Wow.
Where to begin?! There is so much to get caught up on. I opened my little blog tab just wanting to reminisce and it immediately took me back to each day, to all my feelings, emotions, the kicking sensations. I cried to Daniel just a few minutes ago — I miss my pregnancy! (I never thought I’d say that.) While I struggled more than usual with my appearance, I had the most amazing, healthy, beautiful pregnancy. Ever. It set the bar too high for the next but also makes me so excited. (Also can’t believe I’m saying that!)
Our sweet, perfect, healthy baby boy, Woods Scott Kerlin, was born on July 16, 2020 @ 2PM. He weighed the cutest little (healthy) 7lbs, 10oz. With the state of the world, we weren’t allowed visitors so it was the calmest, sweetest few family days, soaking in his little breaths, grunts and cries. He was jaundice so we had to lay him on a blue light (biliblanket) for the first two days. His levels weren’t raising as quickly as the nurses would have liked so we began supplementing with formula so Woods would be getting more nutrients since my milk hadn’t come in yet. The nutrients would, in turn, help him poop more which was the best way to get rid of the excess bilirubin. A few days of little improvement later, he was transferred to a blue light bed with a biliblanket underneath and a light overhead. He had to wear a little eye mask to protect his eyes and be completely naked (aside from his tiny newborn diaper).
This time was extremely hard for me. I was thankful this mili-bed could be in our room and they didn’t have to move him to the NICU but it broke my heart to see him like this. On the one hand, I knew he was getting the care he needed by being under these lights, but I also felt completely helpless. Having grown and nourished his little body for almost a year, I now felt helpless that I couldn’t protect or ‘fix’ him myself. I felt like I had failed which the nurses reassured me that his jaundice wasn’t something I could have done anything differently to prevent. Which did and didn’t help. We were in the hospital four days while his levels slowly, slowly improved. For the following week after being discharged, we had to drive back to the hospital for little heel pricks to test his levels. After the final test before we would have to admit him back into the NICU for monitoring, we received the call saying his levels were just barely above the healthy levels and we could keep him at home (hallelujah) — I held our little baby and cried. We kept the biliblanket for another week and when we were able to pack it up and snuggle our little baby without a cord hanging off of his back, I cried some more.
The following weeks were filled with sleepless nights for both Daniel and I, middle-of-the-night New Girl and The Office binges while I struggled to nurse, feelings of guilt as I supplemented with formula for a few weeks until I started producing enough milk to keep up with our growing bean, healing (of my stitches and my sprained tailbone — which still today isn’t 100% better), figuring out what it looked like to be a mama and a family of 3. And so, so much more that I have probably blocked out of my mind now.
I will write again about the 24-hours after my water broke but for now, Woods is waking up; I’m going to go love on my almost-seven-month old son and feel his little legs kick as I probably cry, thinking about to what it felt like to feel the butterfly kicks for the very first time ♡
eastanywhere.com 