On October 18th at 35 weeks, 6 days pregnant, I woke up not feeling my baby move. I tried every trick in the book to get him to move. I drank ice water, listened to music with the speakers on my belly, drank some juice- nothing worked. I finally woke up Justin and asked him to poke him and see if he could get him to move. So he started taking and poking my belly- finally we got one kick! Ok, so we knew he was alive.
I still couldn't shake the anxiety that something was wrong, but tried to continue on my with day since my doctor kept telling me they slow down with movement as you get further along.
It was a Sunday so I went to church as usual. As I was sitting there, I was getting more and more worried. The organ usually woke him up. There was still no movement. I finally turned to Justin and told him we needed to go to the hospital to get checked. So, we left church ran home to change and grab all my bags and we headed down. I cried the whole way there because I just knew he had passed away. We walked into Labor and delivery and informed them that I hadn't felt him move all day.
When we walked in, they took us straight into a room and hooked up the non stress test. They found a heart beat, thank goodness! We knew he was still alive. They took my vitals and my blood pressure was really high! They decided to keep me for 24 hours to watch me to make sure my blood pressure didn't do anything crazy.
They did an ultrasound, and Blood work as well. Blood work showed high glucose (undiagnosed gestational diabetes) and my ultrasound showed that he was really small and my placenta was calcified.
Once I heard that I knew I was going to be induced Monday. The doctor said he wanted to wait until my regular doctor came on, if possible but made me stop eating just in case.
As the night progressed, Jacob started to have dips in his heart rate. It started out as just a little dip, but progressed into dips that lasted a minute or longer. Every one I heard was longer and longer and I was getting worried again. Justin headed home to try and get some rest and I decided to get some rest too.
Around 11 pm the nurses came in to start and IV. While putting in the IV, he had a big dip in his heart rate and 2 more nurses came rushing in to move my positioning and try and get it to go back up. I knew that wasn't a good sign but knew I was being watched and they would take care of me. Once they got the iv in, I settled in to try and get some sleep.
At midnight the nurse came in and asked where Justin had gone. I informed her he had gone home to get sleep. She then told me I needed to call him to come back because they decided we were in too much danger to wait until morning and they were going to take him via c section. I immediately called Justin and got him on his way back. As soon as I was off the phone there was a flurry of nurses preping me for surgery. I had the on call OB discussing with me the options.
"We can try and induce, but I think your baby will die with the first contraction"
"no thanks" I said " I would rather him live- let's do a c section"
Then the anesthesiologist asking me a million questions.
"Are you allergic to any meds, any previous surgeries?"
By the time Justin had arrived I was fully prepped. They got him getting into scrubs very quickly. The second he was ready the wheeled me into the OR.
Of course me being me, I was stating how much everything looked like an OR in the veterinary field.
"We use the same suture! This looks just like a veterinary surgical suit. We even have the same kind of table!"
They do a spinal block lay me back and start prepping me. I was trying not to freak out- when a hand grabs mine. I look over and it's a woman I had never seen before. She states that she is the on call pediatrician and she was there to over see Jacob. She asks me if we knew gender, had a name, and then asked me a bunch of questions about him, trying to ease my mind. We discussed that because we knew he was small,so there was a possibility of a transfer to Odessa regional medical center to ta better NICU. the hospital we were at only had a level one NICU. She promised was going to try and keep him there. She was a wonderful doctor.
Soon Justin came in. He sat at my head and once again eased my mind chatting with me.
it seemed like they had just started when I heard Jacobs first cry. I started to cry too. He was alive! He had survived and now he was here! I look at the clock- it's 1:25 am. Justin was called over to be with him. I heard the pediatrician and nurses singing him happy birthday. All the nurses congratulate me and help me wipe away my tears. Someone slips my ID band on my wrist.
Soon the doctor hollers out, "4 pounds, 1 oz! Bigger than we thought! Mom, He is looking good!"
She brings him over and places him at my head. tells me he is 17.2 inches long and doing well. I say hi to him and he immediately turns his head to me I give him a quick kiss as the doctor remarks that he knows me and let's me know that he doing really well and Odessa is out of the picture right now. Justin goes with them and they take him to the nursery.
