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| Jason's First Photo |
Back Story
Kaysville, UT 1/29/14 0700- Amber starts experiencing contractions that are weird and irregular. her not being sure if they were contractions or just being uncomfortably pregnant she decided to ignore them.
Kaysville, UT 1/29/14 1730- Steven gets home from work and Amber is complaining about the weird contractions, but doesn't want to go to the hospital again (we had had a slight hiccup about a week prior that didnt end up or reveal anything significant.). Amber eats dinner and goes to rest trying to determine whether or not to go all the way to the hospital for another false alarm.
Kaysville, UT 1/29/14 2015- Amber finally decides that it is time to go to the hospital and see if the contractions she was feeling were real and why they would GO AWAY! They leave to take Jake to sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Murray, UT 1/29/14 2130- Arrive at hospital after dropping Jake off. Many test are run to figure out why the contractions are happening. (they were real, she wasn't just complaining.) She is given IV fluids and nifedipine (I think) to stop her contractions. The doctors end up deciding to move Amber to L&D to give her betamethasone (a steroid that helps develop the lungs of the baby in case of preterm birth) and continue the IV fluids. Betamethasone is given in two shots 24 hours apart, so Amber is admitted to the hospital.
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| Steven sleeping while Amber was getting tests |
Waiting
I'm going to change the way that I am writing this because Amber thinks that I'm a robot that doesn't have emotions.
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| Gross hospital food |
Labor
We got to L&D and there was so much going on. We were so scared at this point. This is where I could no longer hold my manly
composer any longer. I asked if she
would like a blessing and she said yes.
I then attempted to call my dad a dozen times, but couldn’t bring myself
to make the call. I don’t know why, I
think that once I made the call I would finally have to accept that things were
not okay and that I was not okay. It was the hardest call I have had to make in my life. I finally made the call and my dad asked how
it was going and I said not good. I lost
it at this point. Luckily my father was able to ask questions that I was trying
to say, like, “ have given her a blessing” and “do you have oil.” Basically I could only say yes or no on the
phone, but we were able to make it through the conversation with my dad getting
the stuff that he needed to know.
They kind of transferred everything over to the high risk
team, which consisted of residents, students, and doctors since they always
have doctors at the hospital and the standard OBGYN’s only have on call doctors
during the night. They were great. (Ambers dr decided this weekend was a great one to go on vacation.) First we were visited by a resident that
night, she explained that unless there was an infection, bad vitals on mom or
babies side, or Amber went into labor naturally that they would just put her on
bed rest and Amber would be bored and could pick up a new hobby. The
way that they tell if mom has an infection is through a fever, high heart rate,
and contractions. They decided to keep the IV fluids going and added antibiotics just in case, and magnesium solfate to help protect the babies brain. Magnesium solfate does some weird side affects, like making your heart rate go up and giving you hot flashes. So Amber had contractions
and a high heart rate (they thought that this might have been caused by the magnesium solfate). Next thing you know
at 1:00 AM Amber had started to get a mild fever. This was scary because it meant that we might
not be waiting to deliver the baby. At
2:00 AM they gave her the second betamethasone shot and rechecked the temperature
and it still was high. The resident came
and informed us that the team had decided that it was necessary to deliver the
baby. This was also hard, nothing was
going correctly. The fake contractions
were real, her water broke and now there was an infection. Every worse case scenario that we were told at each stage was coming true.
They had a neonatologist come and talk with us about all the
statistics and what to expect with a micro preemie to live or have serious
learning issues and such. Amber didn't hear much, her contractions started to get bad at this point. Then they
started Amber on pitocin and gave her an epidural (which she was hesitant to
get since it did not work perfectly last time). I think I got a solid 4 hours of
sleep that night and Amber got like 2. The room was freezing because Amber was having the hot flashes and I was next to a very drafty window. Any one who has been to a hospital understands that the blankets are not that good. I had 3 or 4 of them because Amber didn't want hers. We
were woken up by the nursing staff doing a bunch of checks and everything looked good. The day time high risk staff came and visited with us. They were going to let the delivery progress on its own as long as mom and baby were doing okay and it was actually progressing. They told us it wasn't uncommon to go 24-36 hours. We hoped it would last as long as possible because with babies this young every day make a huge difference, especially now that the betamethasone was in place.
The day was pretty calm, we even had some family come visit us so that we could pass the time. My mom brought Jake and it was so good to see him. He is the best little boy. He did not like the hospital room though, he wouldn't even interact with Amber, so I took him for a walk. It was nice to get my mind off of everything for a little bit. We got some ice cream and lunch. Obviously Amber wasn't able to eat since she was in labor, but what made it worse is that they wouldn't let her have water or ice chips from probably 2:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Her mouth was so dry; they gave her these swabs that taste like mint and a toothbrush to help. She hated the swab and decided to brush her teeth with lot of water like every 10 minutes. Eventually she got a nurse that let her have ice chips and she was on cloud nine. She continued to progress slowly, in fact, they kept upping her pitocin, but she stayed at a 3 for hours. Then they brought up a C-section. They had told us about this, but we really didn't worry much since it only happened if things got bad ( things were actually going somewhat good for once). With preemies they have to make 2 incisions, one that is horizontal on the skin and a vertical one on the uterus. If this happens she will have to get C-sections for the rest of your pregnancies. Amber did not want a C-section at all, but honestly who does. We fully expected her to have to get one since nothing else was working out.
