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| Levi just born |
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| Levi in NICU |
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| Levi sleeping in NICU |
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| Bringing Levi Home |
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| Chloe saying Hi to Levi |
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| Zach feeding Levi w/Daisy the guard dog |
Levi Allen Batsche was born on Thursday April 5th at 6:31pm. He weighed in at 8lbs 10oz and was 19 inches long. His head was 15 inches around and his chest was 13 3/4 inches around. He has a lot of hair that is a light brown/strawberry blonde and looks a lot like Zach (according to Levi's doctor). He was a big boy compared to Chloe who was 6lbs and 12 oz when she was born! He still looks and seems so small compared to Chloe now. I still feel like he would just snap in half even though he is bigger than what Chloe was when she was born.
Labor was on the same path as Chloe as we had to be induced, but the time was much shorter. We started the induction medication around 9:30am while I was not dilated at all and at 5:30pm Thursday they took me off the medication because my contractions were lasting one minute and one minute apart and they said the could no longer control my body. I was then again put on oxygen for the remainder of the time. I quickly started to feel like Levi was going to fall out and I believe by 6pm I was fully dilated and at 6:31pm he was born. I was exhausted and really cold. In my head Chloe's delivery was all quiet and rainbows and relaxed, but this time there seemed to be millions of nurses and it was chaotic. It was probably more chaotic because it was right at shift change and the fact that I went from a 5 to a 10 in about 30 minutes probably didn't help (normally they say you go up a number about each hour), but I think there were about 8 nurses/doctors in the room with us. After Levi was born he cried, but it was very muffled. The nurse immediately noticed there was some fluid in his lungs still. This is normal and most babies they can suction it out or the baby can get it out within a short time so they continued to clean him up. Once most of the nurses were gone there were only about 4 nurses/doctors and they decided to take him to the NICU to observe him some more because of the fluid and difficulty breathing.
Zach was able to hold him and get a few photos, but I was not able to hold him just to see him from afar at first. What was suppose to be just a few hours of monitoring soon turned into admitting him for a 48 hour watch in the NICU. So we were still planning on taking him home when we were to leave on Saturday. On Friday morning I spoke to the doctor and his words were: "You will bring a very healthy baby home, but just not on your desired time frame." He said it would be the beginning of the next week before we could probably bring him home. This was hard...very hard. I had a pretty healthy baby that I couldn't take home and then I was stuck in the hospital for two days while I only saw my daughter a few times a day.
We finally were able to bring Levi home on Tuesday April 10th around 2pm. Chloe was napping when we got home and so we brought Levi in and put him down for a nap in his pack n play. When Chloe woke up and came downstairs she immediately went over to the pack n play and said hi to her brother. No prompting from us she just knew. It was pretty much the sweetest thing ever. I wish we would have gotten it on video, but we did not expect that from her and the lights were so dim since he was sleeping.
Chloe has been very curious, but very good with Levi. She likes to come over and see him and say hi and tell him he is nice. She also likes to give whoever is feeding him the bottle and put it in the sink when he is done. We are really trying to include her in everything with Levi and show her how she can be helpful and a big sister. I think it has been harder on me more than Chloe because I want to make sure that she is still getting our attention and knows that she is special and it isn't all about her brother.
Its been a rough few days for me. Since Levi came home 5 days after he was born we feel like we missed some of the bonding time and time to figure out his cries and cues. When Chloe came home we had a good grasp on her, but Levi is different and I've had a bit of a hard time, but thankfully nurse Zach is here to help. He is definitely the more natural of the two of us and I forgot a lot even though it was just 17 months since we brought Chloe home. All the nurses in the NICU couldn't believe how confident and good he was with Levi. He had tubes everywhere the first two or three days and Zach would just get in and take charge.
I'm so glad and lucky that Zach has still another week off and I'm off until June!
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