In the summer of 2005, I had been sick and throwing up for several weeks. Call it denial or just being naive, but I had no idea what was going on with me. Finally, I decided to take a pregnancy test on August 8, and I discovered I was pregnant. After some initial freaking out, Dave and I were so happy to be having a baby.
Right from the beginning, I could tell that I was not going to be one of those women who love being pregnant. At first it was just the regular stuff - LOTS of throwing up, being extremely tired and of course moody (moodier than usual). Then as I started to show, things started getting worse. Nothing too horrible - I had a bladder infection, a kidney stone, a weird rash, failed my glucose test, and lots of ligament and back pain. But still nothing that was totally out of the ordinary.
As things got further along, I just felt awful. I was in so much pain most of the time that it almost brought me to tears to walk across the floor. I tried to tell people how bad I felt, but everyone pretty much just thought I was being a big baby. Mom told me that I was a wimp and that I hadn't even gotten to the bad part yet. I just kept thinking that if things were going to get worse, then I was not going to make it.
At 32 weeks I had a regular appointment. I was sitting there with my midwife, Lori, and I was almost in tears telling her bad I felt. I told her that I felt like a big baby, but I just hurt so bad all the time. She was really wonderful. Instead of looking at me like everyone else had, she wanted to do some monitoring of me and the baby just to make sure everything was okay. She hooked me up to this machine that monitors me for contractions and also the baby's heartrate. After about 30 minutes, she came back and looked at the readout and told me that I was having contractions. She checked to see if I was dialated and I was not. They decided to give me some IV fluids in case I was dehydrated and that was what was causing the contractions. They ran the fluids and then put me back on the monitor. Lori came back to check on me and said that I was still having contractions. She was also listening to the baby's heartbeat and I noticed that it was really slow. It was beating more like my heartrate than a baby's. Lori said not to panic, that sometimes they grab their cords or something and that will cause the heartrate to drop. After a couple of minutes, the heartrate went back up. She told me that they were going to send me to the hospital to get a shot to stop the contractions. It would just be an overnight stay. Before I went, they wanted to do a sonogram to check the fluid levels. Everything looked fine - except that the baby was breach. Not a big deal, just meant that I was going to have to have a C-section.
I got to the hospital and got my shot. The contractions seemed to stop shortly after that. It was an uneventful night and I was sure I was going to go home the next morning. Shortly after I woke up, my doctor came in. She said that there were several times during the nigth that the baby's heart rate dropped below 70 bpm. They were really worried that the baby was in distress. She said that they were going to give me a steroid shot to speed up the lung development and that I was not going home until I had the baby. The goal was to keep her in for 48 hours so the shot would have time to give it's full effect. I was devestated. I had tried so hard to do everything right during my pregnancy and it didn't even matter.
As the day went on, there were more times that the heart rate dropped. Then the neonatologist came in to talk to me - I cried the whole time. He said that the baby would probably weigh between 3 and 3 1/2 pounds and that she could be in the hospital for up to 8 weeks. Next, they decided to give me a catheter and told me that I could no longer get out of bed and that I should move as little as possible. It seemed whenever I moved, it made things worse. I had a tough time falling asleep that night. I remember staring at the hear monitor and praying it wouldn't drop again. I think I fell asleep shortly before 11. About 15 minutes or so later, I woke up to two nurses standing over me. I looked over at the heart monitor and it was reading 64. I heard one of them say it had been down for 7 minutes. I started crying. The nurses lowered my head, rubbed my belly and even shocked my belly a little to try and get the heart rate up. Nothing worked. One nurse ran out and called the doctor and then ran back in and said we had to deliver. I was so terrified. They woke up Dave and before he could even get all the way out of bed, they were wheeling me out. I was crying so hard and I just remember telling him to call my mom. As they wheeled me into surgery, it was like a nightmare. I was praying and crying and trying so hard to wake up. They wheeled me into this all white sterile room and I just laid there crying, staring at the ceiling. I just kept saying "It's too early." There was nurse in there with me who held my hand the entire time. She was so wonderful. The anesthesiologist came in and was talking to me and gave me an oxygen mask. He was really sweet too - he kept lifting up the mask to wipe my tears. That was the most horrible, terrifying few moments of my life. Then the dr came in, and I went to sleep.
When I woke up, I was totally drugged. I looked around and saw a nurse and asked her if my baby was okay. She told me that she was beautiful and she cried when she was born. Then she went to get Dave and my mom. After making sure I was okay, they left and went to see the baby. They came back and told me she was beautiful. She was not in an incubator (just on a warming table) and she was on oxygen, but never had to have a ventilator. She weighed 4 lbs 9 oz and was 17 1/2 inches long. They wheeled me through the NICU so I could see her, but I was so drugged that I don't really remember it. When I got back to my room, we decided to name her Sarah Joy.
The next morning, I finally got to go see my baby. She was so beautiful. The nurses told me that she was perfect, just tiny. We were in the NICU for 11 days. The NICU is a hard place to be. It is hard to see your baby lying there and feel like she is not really yours yet. I could hold her and change her, but I couldn't take her home. I couldn't make any decisions for her. I felt more like a bystander than her mom. It is hard to explain what that feels like if you have never been there. She was so amazing though. The only problems that she had was learning how to eat. She was so tiny that she would get tired so fast and could not stay awake long enough to eat. She would eat a little through the bottle, and then the rest through feeding tube. When we were able to leave, she was able to eat a little less than an ounce about every 3 hours. (If it tells you anything, the first time we fed Emily a few hours after she was born, she sucked a two ounce bottle dry - at 11 days, Sarah couldnt even eat an ounce).
We had a couple of scares after coming home. The first couple of weeks they sent nurses to my house 3 times per week to check Sarah and weigh her. The first week, she wasn't gaining any weight and they thought she was going to have to go back to the hospital. Luckily she started eating a little better and she had gained a couple of ounces by the time we went back to the doctor.
Then when she was about 6 weeks old, I noticed that she would stop breathing for several seconds while she slept. I freaked out and took her to the ER. They kept her over night on an apnea monitor, and it turned out that she had sleep apnea. They sent us home with a monitor and she had to wear it to bed every night for a few months. When she would stop breathing, it would go off. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard and a terrifying sound to hear in the middle of the night. She eventually outgrew the apnea.
Sarah is now a perfectly healthy two-year old little girl. She is tiny for her age, but she is 
developmentally right where she should be, if not a little ahead. She is super smart (which makes her super bratty sometimes!) and she is my miracle baby. I thank God for her (and her sister) every day.
1 comment:
Amazing! Sarah is a true miracle.
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