They start closing me up. As I'm no stranger to surgery, I watch the clock and listen. At around 2 am I'm wondering why they aren't done yet. I look at the anesthesiologist and he seems to be wondering the same.
He looks over the curtain, then looks at me and says, looks like they are almost done. Awesome, I thought. This was easy!
Around 2:15, they still aren't done. The anesthesiologist looks over the curtain again. This time the doctor responds.
"you seem to still be bleeding internally. I'm going to have to go back in and see if I can stop this. What is this other scar from? You have a lot of scar tissue and it's really causing a lot of problems. "
I explain to him my emergency surgery I had in 6th grade. I had my appendix out, and a cyst on my right ovary had twisted and killed it.
Apparently, it was a sloppy surgery and the scar tissue had adhered to everything making it very hard for him to clean up.
He finally gets done, and I'm cleaned up and moved into recovery. Justin joins me and shows me a bunch of pictures of how cute our son is.
We reminisce on how lucky we are and how surreal it is. we are both completely in love. The doctor comes in to check on me. He informs me that he feels that had we waited like we were originally going to do, Jacob most likely would have died. We were very blessed and happy that Jacob was alive and well, and that I hadn't had any serious complications and side effects either, I'm moved into my room, and Justin visits Jacob one more time before heading home to get some rest.
It was a Sunday so I went to church as usual. As I was sitting there, I was getting more and more worried. The organ usually woke him up. There was still no movement. I finally turned to Justin and told him we needed to go to the hospital to get checked. So, we left church ran home to change and grab all my bags and we headed down. I cried the whole way there because I just knew he had passed away. We walked into Labor and delivery and informed them that I hadn't felt him move all day.
When we walked in, they took us straight into a room and hooked up the non stress test. They found a heart beat, thank goodness! We knew he was still alive. They took my vitals and my blood pressure was really high! They decided to keep me for 24 hours to watch me to make sure my blood pressure didn't do anything crazy.
They did an ultrasound, and Blood work as well. Blood work showed high glucose (undiagnosed gestational diabetes) and my ultrasound showed that he was really small and my placenta was calcified.
Once I heard that I knew I was going to be induced Monday. The doctor said he wanted to wait until my regular doctor came on, if possible but made me stop eating just in case.
As the night progressed, Jacob started to have dips in his heart rate. It started out as just a little dip, but progressed into dips that lasted a minute or longer. Every one I heard was longer and longer and I was getting worried again. Justin headed home to try and get some rest and I decided to get some rest too.
Around 11 pm the nurses came in to start and IV. While putting in the IV, he had a big dip in his heart rate and 2 more nurses came rushing in to move my positioning and try and get it to go back up. I knew that wasn't a good sign but knew I was being watched and they would take care of me. Once they got the iv in, I settled in to try and get some sleep.
At midnight the nurse came in and asked where Justin had gone. I informed her he had gone home to get sleep. She then told me I needed to call him to come back because they decided we were in too much danger to wait until morning and they were going to take him via c section. I immediately called Justin and got him on his way back. As soon as I was off the phone there was a flurry of nurses preping me for surgery. I had the on call OB discussing with me the options.
"We can try and induce, but I think your baby will die with the first contraction"
"no thanks" I said " I would rather him live- let's do a c section"
Then the anesthesiologist asking me a million questions.
"Are you allergic to any meds, any previous surgeries?"
By the time Justin had arrived I was fully prepped. They got him getting into scrubs very quickly. The second he was ready the wheeled me into the OR.
Of course me being me, I was stating how much everything looked like an OR in the veterinary field.
"We use the same suture! This looks just like a veterinary surgical suit. We even have the same kind of table!"
They do a spinal block lay me back and start prepping me. I was trying not to freak out- when a hand grabs mine. I look over and it's a woman I had never seen before. She states that she is the on call pediatrician and she was there to over see Jacob. She asks me if we knew gender, had a name, and then asked me a bunch of questions about him, trying to ease my mind. We discussed that because we knew he was small,so there was a possibility of a transfer to Odessa regional medical center to ta better NICU. the hospital we were at only had a level one NICU. She promised was going to try and keep him there. She was a wonderful doctor.
