August "Augie" Orion Donner
born September 21, 2017
12:04 AM
7 lbs., 20 in.
Augie was born at 37w4d.A day or so before, I was measuring at almost a 4 and had my membranes stripped. The day of started normal and then gradually I knew something was happening.
At around 4:30pm, I rallied the troops. My friend Kaylene came to take Milo till my sister Abby could come take care of him for the night. My parents came to the hospital and I very slowly started dilating. After a few hours of resting and walking around the hospital, I finally started progressing fast enough to be set up for delivery. They started pitocin and I had an epidural shortly after that.This time, the epidural didn’t completely numb my legs so I could still move them on my own, but I didn’t feel any pain still!
Around 11:45 on September 20, I was ready to push. In fact, Augie’s head was already crowning on its own. (Back story: Milo was born the morning after Sean’s dad’s birthday and we really wanted Augie to be born the day after My dad’s birthday and that just happened to be the 20th!)
We finished watching the baseball game and joking with the doctors and nurses in the room until midnight and then 4 pushes later, Augie was born! They cleaned him up, took care of me (only a small tear even though he was sunny-side up like Milo was. These boys!) and then I got to hold him for maybe 15 minutes. The entire time we were doing the skin-to-skin, Augie was grunting and squirming and turning more purple. Something didn’t seem entirely right, and the nurse came and took him to their small NICU.
Augie’s lungs weren’t filling all the way with air. Our pediatrician came and took care of him and gave him a dose of surfactant to try and get the air sacs to fill up while he was on oxygen. That didn’t work and they didn’t have all the things they needed or the room for him at the hospital I delivered him at, so they strapped him and the oxygen and feeding tubes and whatever else to a gurney and wheeled him in to say goodbye to me before being transferred by ambulance to the big hospital the next town over. That was around 10 in the morning after a night of intermittent rest and belly pushing and Augie updates.
It was heartbreaking seeing him in the tiny incubator box on the gurney, but I knew he’d be safe and better taken care of in the big NICU. They put him on oxygen and cpap and iv fluids when they got there and then gradually started weaning him of oxygen.
I was discharged the next morning and then hurried over with Sean to see him. I got to hold him, even with all the tubes and wires attached. The nurses that took care of him were all so sweet and so excited to see his progress. Everyone we talked to was pleasantly surprised at how fast he progressed. He nursed well a few times, took formula just fine, and passed all the NICU graduation tests and we were able to take him home after only 2.5 days!
He’s been home for a few weeks now and has fit right into our family perfectly. He and I are learning to nurse well and I have more than 100oz of breast milk frozen already. I’ll have to do a post about the difference it’s been nursing vs formula feeding with Milo. It’s been interesting! He sleeps pretty well at night (he's gotten up to 5 hour stretches) and generally only wakes up once between the time we get to bed to the time everyone wakes up for the day. He's super strong and is not a fan of diaper changes. We're all in love with baby Augie and we can't wait to see the kind of kid he grows up to be!
Milo is a fantastic big brother. He’s kept up well with potty training and is so sweet with Augie and loves to check in on him and give him soft head kisses ("What's Augie doin', Mom?" every few minutes. He's usually still sleeping or eating). There's still days when we struggle (thus is life with a newborn and a 2 year old), but I'm feeling pretty confident in my abilities and I'm so grateful for these boys of mine. Today I got a bunch of stuff done (laundry, dishes, picking up toys, gathering garbage, showering, nursing while eating breakfast, keeping 2 kids alive and not losing my sanity!), so I'm feeling pretty good.