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| Amber's cup of ice. Yeah! Best nurse ever! |
Pretty much we were exhausted (I don't know if I can complain because I at least had food and wasn't in labor). Amber's parents arrived and we visited. They went to pick up some stuff from our house for us since we didn't pack anything. We didn't expect to be having a child yet. They did a check and found out that she was now at a 3+ and maybe even a 4. Finally, they were getting a little more comfortable and the C-section talk was delayed for now. When Amber's parents returned we had my parents bring Jake so that he could go with her parents. I went out to get the car seat for them and I came back to the room at 7:45 PM. I laid down to take a nap and Amber had a really bad contraction. The babies heart rate dropped to 58 bpm (normal is 120-160 ish). The nurse came in and had Amber roll over to see if a different position would work better. She started taking vitals and said if this happened again she would check to see if Amber had dilated further and possibly call the doctor.
Delivery
Amber's next contraction happened. The hear rate dropped again and Amber shouted, "I feel pressure, a lot of pressure." Amber pulled back the blanket and our son's head was already out. Then he fell onto the bed. This was honestly the scariest moment of my life. I started running around the room trying to think of what to do. The nurse pulled the code blue alarm on Amber since it was the closest thing and she didn't want to leave the baby. Our son, Jason, was laying on the bed and trying to cry (which is good since it means he is getting air in his lungs), the nurse kept shouting the the heart rate was good and he was breathing. After what seemed like an eternity, but was more like 30 seconds to a minute, doctors, nurses, and NICU staff had flooded our room. The high risk people had left the OR to come. Amber was having a hard time, but who wouldn't she was saying how little he was and that he was only the size of a barbie. I tried calming her through breathing exercises and having her focus on me and not the baby. She started to calm down, but kept asking questions like, "Why are they putting plastic wrap on him?" (FYI it is used to keep them moist and warm). He was born at 8:01 PM and by 8:15 PM only Amber, me, and the nurse were left in the room, which had been left in complete disarray due to the code blue. This was easily the longest 15 minutes of my life. We can't really remember a lot of what happened, but it seemed like it was lasting forever. So yeah we thought the C-section was the worst case, but once again giving birth with no one there is even worse, especially since with preemies they give birth in the OR even if you aren't having a C-section since there are windows to pass the baby to the NICU. We spent the next 40 or so minutes sitting there shaking, trying to figure out what had just happened. Doctors told us that Jason was doing great considering the 'non-ideal' circumstance in which he was born. Then Amber fell asleep and I went for a walk to try to calm down. We finally got to see Jason about 2 and a half hours after he was born on our way to postpartum.
Meeting
They took us the back way into the NICU. Amber started crying before we got to the room. We went in not knowing what to expect when we saw him. We walked in and saw his little body laying in the man made uterus. He was, and still is, so cute. We asked a thousand questions about what was going on, 'why was his body shaking', 'what were all the different tubes and wires', etc. They told us that he was doing amazingly well considering everything that had happened. They hook them up to a ventilator that puffs about 600 time a minute, this causes him to shake, but it is much better on the lungs than a normal ventilator when their lungs are so underdeveloped. Amber asked if he had webbed toes, so they showed us his feet and thankfully (at least according to Amber, I don't have a problem with webbed toes) he didn't. We felt so much more comfort after seeing him this time; we knew he was in great hands and that he was going to be a fighter. He weighed a whole 810 g (1 pound 13 ounces), they expected him to only weigh 700 g (1 pound 8.5 ounces). He also was 13 inches long, much bigger than a barbie doll. After this visit we went to postpartum were Amber had a whole bunch of tests done and finally ate the 'best sandwich ever.' This gave her a second wind while she was getting all of her tests done. I fell asleep at 11:30 PM. She stayed awake and woke me up at 3:30 AM to go see him again.
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| One of Jason's first photos |
Steven really hasn't given himself enough credit for how amazing he was through the process. He had enough emotion to not be a robot but he stayed calm enough for me; being calm enough to sit and help me breath when I wasn't able to figure out the process on my own when things were chaos was really the best thing he could have done. he was able to comprehend what the Dr's were telling us when all I could think was when ever they said something bad could happen it would. He was more realistic and took the hits as they came and quickly overcame them to help me understand what was going on. The experience was the most terrifying one of our life. It was also the one that made our marriage and our faith the strongest. Going through something so traumatic was so hard but we did it together. Looking back we saw all the blessings God had given us through the whole 48 hours. A lot of bad things happened but in those bad things a lot of small things were done to make a big difference in the good outcome of our sons amazing life. Steven is the biggest blessing in my life. Every time something bad happened and my husband was right by my side helping me understand, I fell in love with him all over again. I'm so happy he will be the person I will be the person I grow my family with and will be with for infinity and beyond.
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