Soon Justin came in. He sat at my head and once again eased my mind chatting with me.
it seemed like they had just started when I heard Jacobs first cry. I started to cry too. He was alive! He had survived and now he was here! I look at the clock- it's 1:25 am. Justin was called over to be with him. I heard the pediatrician and nurses singing him happy birthday. All the nurses congratulate me and help me wipe away my tears. Someone slips my ID band on my wrist.
Soon the doctor hollers out, "4 pounds, 1 oz! Bigger than we thought! Mom, He is looking good!"
She brings him over and places him at my head. tells me he is 17.2 inches long and doing well. I say hi to him and he immediately turns his head to me I give him a quick kiss as the doctor remarks that he knows me and let's me know that he doing really well and Odessa is out of the picture right now. Justin goes with them and they take him to the nursery.
They start closing me up. As I'm no stranger to surgery, I watch the clock and listen. At around 2 am I'm wondering why they aren't done yet. I look at the anesthesiologist and he seems to be wondering the same.
He looks over the curtain, then looks at me and says, looks like they are almost done. Awesome, I thought. This was easy!
Around 2:15, they still aren't done. The anesthesiologist looks over the curtain again. This time the doctor responds.
"you seem to still be bleeding internally. I'm going to have to go back in and see if I can stop this. What is this other scar from? You have a lot of scar tissue and it's really causing a lot of problems. "
I explain to him my emergency surgery I had in 6th grade. I had my appendix out, and a cyst on my right ovary had twisted and killed it.
Apparently, it was a sloppy surgery and the scar tissue had adhered to everything making it very hard for him to clean up.
He finally gets done, and I'm cleaned up and moved into recovery. Justin joins me and shows me a bunch of pictures of how cute our son is.
We reminisce on how lucky we are and how surreal it is. we are both completely in love. The doctor comes in to check on me. He informs me that he feels that had we waited like we were originally going to do, Jacob most likely would have died. We were very blessed and happy that Jacob was alive and well, and that I hadn't had any serious complications and side effects either, I'm moved into my room, and Justin visits Jacob one more time before heading home to get some rest.
The night was pretty uneventful. As soon as my legs were no longer numb I asked the nurse about going to see my baby. I needed to be with him and see how he was doing!
They get me into a wheelchair and wheel me in. Since last night his oxygen had dropped a little and his glucose was giving him trouble. He was hooked up to oxygen and an IV, but they didn't think he would be in there long. He was doing well
. They let me do skin to skin and I was able to finally hold and cuddle my baby.
. They let me do skin to skin and I was able to finally hold and cuddle my baby.
The rest of the day was spent with me trying to recover and loving on our newborn son. he was unable to come into our room, but we had unlimited access to him in the nursery.
the next morning, his attending physician came in and gave us some bad news. Jacob was having clotting issues, He couldn't determine the issue and didn't feel they were adequately set up for the critical care he needed, they want to transfer him to another hospital to a high NICU unit. I ok'd the transfer and soon they picked him up. Justin was once again gone, when all of this happened, I immediately called him to come back down because I needed his support. As soon as he got to the hospital I asked him to go and give Jacob a blessing, not only one of health but one as father. I was not able to go to the nursery as this was being done, but I felt comforted in knowing the lord would bless us as a family and bless him as an innocent child.
I got news they had arrived to pick him up and stopped by so I could see him and say goodbye.
It was quite traumatizing to see my newborn baby like that. Thankfully he was very alert and didn't seem stressed about the move. We signed a ton of paperwork, set up passwords to get in, etc.
I was discharged soon after in order to be with my baby.
When we finally got over to Odessa Regional later that day we got good news. He had stabilized, but they had found jaundice and he needed to be started on lights. We got to visit with him for a while and I feel very good about the transfer. He had wonderful nurses who were very attentive to him, he seemed a lot more relaxed here, and I knew he was getting what he needed.
I wont bore you will all the details, but he was in the NICU for about 2 weeks, he had lots of up and downs, but finally he was eating, and then breathing on his own, and he got his IV's out on 10/30, and upgraded to a crib.
On Halloween 2015 he came home
It was a long scary process, and we he cheated death twice, but we is alive, and doing well. I know he is a blessing from our Heavenly Father and we couldn't be happier that he is part of our family.
Well that's all for now, more to come on our new life as a family of three!
~ Jess
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