February 14th at 8:14 am Nellie Jo Doyle was born. She weighed 9lbs and is 21.25 inches long. Healthiest baby I had ever seen. She was perfect. She is perfect. She had the same rolls on her arm and her legs just like her momma. Then she started breathing weird and things were changing.

After only a couple minutes on holding her they took her from me. I had just gone through 15 hours of unmediated back labor. Nothing else matter at that point other than holding my baby I carried for over 40 weeks. That was my baby they took from me. At that moment it went from the best day in my life to the worst. Doctors said it could be a hole in her lungs but they didn’t know so they took her to the NICU. After what felt like hours of waiting, I finally got to see my sweet baby girl. I was suppose to be resting and taking care of myself but there was a baby needing her momma so I made my way down there. Luckily her daddy was right by her side through it all.

After running texts and X-rays they saw her lungs were completely filled with fluid. At that point she was on a breathing tube that was giving her 20 breathes a minute but this wasn’t working. Then they put her on another machine that would give her 600 breathes a minute (yes 600). This machine also shook her body which helped break up the fluid. She is also on antibiotics to help the infection in the lungs. When she first started oxygen she was needing 70% but now she is hanging out between 25-30%. She’s making progress but it’s slow.

Then Sunday comes and our nurse felt fluid in her head. They thought it could be blood or just fluid that needs to disperse. After waiting 6 hours for those results they found it to just be fluid and it would go down on its own, and it did!

Since she is hooked up to all the machines, she hasn’t been able to eat anything. Unfortunately this caused her to have jaundice. Monday afternoon they started giving her my milk through her feeding tube. We hope that she has a big poop so that her body can just focus on the lungs. Poor thing has been under a big blue light since yesterday.

This morning I finally went home to shower and take my mind off of everything going on and Nick stayed back with her. He called me with great news. Nellie was now back to the first machine which is only giving her 20 breathes a minute and she is stable on that. When I got back to the hospital they took away the blue light too! Not sure how long she will be without the light but this is a huge step. We are hoping she will be off the oxygen machine and move her to a CPAP, that way they can take the breathing tube out and I could finally hold her.