I know that I have been absent for a while, and for that
there is really nothing I can say.
We just had a new addition to our family. Alexandra Evelyn
was born on 1/31/13 @ 1am. She was 36 weeks and 2 days, 8lbs and 20" long.
On Sunday, 1/27, shortly after midnight,
I started having contractions every 4 minutes along with some bleeding. We went
to the hospital and they were able to slow down my contractions and the
bleeding stopped unless someone checked me to see if I had dilated any further.
They switched me to a different blood thinner that dissipated more quickly, and
then on Tuesday evening I was sent home. At about midnight
that night I started having harder contractions that were about every 8-10
minutes until about 7am, then they
were about every 5-7 minutes apart. I called the Doctor at 8pm on Wednesday and she said she would see me first thing
Thursday morning and called in a prescription for pain medication to see me
through the night. Chris went to pick up the medicine at about 9pm and I called my mom while I was trying to
rest in bed. As soon as I got off the phone with her, I thought I was about to
have a contraction and my water broke.
We got to the ER about 40 minutes after my water broke, and
by the time they wheeled me up to Labor & Delivery I was having
contractions one on top of another. I had to wait for a blood test to come back
before they could do the C-section, and after all that I only dilated from the
3 I was at on Tuesday when I checked out to a 4. I couldn’t get an epidural
since we had to wait to see if I could get a spinal, so I had nothing for the
pain while I waited. Needless to say I was speaking trucker for the next hour
or so while I tried to realize I wasn’t dying. If my blood was too thin, they
couldn’t have done a spinal and would have had to put me under general anesthesia
which would have also meant Chris couldn’t have been present.
They wheeled me into the operating room where I caused my IV
to bubble up while moving to the operating table. They had to take that one out
and proceeded to try another 5 times to get another one in. I am a very hard
stick and have crappy little veins. After about 15 mins of that, they were able
to do my spinal and get me on the table. It seemed like no time at all and they
were pulling Alex out and starting on the tubal to make sure she is our last.
According to all of my Drs it isn’t a good idea for me to do this again, and
frankly I don’t have any desire to either.
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| First picture |
Because I am allergic to Morphine and similar drugs, they
weren’t able to put anything into my spinal for the pain, so by the time they
had my room all ready, I was ready for something to take the edge off. It took
almost 2 hrs in recovery until they were able to get me moved and something
into a button pusher for me. While in recovery, they discovered that Alex had
low blood sugar and needed to be taken to the NICU.
They said that while I didn’t have gestational diabetes, it
looked as if she was starting to develop it which is why she was so large and
so puffy when she was born. It could have also contributed to all the
additional fluid in the placenta. That combined with her size is what put all
the pressure on my cervix and caused the early labor.
About 2 hours after I was put in my room, I started itching
and having an allergic reaction to the other drug they gave me for pain, so at
that point I was out of options except for Motrin and Percocet. I was given
doses of those every 4 hours, and after then 1st day dropped the
Motrin because of the interaction with the Warfarin I started to take again to
prevent blood clots. While most women were just then having their Morphine wear
off, I was down to 1 medicine that helped, but not nearly enough. To top it all
off, it was so dry there, that I sounded like a 50 year smoker. My voice was
raspy and my throat so dry I had to drink a TON of fluid to keep from coughing
since it hurt so badly. It took 9 days after coming home for it to get back to
normal.
I was in the hospital until Sunday evening, and when I
checked out, Alex was still there. First they said they were keeping her until
her blood sugar went up. Then she got jaundice
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| Under the UV light |
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| With feeding tube |
and they said they were keeping
her for that. After that, she wasn’t eating enough and kept losing weight, so
they were keeping her for that. Now she started to gain back some weight, but
isn’t eating enough. She is only eating an ounce by herself.
I am hoping that
we can move to an ad lib eating schedule in the next couple of days and that
she will step it up so she can come home.
If you have never had a child in the NICU it is hard to
explain how it feels. I go into her empty room every day and my heart breaks. I
feel like I am some how defective since both my children came early and had to
stay in the NICU. I feel almost lost in a sense.
As a mom, you have a connection to your child that is hard
to explain when they are first born. You carried them for X number of months.
You felt their first movement. You ate and drank and did everything for them. They
were literally a part of you. In theory, when you give birth, you take that
child home and the connection grows stronger. When you have to leave them behind,
you loose that. You leave that part of yourself behind. You feel almost bereft.
At least I do.
And now that we have Jonathan too, I feel as if I am choosing to
leave one of them to see the other.
This pregnancy wasn’t supposed to be this way. She was
supposed to come home with us. I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to do and more. We
NEED her to come home to us. My head knows it could be much worse and that we are lucky. My heart doesn't seem to care and just feels like it is missing an integral piece.
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