Hospital stay
My husband and I stayed in the labor room with the twins for a couple hours after delivery. During that time, we were able to hold and snuggle the twins. Once the epidural had worn off completely and I was able to walk on my own they wheeled us down the hall to our post-partum room. This room, although it wasn’t, felt smaller than last time just because we had two baby nursery cribs. But we still had a full-sized bed which I was again, so grateful for!
Since it was getting close to dinner time my husband and I placed an order for dinner. I was craving sushi and fried rice, so we placed an order from our favorite sushi restaurant in town. The babies had to go get some tests ran so it was perfect timing for my husband to go pick up the food.
Whenever you deliver babies in a hospital there are always tests that need to be ran to ensure they are healthy and good to go. Some of those being Apgar test, hearing test, bilirubin, and heart screening tests. Since Koehn was born purple and limp, he had many more tests ran on him than Kinzley did.
They had to recheck his bilirubin so many times. We ended up having to come back to get both babies bilirubin tested three days after being dismissed as well as four days after being dismissed before they would clear us completely. And even though it may not seem like it, that’s a lot of work when you live 45 minutes from the hospital and are recovering from giving birth. Luckily, we were able to get cleared without having to do any additional treatments.
The nursing staff also asked me how I would be feeding these babies, bottle or breast. I was set on just pumping exclusively once my milk came in. I know some people are going to have mixed feelings on why I did not choose to physically do baby to breast but I literally had such an awful experience with it the first go around that I did not want to struggle again. I was used to pumping, since I had done that for a bit my first go around, and either way the babies were still going to be fed breastmilk, so I was not worried about my decision.
Since my milk had not come in yet, they had bottles with formula that they provided for us to help get the babies eating and sucking properly. It took a good while, but they were champs before we left the hospital! Every time we would feed them in the hospital I would be “pumping”. I just basically was hooked up to the machine physically going through the motions of pumping so my body could still be stimulated to start producing milk – my milk did not come in till the day after I was released from the hospital.
One thing that helped me DRSATICALLY this time around was talking to a lactation consultant. I found out that I was using too large of flanges. Once she corrected me and gave me the proper size flange pumping became a breeze. I was not in pain, and I felt like I could do this with excitement now instead of dreading it. She also gave me just really good tips in general that I would not have known without talking to her. Ask to speak with a lactation consultant before leaving the hospital, they are there to help you.
We were in the hospital for three nights and released on the fourth day. If you read my last pregnancy blog you know that due to COVID we could not have any visitors in the rooms. Well, my husband and I loved that aspect of just being close to one another and enjoying the time figuring out this new balance of life without having to stress about who would be coming to see us at what time, so we decided to do that again this time around – with one exception. My mom and dad asked if they could swing by for just 30 minutes or so. We let them come see us and we got to ask how Kaison, our first-born son, was doing with them and the sitter. It was a great visit and it made me really want to get home to see Kaison!
Many parents would want to bring their other children to the hospital to meet their new siblings, but I did not want him to be forced to meet his siblings. I wanted to introduce them at his level, and I wanted him to see them in a space that he felt comfortable in. I will talk more about this later.
One other thing we did this time around during the hospital stay that we did not take full advantage of last time was sending the kids to the nursery at night so we could sleep. I NEEDED sleep. I had not been able to get a full night’s sleep since I hit the third trimester in pregnancy, which also meant my husband had not been able to sleep well from that point on either. It was so nice to get a full night’s sleep while having the help to do so.
The babies passed all their tests, and they were eating good so that meant it was time to go home! We got all loaded up and took the long walk down the hospital halls and out to the truck. We started heading for home and about four minutes after we left the hospital parking lot, Koehn decided to spit up/throw up all over his car seat. Gotta love the newborn stage!
