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Finding out that we were expecting was just about the most fantastic discovery we could make. We had been married for almost 10 years and had been trying to get pregnant for the last few years. We had our doubts, but were extremely hopeful. So this news was incredible!! The next few months were exciting for us. Every lb gained ... even the terrible swelling, was all part of what was going to be the BEST day of our lives. My pregnancy was nothing if not textbook. (Well, except for the 18-lb gain right off the bat ... 2 college degrees, Mensa qualified and I had no idea I wasn't supposed to eat 5 bagels, 6 servings of pasta, 2 heads of broccoli, a gallon of milk, 3 chickens, several fish, etc .. all in one day!! Who could possibly fit that in? I did and that 18-lb gain was the result. How happy was I to be eating for two?) And then over the rest of my pregnancy ... I gained the normal 24 lbs.
With 6 more weeks to go, my week was filled with interpreting appointments as well as home visits to see various families (I worked with the local Early Intervention program at the time) ... a little shopping (still needed a changing table as well as other nursery necessities) ... several naps ... an OB appointment ... etc. But that Monday morning while chatting with some therapists outside a family's home, I suddenly felt very fluish. Crap! An appropriate response ... every mom-to-be knows that there simply isn't anything you can take for anything that ails you (nothing good anyway). So, I canceled the rest of my appointments for the day, went home and crawled into bed. I stayed there all day and night ... calling my mother to whine in a bit of self-pity before nodding off snuggling up to an icicle of a husband. (Another mom-to-be piece of knowledge ... you just can't get the house cold enough to help you regulate your malfunctioning internal thermostat ... so the rest of the household must live in subzero conditions.) 2:00am Tuesday morning: waking up to pee for the 8th time since going to sleep ... getting back to bed only to discover that I might not have finished with that particular pee-party ... hmmm, that was weird ... and is it pinkish or am I seeing things ... not wanting to (or not being able to) wake my log-sawing husband, I grabbed the phone and went downstairs to make a call to my OB. Come on in, he says, Let's have a look see. You just might be in labor. What?!?! Well, I'll just go in and then come back home. I am not due for another 6 weeks. Then as I was beating my husband awake, it hit me ... Oh, my gosh!! I really could be in labor. This isn't good ... he needs more time to bake. This just isn't right. So, since we hadn't prepared for this trip, yet ... we packed up what we thought we needed ... did a little first-time-parents-to-be panicking ... and headed up to the hospital. I was extremely nervous, Nelson was quite excited ... his son might be born soon! It's the middle of the night ... I'll call Mom after we find out what's going on, no need to wake her, she lives just 4 hours away ... and everyone knows that it takes forever to deliver the first-born. We got checked into the hospital room around 4:30am, I called Mom, told her we were stationed there for a while and that she might want to consider coming on down ... it looked like this was going to be it. 3 hours later ... and having had no epidural ... the pain was tremendous and it was time to push ... OMGosh!! ... they NEVER used the term bone-crushing pain in the Lamaze classes ... they freakin should have!!! ... difficult to breathe, my ass ... how about SOMETHING'S HAPPENING TO ME!! GET THE DOCTOR IN HERE ... I AM GOING TO BREAK!!! OK ... how can I get out of this?? I can't do this ... it is impossible. But ... I realized that the only way to get out of my current situation was to just work through it. So, I pushed and pushed ... Nelson was right there beside me using wonderful encouraging phases like ... You can do this honey ... you are doing a great job ... pretty soon our baby boy will be here ... just a little more ... just think, after he is born you can eat sushi again! 53 minutes later, little Jared was born. Whew!! Glad that part was over with. Our precious baby boy was placed upon my chest. Can I kiss him?? I could do anything I wanted, I was told, he was after all, my son. Then the placenta pain ... I pushed little Jared away from me and they whisked him away to do their thing ... clean him up ... Apgar tests. We relished in our victory ... gathered ourselves and made many phone calls alerting all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and dear frinds. Where was Jared?? When do they bring him back? We were being moved to another room ... the recovery room, where we would remain until we got to go home. Much nicer ... but Where was our precious Jared?? I need to nurse him, right? They brought a wheelchair into the room for me. Would you like to go see your son? Nelson explained that he was in the NICU, and the doctor's just wanted to make sure he was able to breathe, etc all on his own ... (having worked in Early Intervention for several years, I knew that being born 6 weeks too soon can present some problems) ... but that he was doing fine and that he looked simply adorable lying there. He and Mom had already been into see him and snapped a few pictures.
So, Nelson wheeled me in to see our beautiful baby boy. There had been some changes from when Nel and Mom had been in to see him. Not only was he hooked up to all sorts of machines monitoring his vitals, but he now had a feeding tube and was hooked up to a breathing machine. I ached to hold him.
