Our Baby Girl

Monday, May 20, 2013

Meet our baby girl: Iris Wenjing Chung (鍾文靜). She was born on Monday, May 13, 2013 at 10:36 am. She weighed 8 lbs 12 oz and was 21.5 inches tall.

After cleaning up from our mother’s day dinner, I started noticing contractions right before I went to bed, around 1am. By 3:30am, contractions were coming every 5 minutes, lasting for at least a minute, for one hour (5:1:1 rule) so time to go to the hospital. I was admitted around 4:30am, had an epidural placed at 7am when the contractions got too strong for me to handle, started pushing at 10:20am, and baby was out by 10:36am (after only four contractions)! I was so relieved to not have a C-section again.

But after an hour of bonding time, they had to check baby’s blood sugar since I was taking glyburide for gestational diabetes and it was dangerously low at 19 mg/dl. Then immediately rechecked at 14 mg/dl. It should be above 50 mg/dl. So she was whisked away to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) to evaluate her and treat her. I didn’t get to go with her because the epidural hadn’t worn off yet so I couldn’t walk. So I waited anxiously for at least three hours before I could see her but at least Ron was with her. Poor little girl had an IV line in her hand and lots of little electrodes taped to her body for monitoring. They had to draw blood for cultures to rule out infection and gave her empiric antibiotics (ampicillin and gentimicin). After having a dextrose infusion and close monitoring, she was stable enough to leave the NICU to my room the following afternoon. But it was a stressful time waiting to make sure she was okay. Her poor little feet got poked a few more times to make sure she was able to maintain her own glucose since she wasn’t getting much breastmilk yet and thank goodness she held her own.

Simon visiting his baby sister in the NICU.

I was so happy to have her in my arms and not hooked up to the monitors and IV.

The little scars she has on her foot from all the glucose checks.

Simon helping to calm down Iris since she was hungry with no milk available yet.

We were discharged on Wednesday 5/15 in the late afternoon and headed home with our newest family member. Simon couldn’t come to the hospital since he got sick sometime over the weekend with runny nose, cough, and phlegm. So since we’ve been home, he hasn’t been able to interact much with the baby since we are afraid of her getting his cold. Simon seemed happy to see us home since I think he might have felt a little abandoned when we left in the middle of the night for the hospital and didn’t get to tell him goodbye.

First car ride, going home!

So far we are settling in okay. My milk has come in so she is finally starting to pee and poop. At her checkup this week, she lost about 4oz which is still within normal limits but she will get a weight check next week to make sure she is back to her birth weight.

Interesting facts:
– Iris arrived on her due date, which happens in only about 5% of births. (Simon arrived the day after his due date.)
– Simon was 8 lbs 12.8 oz and 21.5 inches tall so they are almost the same weight and height. One of the nurses commented that I “make very consistent babies”.
– May 13th is the date of my pharmacy school graduation 10 years ago! How time flies…
– I lost 15 lbs after giving birth (baby+placenta+fluid/water/blood) but still have 20 lbs to go.

It’s taken a little while to post this up since Iris is still adjusting her sleep, awake, and eating patterns. But I think I’ve been fairly lucky since my milk came in since she has had a few 3-4 hour naps so that I can catch up on sleep too.

A few more pictures:

All swaddled up and resting on a Boppy pillow.