At the Hospital

Hello. I’m sorry we haven’t gotten a new post up here sooner. I had a few days of not feeling well this week, but I am better now and well-rested enough to give it a try!

Where do we start? I’ll talk about the c-section and hospital stay in this post.

Sweet little baby Holly Belle. She was born at 8:57 AM on Friday, September 6. She weighed 7 lb., 5 oz. and measured 20 inches long. For comparison, Emrick weighed 7lb. 4 oz. and was just 18 inches long! I was pretty surprised that this baby girl is two inches longer than her brother. Does that mean she will be taller than Emrick some day?

I had a choice between two hospitals where I could have this baby. I had Emrick at American Fork Hospital (located in American Fork, UT) with an OB that I really liked. I’d found that OB by searching our insurance provider list and checking reviews that I could find online. I had hoped and planned to use that same OB this time, but alas! Our insurance changed about a year and a half ago, and I was forced to find a different OB and to deliver at a different hospital. I went about finding the new OB the same way I did the old one, and luckily found someone that I also liked. This new OB has privileges at several hospitals, but only two of them are covered by our insurance. One of those hospitals is brand new and is called Lone Peak Hospital. It opened on July 30th and it’s in Draper which is the next city north of Lehi. Nice and close. I had mixed feelings about using a new hospital, though. On the one hand, it’s shiny and new and seemed like it might be a pleasant experience. On the other hand, I would be delivering there just a month or so after they opened. Would that be enough time for them to work out any bugs?

Our other option was Jordan Valley Medical Center, which is in West Jordan. It’s farther away and the reviews online were mixed, as they are for pretty much anything you can think of.  There was just one thing that all of the mothers who had delivered at Jordan Valley agreed on, and that was that the cookies they served up in the maternity ward are the best cookies like, ever. Several reviews mentioned them, and one review essentially said something like, “I didn’t care for my experience there at all, but OMG the cookies are AMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZING.”

So it came down to a choice between a brand new unknown and delicious cookies. I chose the brand new unknown. (I can make my own cookies).

We actually toured the hospital during an Open House held for the public at the end of July and liked what we saw. The rooms were quite large, even for c-section moms. At American Fork with Emrick, we were put in a tiny room instead of a big one because we were not delivering in the same room where we were recovering. The big rooms were saved for the moms who delivered and stayed overnight all in the same room. C-section moms deliver in an OR and are then wheeled to a small room for the rest of their stay. Just how small was that room at AF Hospital? Well, they had a fold-out sofa bed for fathers to stay on which is great, but the room was so small that there was not enough room for that fold-out couch to fold out! Marcus ended up sleeping in my bed with me! But at Lone Peak the fold-out couch was large and comfortable and actually had room to fold out with tons of room to spare. I still delivered in an OR, obviously, but the room I was in afterwards was the same as the others.

The experience overall was positive. Before my surgery, the anesthesiologist came in to speak with me and tell me what was going to happen. When I had Emrick, I vomited for about ten hours afterward as a reaction to the anesthesia. I told this guy about that experience and he said that if I reacted that way the last time, there was a decent chance I would react that way again, but that he would take some extra measures to try to prevent that. He put Zofran into my IV while I was still on the operating table, and I think he gave me something else, too. He was very nice and very attentive to how I was feeling throughout the surgery which I appreciated…

This is the anesthesiologist, helping to wheel me and the baby back into my room.

But he was no magician. I vomited for about ten hours after surgery just like I had the last time. In fact, this time was probably worse. With Emrick, I wasn’t nauseous for most of that ten hours. Instead, the nausea would hit me about ten seconds before I threw up and then I’d be fine again until ten seconds before the next episode. This time, I was nauseous for most of the time between episodes as well. The first couple of hours were especially bad. Making it worse was the fact that my body temperature was low, and one particular nurse, Lori, was withholding from me the comfort of ice chips until my body temp rose. I might not have thought about ice chips, had she not mentioned them and made the cruel promise to fetch some for me if only my body temperature would rise. She put a “bear hug” blanket on me, which was an inflatable plastic blanket that they laid on top of me and blew hot air under. It basically felt like having a pool raft sitting over the top of my body while someone positioned a blow dryer under it on full heat. She also turned the room’s thermostat up to its highest setting. At one point the raft blanket blew off me slightly and I got a glimpse of my right arm. Beads of sweat, seemingly in the millions, were collected all over my arm, the back of my hand and my fingers. “Ice chips,” I said. “Not until your body temp comes up.” As I lay there nauseous and sweaty, those ice chips mocked me.