As much as we wanted to pick him up and snuggle and kiss and pour our love onto him ... we could just barely touch him. We couldn't even caress him ... the motion excited him and made it more difficult for him to breathe. We were allowed to put a little pressure on his arms and gently touch his tummy. This was so hard!
For 3 days, we weren't allowed to hold our precious bundle of joy ... and seeing him struggle in the NICU, using every ounce of strength to simply breathe, was THE most challenging thing we had ever done. Leaving the hospital to go home while our little Jared was struggling in the NICU just did not seem right. He was under the BEST of care and his doctors, therapists and nurses were amazing throughout this whole process. They were really clear with us about what to expect from Jared. They said that his lungs were underdeveloped and that he just could not breathe on his own so he needed some help. His respiratory therapist told us that he would get worse before he got better and to be prepared for that. THAT was so very difficult. But he was right ... Jared did get worse before he got better ... and when he got worse, we got scared ... and there was nothing that the doctors could do to fix him. Jared just needed time. Time for his lungs to develop so that he could breathe on his own. (What he really needed was more time en utero. ) When he was 3 days old, Mom and I were visiting Jared at the hospital and we overheard the respiratory therapist saying something about his machine and that if he could get all the wires to stretch enough to reach the rocker Mama can hold her baby. Eavesdropping has never been so sweet. I might be able to hold my baby!!! And if he did well, then Grandma could hold her grandson, too! The wires just had to reach ... that was all there was to it! Nelson was at work, quite reluctantly, and this news would just make his day! I couldn't wait to tell him.
This was the sweetest moment. Our gift from God, bundled in our arms! I couldn't wait to tell Nelson that after work he could hold his son! I held him and Mom held him and then I held him again ... then the respiratory therapist said that we needed to put him back on the breathing machine because his oxygen saturation was dropping and his lungs were not inflating sufficiently. This scared me ... something I wanted so bad (to hold my son) was beginning to hurt him. So, we placed him back in his little bed and they hooked him back up to his machine and then he was just fine. All his levels began to come back up and he was fine. Jared just needed a little more support.
That night, when we all went back to the hospital, the doctors let Nelson hold his son for the first time. Jared still needed the machine, but they felt that it would be perfectly fine for Daddy to hold him. The next day, things were different ... he required more oxygen than ever before. What the therapist had said before was happening ... Jared was getting worse. This made every trip to the hospital to visit emotionally draining. As much as I wanted to see my baby boy, it just tore at my heart to see him struggling, and then to have to leave and come home without him. It seemed too much to handle ... we were all emotional and exhausted and I was severely depressed. The next night as Nelson and I were leaving the hospital from the midnight visit and milk drop off, I doubled over in the elevator with extreme abdominal pain. We called Mom to tell her that we were going to the emergency room. After some really good drugs and several tests, it was determined that it was my gall bladder. They wanted to take it out immediately, but Nelson (being the only one of sound mind at the moment) said no, that we would go see a surgeon the following morning. We did, and he scheduled surgery for the following afternoon. Gall bladder surgery is usually an outpatient procedure, but since our son was in the NICU and I was pretty depressed and weak, they made it for late in the day which would guarantee an overnight stay. I would be near my son! I had the surgery, stayed the night, visited my son several times and went home the following afternoon. The next day while Mom, Nelson and I were visiting Jared (and bringing all the milk I was pumping at home ~ they were giving it to him through the feeding tube), we received extremely good news. Jared had improved beautifully! He was off the breathing machine and down to a 4 prong canula ... which did not help him breathe (he was able to do this on his own now, yea!), but rather supplied him with extra oxygen. Any parent who has had a child in the NICU with a similar situation knows about the prong countdown. The smaller the number, the closer you are to bringing your baby home! The next day, he was down to a 3 prong canula ... then 2. Then finally, his oxygen saturation was stable and he no longer needed it. What good news! Great news! He was being moved from the high-risk rooom to the low-risk room! I was able to begin nursing my son! And as soon as he was able to nurse or take the milk from a bottle, he was one more step closer to coming home. Since Jared had been on a feeding tube, they regularly gave him a pacifier so that he would retain the sucking instinct. He had no problem transitioning off the feeding tube. We were elated!
The doctors informed us that he was doing very well and that we should expect to be able to come back to the hospital the next day and spend the night with him (there is a special room inside the NICU where parents can come spend the night with their baby as they would have done if he had been born problem-free) and THEN we could take him home on the next day. This was music to our ears!!! We went home just beaming with this news. Once home and completely exhausted and I in pretty terrible pain from the surgery, we crawled into bed for a late afternoon nap. We had just settled in, and as Mom was taking the phone out of the bedroom, it rang ... it was the NICU calling ... they said that Jared was doing so well that the insurance couldn't justify another night so instead of goingn to spend the night with Jared tomorrow night, we needed to go tonight. So, we dragged ourselves out of bed and packed up for the hospital. JARED WAS COMING HOME !!! |
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