Alright, here's the real story on some of the events of last week. It was a week that completely threw our family off-guard, and one that was precious and difficult and comforting and terrifying. It brought lots of tears and lots of smiles. Lots of stress and lots of reminders that God really is in every detail of our lives.
Thomas has a very different beginning in our family than the girls. I went into the hospital on Tuesday morning for an amniocentesis to check the baby's lung development. The large measurements on the ultrasounds combined with the large measurements of my belly and amniotic fluid along with my history of my babies getting bigger with each delivery concerned both me and my doctor. After my last ultrasound last week, all of us involved suspected that the baby may be even bigger than we'd been thinking. If we didn't do an early delivery I was told I could pretty much count on a C-section or risk getting the baby's head out but not the shoulders, which clearly would be an emergency situation. So, I spent the end of the previous week worrying and agonizing over what the "right" decision was in this case. I tried to read up on the risks of induction at 37 weeks versus the risks of delivering a 20lb baby. Cline and I prayed, thought about it, and made the decision to go ahead with the amniocentesis. I limited the number of people who knew this was our plan for multiple reasons. I was exhausted from 17 weeks of constantly feeling like I had to explain my large belly to every stranger who commented on it. I was tired of hearing stories of how wrong the ultrasounds can be in both directions or how so and so actually did deliver a 15 pound baby without a c-section or complication. I was freaked out about the potential complications from either scenario, and the last thing I wanted on Tuesday was 1,000 text messages and Facebook posts asking me how things were going. I was done explaining and rationalizing and answering questions. Cline and I are educated people in the medical world, we trusted our doctor, and we had to find a way to have confidence in the decision we made together and prayed over. Luckily, Cline is a lot better at that than I am.
So, we arrived at the hospital bright and early on Tuesday the 17th, not certain we would having a baby that day but thinking there was a good chance. The doctor called us late in the morning to let us know the baby passed the lung development tests, and the nurse brought in the Pitocin. We were having a baby! I was nervous and excited.
I knew this was going to be a different experience from my previous, perfect deliveries when I started feeling the contractions early on. When they started to actually hurt (which has never happened before I was fairly dilated already), I made it clear that I wanted to make sure I got the epidural in time.
Sometime around lunch time, I got the epidural. The doctor came in a while later and broke my water, saying things might progress quickly after that. I prepared myself for potentially having a baby in the next couple of hours. Twenty minutes later, I was ready to go. We waited for our doctor to arrive, and I was anxious to get the delivery over with and lay eyes on my healthy baby boy.
The doctor arrived a few minutes later. I pushed a couple of times, and then the doctor asked Cline if he wanted to deliver the baby, I thought that was a cool idea, even if that meant there was no one to video tape, but did wish we'd thought of it sooner. We waited for someone to grab a gown and gloves and things for Cline. Finally, the moment was here. I pushed the head and shoulder out. The baby was face up with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck. The doctor had to cut it right there. Then he let Cline finish. The baby popped out, quickly followed by a gush of liquid falling to the floor, I thought I must be bleeding out or something, because that had never happened. But I felt fine, so I decided that wasn't it. The doctor grabbed the baby, thinking his umbilical clamp had come off, and the baby was bleeding to death. Fortunately, it was just the clamp on my side of the cord, which was all going to come out anyway, so no harm was done. Whew! That was an intense 10 seconds. Time to lay eyes on my healthy baby. His APGAR scores were great, but he was really working to breathe. The nurses assured me he would figure it out, and laid him face down on me on his stomach. I couldn't move and couldn't tell if he was even breathing, much less correctly. The nurses weren't worried, though and continued to stimulate his feet. I was anxious to hold my boy, but I was more anxious to see him breathe like the girls had. They took him back and forth a couple of times between me and his neonatal set-up, and finally decided to observe him in the nursery as he "transitioned." They assured me he would be fine, and they would bring him back not long from then.
After a little while, the nurses came in and said he wasn't transitioning as well as they would like, but, again, should be fine after a little longer. No one was explaining what was going on or what I might expect, and I was desperate to know more details. Over the next couple of hours, the news got worse every time someone came in. "He's just requiring a little Oxygen. Well, he's requiring a little more Oxygen. We're just going to draw some blood. We're going to officially admit him to the NICU...."
When I finally got settled into my temporary post-partum room, I finally broke down to Cline, overwhelmed with guilt for doing the induction and not asking even more questions during that decision and praying that was not the cause of this. I never really believed that Thomas was in any real, long-term danger. I'd had PICU experience and heard of so many friends who went through similar situations with their little boys, that deep down, I figured he'd get better in a day or two and we would go home. But at the same time, I couldn't see him, no one was explaining anything, and I told Cline that the news seemed to be getting worse and worse each time someone came into the room. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, the neonatologist walked in. She did her best to comfort me and gave us a diagnosis and information that I didn't process until much later. She said very non-chalantly that he was really working to breathe and was on a little CPAP while he figured it out. I burst into tears, and she asked why I was crying. I answered, "Isn't CPAP one step away from a ventilator?"
"Well, yeah, but it's a big step."
What had I done??
(to be continued...)
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