“Can I have those ice chips now?” I asked again a few minutes later, after a temp reading showed that I was starting to warm up. “You’re still too cold. A low body temperature can cause complications.”

The thermometer she used was a Star Trek-reminiscent tool that she glided across my forehead and held behind my ear, about a three-second procedure. After a while, Lori began to mistrust the low readings she was getting on the futuristic device and took my temperature orally. It was 97-something. “Ice chips.” “Okay,” she said.

They took the bear hug blanket off of me, let me have some ice, and when Lori was out of the room, I got another nurse to turn down the thermostat. The nausea and vomiting weren’t over yet, but at least I had the ice to soothe me and help me get through it. A little later, Lori was back in the room and turned the thermostat back up. Sadist!

Seriously, though, all of the nurses were very nice and helpful, even Lori. I also appreciated that they let me hold and nurse the baby even when my body temp was low. With Emrick, at American Fork Hospital, they would not allow me to do that because they believed there was a danger of my body bringing down his body temperature. I certainly would never put my baby in danger, but the fact they thought nothing of letting me hold and nurse Holly at Lone Peak makes me wonder if there was ever a significant danger of Emrick’s body temperature dropping if he’d been held by me sooner. Anyway,  I was just glad to be holding my baby right away!

But I have babbled too much now, haven’t I? Let’s go straight to what you all really want to know: HOW WERE THE COOKIES AT LONE PEAK? Well, they didn’t come around the maternity ward with a cart full of cookies (which, as I understand it, is what they do at Jordan Valley) but twice they brought me a cookie with my lunch. I had not ordered the cookie, but they put it there for Emrick, at least the first time. Emrick had been in the room when the food person came by to take my order (the chicken caesar salad was awesome) and when she came back with my food, she said, “I also brought a cookie for your little guy.” Emrick was gone by then, so I ate the cookie myself, of course. It was fine, but not amazing. It was a chocolate chunk cookie, and the chocolate chunks were milk chocolate. I love milk chocolate, but not in cookies. It’s too much. Bittersweet is the only way to go when you’re making cookies.

The next day, Emrick was not in the room when they took my order (chicken grape salad on a croissant — also awesome) but they still brought me another (un-ordered) cookie. I stowed it in my purse and Emrick nibbled on it later.

But back to Holly!

There was much demand that day to know Holly’s name. The problem was that Marcus and I didn’t know yet! We had pretty much narrowed it down to two main contenders, and our plan was to make a final decision and announce it by the end of the day Friday. But with my feeling so miserable, there was just no room for that discussion. If I remember correctly, we settled on the first name on Saturday, and the middle name on Sunday. The name Holly is one that just crossed my mind out of the blue one day a couple of months ago. I had been having a hard time thinking of names that I really liked and that Marcus didn’t dislike. He called various suggestions of mine “too prairie”, “too masculine” (Claudia?), and “too blah.” Plus, as I have mentioned before, some of my old favorites are becoming very popular now. So one day I was heading upstairs, and I tried to picture myself introducing my children to people and what that would sound like. And in my brain the sentence “These are my kids, Emrick and Holly” just manifested out of nowhere. Holly! I remember liking that name a long, long time ago, but it had never once crossed my mind during the entire pregnancy, and this was now July. I asked Marcus what he thought of it and he liked it well enough. Not too prairie, I guess! So Holly became a strong contender at that point, and after our little girl was born, the other name we were strongly considering seemed less and less suited to her as the hours went on.

