definitely ready to get back to our own house and bed.
I'm so grateful for yet another safe delivery of another beautiful daughter. So many things came together for her delivery to go even better than I had been hoping for. We are so grateful for all of our family, friends, and the medical professionals who took care of us, our girls, and all of the details that had to be dealt with. We are so blessed with the best people.
Thank you to any of you who also prayed for us and worked to encourage us along the way. It was a long hard journey, and we are just so thankful to be on this side of things.
Our discharge pictures
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