Meeting the rest of the Little Women

We were discharged from the hospital around lunch time and headed home by way of the pharmacy to drop off the the prescriptions for the strong pain meds. I called Barbara on the way home to let her know our ETA, at which point she asked us to slow down our arrival so she could finish getting the girls dressed and photo-ready. I love her for that.

We sat in the parking lot of the church across the street for a few extra minutes while they finished up...and while we were waiting 5 of our neighbors started congregating right in front of our parking spot (they weren't waiting on us; they all just kind of happened to converge there while chatting with the new neighbors that had just moved in next door to us). I definitely wasn't super excited about needing to chat with half of the neighborhood (and meeting the new folks) right at that moment. Thankfully, Brad did the chatting part while holding the baby, and I stepped inside without having to do more than wave.

The girls were happy to see me, but they were beside themselves with excitement over meeting Hallie. I knew that I wanted some video AND photos, so I prepped them to cooperate as much as possible while we waited on Brad. They did a good job! They had decorated the living room with potholder loops and hair bows, and it was ADORABLE. 

Also ADORABLE? Watching them meet Hallie. I could have died at how precious it was. Lily even offered to share Trumpkin with Hallie. If that's not true love, I don't know what is.

The covering their mouths in awe just gets me.

First photo of the five Boswell women

Note Trumpkin again

Sharing a car

Brynn held Hallie right before Barbara did, and when we gave Hallie to Barbara to hold, Brynn went and stood next to her and said, "Give it back."

Claire's face is priceless here.

The girls were absolutely thrilled to meet Hallie. They argued over who got to hold her next and were (and are) generally SO TAKEN with their baby sister. Their excitement about her has been even better than I could have hoped for. Love these little women of ours.

A Baby Story: Hallie, part 4

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.

Her first bath was NOT her favorite.

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

A Baby Story: Hallie, part 3

Once we proved that we were not actively sick, they sent us up to L & D. We got up to L & D around the shift change, so we saw a myriad of nurses/providers before we settled in to the crew that would be with us for my surgery. For a while, we just hung out while early prep stuff got started. I think the first thing that happened was getting my COVID test. Gosh. Those are NO FUN, right?? And I learned from the nurses that all of the COVID positive mamas they'd had come through had been asymptomatic. All of them! Isn't that nuts? Obviously, this made me nervous that I was going to come back positive, too.

Got into my fancy gear, and they hooked me up to a bunch of monitors under my gown. 

Remember how I said a couple posts back that, because of the high-risk nature of my pregnancy/delivery, I would have to have two OB's present? One of the OB's that would be in on my delivery was actually a doctor from a sister practice. I had never met her before, but I instantly liked her because when the nurse came in for my COVID test (in her scary hazmat suit), Dr. W came to stand by me, held out her hand, and told me to squeeze until it was over. That's a solid human being right there. (And yeah, I did squeeze her fingers until it was over.)

Once that got sent off for a rush result, things started moving very quickly. I found out that I was being moved to the top of the schedule and even displacing two other women who were already scheduled for c-sections that morning, thanks to my being higher-risk than they were. I felt a tiny bit bad about that, just because I knew that they had been fasting and prepping for their scheduled sections...only to learn that they'd gotten bumped. 

My doctor showed up shortly after that, stood in the doorway for a second, sighed a heavily sarcastic sigh, and said, "Oh, you."

I'm always causing trouble.

One nurse put an IV line in my left hand while the nurse anesthetist put one in my right. Again, high-risk pregnancy = extra precautions like two IV ports, which was no fun. Because there had been no time for my Group B Strep test results to come back, they went ahead and gave me preventative antibiotics in one of those IV's. My COVID test came back negative (WHEW), the anesthesiologist and OB went through all of the you-know-you-could-die-but-you-can't-sue-us waivers that I needed to sign, and my doctor did a quick ultrasound to make sure that the baby and all of her accessories were where they were expected to be before the incisions were made.

Fun note: the nurse anesthetist was Nigerian and had worked as a midwife in Nigeria for 25 years before moving to the States. She was delightful and definitely lifted the mood for me. The Lord knew that a West African friend would give me a needed boost. (If you haven't known me for very long, I should maybe mention that I lived in Senegal for a while after high school and have a super special place in my heart for West Africa.)

My entourage and I then walked down to the OR, getting a round of encouragement from the nurses' station on the way. Brad was given his special suit, hat, mask, and shoe covers so that he could come in after they put me under (because, like all of my previous deliveries, I was getting general anesthesia. I have a very long story and complicated history revolving around anesthesia.). 

Once we were in the OR, I really started feeling the nerves and anxiety. All at the same time, the following took place:
1. They began taping the drape over me.
2. The anesthesiologists were clamping oxygen over my mouth and nose, blocking my ability to see anything other than a hand over my face, which made me VERY claustrophobic. And, the oxygen is so concentrated that you can't exactly breathe normally.
3. They began strapping my arms down and flushing both IV's (which made me even more claustrophobic, knowing I couldn't breathe OR move).
4. One nurse started prepping my incision site, which was fairly uncomfortable.
5. Another nurse began inserting my catheter, which was wildly uncomfortable (they usually put in catheters after the patient's spinal block has been inserted and taken effect, meaning that most people don't feel the catheter.). To be fair, the nurse apologized repeatedly and tried to get it done quickly. But gosh, that's miserable.

It was all very overwhelming and quite a bit of it was really uncomfortable and/or painful. I started tearing up just a bit from the overwhelm. I tried to blink the tears back without anyone seeing, but apparently, everyone saw. Both the nurse anesthetist and the anesthesiologist started patting my hands. Thankfully, they also realized I was struggling to breathe normally and adjusted the oxygen mask a bit to make it easier. My doctor (and Dr. W, the second doctor) also realized I was crying and came up to my head to reassure me and encourage me. I think they thought I was primarily scared, which wasn't actually my biggest issue, but it was kind of them to care. Lots of head and hand patting. Which, somehow, made it harder for me to stop crying (I'm blaming the hormones and lack of sleep). I wasn't really able to acknowledge them and their kind words much, as my arms were strapped down and my face was covered and immobilized, but I thought kind thoughts toward them which counts, right?

Mercifully, they started my anesthesia, and I was finally unconscious.

I have to cobble together the next bits of the story from Brad's info and subsequent pictures, as I wasn't conscious again for the next couple hours. But, roughly: they brought Brad in, and he sat by my head until they got Hallie out. At that point, he went with Hallie and her care team while mine put me back together.

This particular doctor is quite petite, and when Brad met her before Brynna was born, he asked me if she would have to stand on a stool for the delivery. I had said that was silly. Then wouldn't you know? She DID. This time, he got photographic evidence.


So funny!

I came to a bit later and was crying-again (I promise I never cry this much!)- this time because my incision HURT and my throat was aching from having been intubated. Little fact about general anesthesia for a c-section: when you come to, you FEEL it. Because there's no spinal block, the pain isn't actually blocked- it's just put on hold. Thankfully, they got some serious pain meds going very soon, and I finally woke up more, pulled myself together, and stopped crying.

The good stuff (you know...when you push that green button)

And once I did those things, I was able to meet my baby!