5 days old!

Monday morning I was really anxious for the call.. but as I found out they were quite busy and had to wait for a call to come in later that day. Finally they said come in for 1pm! I called Rob to come meet me at home. After we registered we went to triage where I had to do another non stress test. After that, they transferred us to a labour and delivery room where the doc broke my water (2:30pm). They said that they usually wait 2 hours for you to start having contractions, otherwise will talk about starting labour with pitocin. I wasn't contracting on my own and was really anxious to get going, so at the 2 hour mark they hooked me up. Rob had left to go home and get some food and say hi to Nicole at this point. Within half an hour I started feeling the contractions kicking in (5:15pm). They got more and more intense, so I asked for the epidural. Rob came back just in time for the intense contractions :) It took a bit longer than I had hoped to get the anesthetist in and get it started, so the nurse turned off my pitocin to lower the intensity as we waited. MUCH better! We really liked that nurse (Jes), she was our favourite the whole time we were at the hospital. I had the epidural by about 7pm, and it didn't take too long to start feeling some relief. I just laid there for an hour or so and updated my parents. Around 8:15pm the nurse examined me (a new nurse), and she said I was fully dilated! No one had checked me since my water being broken (2cm), but was not expecting to be fully dilated at that point! She said we'd wait for me to feel the urge to push, or until 9pm, whichever came first. But at 8:30pm she came back and said we were going to start pushing. She looked and saw the head! I had started feeling a bit of pressure as well. She called the baby nurse and the OB (on call doc.. Dr Farell) first because she thought it would only take one push! It might have, but I really couldn't feel anything so had no idea how to push, I was so numb. It took a few pushes and by 8:39pm he was out! I still didn't feel anything, unlike all the pressure I felt with Nicole. As soon as they took him out I noticed that it was a boy!  They put him on my chest, he was so tiny! Definitely smaller than Nicole. After a few minutes Rob cut his cord and then they weighed him. 6lbs 11oz! Much bigger than expected. His apgar scores were 9 and 9. I didn't tear and my bleeding was controlled so it wasn't long before I was able to start trying to breastfeed. Rob tried to do skin to skin but he kept rooting so he handed him back to me to continue the feed. Around 10:30pm they transferred us to the Mother Baby Unit where we stayed the next day and a half. The nurse had to do hourly checks on him for the next couple hours, so it was hard to get much sleep. My legs were still quite numb from the epidural, so it wasn't until almost midnight I was able to get up on my own to go to the bathroom. Rob originally was going to go home for the night, but I wanted him to stick around until I could get up on my own. By midnight he was too tired and figured it was easier to just stay. We all got some broken sleep between checks and feeds. Luke (not officially named at the time!) slept in the hospital bed/tray most of the night. I was told to wake him every 3 hours for feeds, but he often didn't want to wake and feed and kept falling back to sleep. The next morning, Rob went to get my parents and they came for a visit around 9am. It was nice to socialize a bit since I was stuck in that room for so long. I didn't really feel up to walking too far, and didn't feel presentable either to be in 'public', haha. Rob took them back, had lunch at home then came back. Later that day he brought Nicole in after daycare and visited with her for a while. She had no idea what was happening, and actually kicked his bed while he was in it! Not intentionally trying to kick him or anything, just checking things out I think. Lol. She was hard to entertain since she couldn't touch anything there and wanted to run around. They didn't stay long. Rob dropped her back off and came back after dinner for the night. Again, he hadn't planned on staying that night but with all the driving he had done that day he was tired and didn't want to drive back home! That night was rough. Luke wouldn't settle after a feed, so I kept feeding him more and more, until about 11:30pm I called the nurse in, not sure if he was uncomfortable or what was wrong. She said all this is normal.. even my emotions at the time! She offered to take him to the nursing station to get him to sleep for a bit then bring him back. I graciously accepted. I got a couple hours sleep which was great, then worked on getting him to feed a couple times throughout the night. At his age then (30 hrs?) it was getting important to get his feeds in so I had to be more persistent to wake him. He continued to sleep again most of that next day (21 June). He had his blood taken to check bilirubin levels, then we just had to wait for the results and the hearing test before we could be discharged. It all took awhile, but by about 11am everything was done and we were able to pack up and get discharge. His bili levels were high, so we did have to go back 2 days later to have him checked again. We were hoping that we'd only have that one more check, but had to go back two more days after that (Sat/Sun) until finally he was cleared to stay at home! He was pretty yellow, but he started regaining weight relatively quickly and had lots of input/output which helped him get over it.