The middle name was a little harder. We tossed around various possibilities, had some disagreements about what sounded good, and ultimately settled on one back-up option if we couldn’t think of anything else. Then Saturday night I looked at Marcus and said, “Holly Belle Sorensen.” Marcus nodded. I liked the way it sounded, but I immediately second-guessed it. I know that some people think of Holly as a Christmasy name. The internet tells me that some people are named Holly because they were born in December (though most Hollys are not, in fact, born in December… according to the all-knowing internet). Is it too much Christmas to put a Belle in there? “I don’t think bells are strongly associated with Christmas,” Marcus said. “What about Jingle Bells? And ‘every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings’ — you know, from It’s a Wonderful Life?” I pointed out. Understand — we have nothing against Christmas, obviously, but I didn’t want a name that sounded like it was trying to be Christmasy or cute or gimmicky or whatever. But long story short, I slept on it, decided I still liked Belle, and Sunday we made our announcement. Most people were not going to think her name sounded like Christmas, I told myself. Cue my dad’s blog comment: “WOW! Deck the Halls with Belles of Holly!”

Sigh!

Little Holly Belle has lots of dark hair just like Emrick, but I suspect that the resemblance is going to stop there. Marcus brought her over to me when I was still on the operating table. Her head was tipped back slightly and her chin was thrust in the air. I looked at that chin and my first thought was, “That is NOT a Morgan chin.” I stared at it a second longer and realized that it looked like Marcus’ mother’s chin. And when I looked at her nose closely a few minutes later in our room, I realized that it, too, looked a lot like Marcus’ mom’s. In short, I think she looks a lot like my mother-in-law! But I can’t seem to find any pictures that do the resemblance justice.

In the pic above you can see that they are measuring her head. One of the nurses commented that Holly had a “good-sized” head, but I tell you, her head looks positively tiny compared to Emrick’s. In fact, even though she is longer, she seems so much smaller than Emrick. She’s definitely leaner. At the ultrasound a few weeks ago, they said her abdomen size was at the 91st percentile. Well… then Emrick’s must have been off-the-charts. I feel like she looks bigger in pictures than she does in person. In person, holding her is like holding a long, heavy tube sock with a black fuzzy ball at the top.

But look at this picture of Emrick when he was three days old. See the huge head? The wide tummy? Not a tube-sock baby!

And now that little baby is a big brother…

About once a day during our hospital stay, Holly was taken to the nursery for routine assessments like the newborn hearing test, etc. After one of those nursery visits, she was returned to me with a tiny pink bow in her hair. Funny story: the nurses — and occasional on-call doctor who was checking on things — kept referring to her with masculine pronouns. “Is he feeding well?” “We’ll change his diaper in the nursery.” “Do you have a name for him yet?” (I should have said, “We’re naming him Holly.”) After a couple of days I found out why: Holly was the only girl on the whole ward. And it stayed that way for our entire stay. Sometimes I’d hear that two new women were laboring on the floor. Both boys. An emergency c-section just arrived? Boy. A woman showed up in the lobby in active labor? Boy. So when Holly showed up one day with a pink bow in her hair, my first thought was that someone was being sweet. My second thought? Someone was sneaking a little “reminder” onto my baby’s head! By the time we were discharged Monday afternoon, the bow had fallen off and into her bassinet. I meant to grab it as a “baby’s first hair accessory” keepsake, but I forgot. I did remember to keep the hospital-issue shirt she was wearing, though, so at least that’s something.

Holly’s little face looks so sweet and tiny in this picture.

I brought a cute onesie to put her in for the trip home, but we didn’t get a picture of her in it before putting her in the car seat.

A day or two after we got home, we gave Holly her second bath. He hair was fluffy for about five minutes afterward, and then started to look greasy again. Baby hair!

Sweet Baby Holly.

Some time soon I will do a post about how Emrick is handling everything. He’s handling it well overall, but it has definitely been an adjustment for him. Details later.

And speaking of Emrick, tomorrow is his third birthday! So watch for a Pookie Report.