The Craziest Week (and a half) Ever

Mari is right, I am completely incapable of multitasking. It's been a week and a half since Jonathan was born and I'm just now starting to feel like we have things under control. Mari did a pretty good job of summarizing everything, but here it is from my point of view.

Jonathan's Birthday:

I went in to the hospital on Tuesday night and found out that the baby had an irregular heartbeat. That in itself wasn't bad, but it meant that they couldn't accurately monitor him and if he were to go into distress they wouldn't know about it, so a few hours after they gave me medicine for the induction they decided to do a c-section. Kurt had previously told me that if that were to happen he really didn't care to be in the room, and I didn't mind, but when he asked that night the nurses told him "you DEFINITELY need to be there" so he got stuck being in the operating room with me. The initial dose of anesthesia didn't completely work, so the doc gave me some other good stuff that knocked me out. I guess the surgery was a little more complicated than expected (with the baby being so big and having the cord around his neck) and at some point the doc said "oh shit - put that back!" which Kurt didn't really take well to since he couldn't see what was going on. All in all, the baby was fine and I recovered really quickly. Because of his heartbeat, they kept Jonathan in the neonatal nursery for the first day and I just went over there to visit him. The nurses at Langley were great and the doctor and pediatrician also stopped by each day to check on us. After being discharged on Friday (I was definitely ready) we went down to Portsmouth Naval Hospital to have Jon's heart looked at to make sure there wasn't a bigger problem. The hospital down there is really nice and the specialist we saw spent a half hour doing a sonogram of his heart and said that everything looked perfectly normal and that the strange beat would probably go away on it's own and even if it didn't it really wouldn't have to much of an effect on him, just something we need to watch. Finally we went home and I took a shower and went to bed.

In the NICU

Waiting for me in my hospital room

The first few days at home and the Fire:

The first night at home sucked. Jonathan didn't sleep at all (he was probably hungry the whole night), we forgot to get the diapers and wipes out of the guest room that Kurt's mom was staying in, and just didn't really have a plan at all. The next day I woke up in the morning at a normal time and somehow managed to function for the rest of the day - adreniline I imagine. Mom and dad were great and took Micaela which make the day a lot more relaxing, but I didn't get to see too much of them. The one time we had everyone together for dinner, I fell asleep upstairs on the couch and didn't socialize. The next day was pretty much the same with people coming to visit and lots of naps. My memories are kind of blurry since I was so tired. That night was memorable though, since that's the night the kitchen caught fire. Kurt and I were both exhausted from Jon not sleeping and at midnight Kurt went downstairs for something and saw that there were some bottles on the stove that needed sterilizing. He turned to pot on and came back upstairs to see how I was doing with the baby. I had finally got Jon to sleep and was in bed falling asleep myself so Kurt laid down with me. After sleeping for about 45 minutes the fire alarms started going off. The water had boiled off and the plastic bottles melted and then caught fire and produced about a 2ft flame. I woke up and Kurt was already gone (he realized what had happened and was putting out the fire). I opened the bedroom door and saw a bunch of smoke so I closed the door and grabbed the baby who was sound asleep for the first time. Then I just stood there kind of dazed until I heard Larry (Kurt's dad) yell, "everybody out". That got me out of my daze and I realized that the next step was to get out of the house. We all went downstairs (which was REALLY smokey) and out the front door. I told Kurt that I left the dogs in our bedroom and he went back inside to get them. He had already put the fire out and decided that the next thing to do was to start opening up the windows to get some of the smoke out of the house. I didn't really like him spending so much time in the house with all that smoke, but he wanted to mitigate the amount of damage. We contemplated calling the fire department, but since there was no fire, decided against it and I called Dad instead. He brought Mom and Mari over with a diaper bag, some shoes and a new t-shirt for me. Larry, Sharon, and Micaela went and found a hotel and Kurt, Jon, and I went to the hospital to get checked out. Because of some nasty car accidents that night, we were in the emergency room for the next 6 hours for pretty much no reason. They did one test on me, none on the baby (his arteries were too small) and a couple on Kurt and decided that we were all fine. With all the chaos, there was no way I was breastfeeding so I gave Jon some formula and he was a superstar and slept the entire time we were in the hospital. Total sleep that night for us - 45 minutes. After we left the hospital we went back to the house to check out the damage. Except for the nasty plastic smell (which was better than before), the only damage was some melting of the knobs on the stove and a little charring of one of the cabinets. Because we had guests and the new baby, instead of waiting to call a company to come clean the house and get the smell out, Kurt, his parents, and some really nice neighbors, spent the rest of the day cleaning the house top to bottom. I mean they moved all the furniture out of the rooms, washed EVERYTHING that was out in the open, washed all the dishes in all the cupboards, vacuumed and scrubbed all the floors, etc. I can't even imagine how exhausting it must have been, especially for Kurt and his parents who hadn't gotten any sleep. I took the baby and went to Mom and Dad's hotel and slept for a few hours and then went to the outlets with Mari. I felt a little bad since everyone else was cleaning, but we couldn't be in the house because of the smell, so I had to do something. Going out with the baby wasn't too bad, but it was nice having Mari there, I would have been nervous by myself. That night, we all went home and were able to sleep in the house, which still had a burning plastic smell, but was getting better.


Last Week:

Last Wednesday was the first day that we were home by ourselves without any visitors. I'm so glad everyone came out, but it was nice to have a quiet house again. After seeing the success that the formula feeding had the night of the fire, I decided that breastfeeding wasn't worth it. With formula you can tell how much the baby is eating and Jon eats WAY more than the nurse at the hospital said he would. No wonder he wasn't sleeping those first few nights. He'll eat 5oz and then sleep for 5 hours, which is really nice. We had one lucky night where he slept for over 6 hours - our first full night sleep (FFNS). We now have a system down where we put him to bed in the nursery and take turns getting up to feed him. It's working well, and except for one night that I got a fever and chills, we've been getting a decent amount of sleep. Micaela has been great with him, she likes feeding him and playing with him, but gets bored after a few minutes (which is expected). Now that the house is back in order - it took until last night to finally get everything cleaned up from the fire - I can start doing some of the other things that need to be done (i.e. get his birth certificate, pay our bills, check the mail, etc). I've been horrible about picture taking and don't even have a picture of the four of us yet. I'll make sure I carry my camera around next week.