Long overdue update, and a long update....
Okay, wow where to start?! First off hello again, hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!
Our baby boy has arrived he was born Dec 4th.
I started having issues with my blood pressure and ended up being admitted to the hospital the day after Thanksgiving. While there they were doing once a shift fetal heart tone monitoring, baby boy had what they call a decel where his heart rate dropped into the 70's he recovered fine but this put me in the labor and delivery unit for 24 hour fetal and contraction monitoring where I was told I would stay until he was born.
At midnight on Dec 4th they started the process of inducing, using a med called cytotec not the main IV med that they use to induce this is only supposed to "thin your cervix". I started having contractions and he started having decels again so while I rested my DH stayed awake pacing and watching the heart tone monitors. The next day when I woke up he was sleeping and my in laws were there visiting. I was having pretty regular contractions but they weren't what I expected. By the time they would start hurting they would go away. I did however have a horrible earache so the nurse gave me some IV pain medication. We were waiting for the doctor that we had requested to deliver us to be available (he wasn't on call and this was a sunday, he was doing stuff with family and was coming in to start the pitocin at 2) I rolled over in bed and felt what I thought was my water breaking we called the nurse in and at this point my FIL woke up my DH (he had wanted to all morning but I told him to let him rest b/c they had said it would be three days until I delivered, there was no point in him seeing every contraction.) when the nurse came in she told me that my water had not broke, but that she needed to check me anyways b/c they were about to start the pitocin, she did her thing and then said..."Oh my God, you are at an 8, did you want an epidural b/c we need to get it now!" so things progressed pretty quickly. After the epidural my BP dropped (back to normal but low for what it had been) so I felt a little off and C's heart rate started dropping again so they started doing internal stimulation which then broke my water. AT this point his heart rate dropped and did not return to normal so my doc decided we needed a C-section.
Well when the doctor started cutting I could feel everything, and they gave me more anesthesia but I was still having crazy pain and they ended up having to "twilight" sleep me...that is the weirdest thing I don't remember a lot but my DH says C did not cry right off and that his cord was loosely around his neck. Everything seemed perfect.
That night I was still so out of it from the meds we decided to let him stay in the nursery, during the night his blood sugar was dropping and the next day they ended up having to put him in NICU to get IV sugar fluids to help maintain his blood sugar. That Thursday they d/c'd me but kept him, we went home to finish up nursery stuff...organization mainly and I got ready to take a nap, we had been home for about 3ish hours.
Then we get a call that we had 45 minutes to make it the hospital that our son was going to be transferred to a hospital 2 hours away for emergency surgery he had a bowel perforation and they did not know the prognosis.
When we finally arrived at the specialty hospital many hours later he was on a vent and very sedated the surgeon was awesome and put off so much confidence that the family and I relaxed. Well what was supposed to be a 2 hour procedure ended up being a 4.5 hour instead. Yet it didn't seem like that long because he had kept us so informed having a staff member call to the waiting room each hour to give us updates.
When the surgery was finally finished the surgeon came out it turned out that our son, had not had a bowel perf instead his stomach had essentially ruptured they had to remove what was thought at this point 2/3s of his stomach and he had a feeding tube in place he was also septic, he explained that this is a surgery he had only done twice (he is a surgery prof at Emory here in GA.) He also said that we may never have a cause to the reason of the surgery and that our son would be in the hospital at LEAST a week and that he understood we both had jobs and not to feel guilty if we had to go back to work and leave our Son there alone eventually. That is how long he was expecting C to be in the hospital.
Many days and tests later our DS came off the vent and we even had answers apparently he was missing the muscular layer of his stomach and the doctor explained that it was like a weak spot in a tire when he ate it just ruptured. He asked permission to do a formal write up of the case and said that this is only the third case they have seen in the last ten years. He then assured us that C would not have a permanent disability due to this although he would have to be on tube feedings for a long while to help stretch out his stomach at this point he told us a year.
We are now home, we have a tube called a "mic-key" in place that the doctor told us we would not be able to go home with, we were only in the hospital for a month and 3 days. they are already letting him consolidate his tube feedings and are now saying he may only be on the tube feedings for 6 months. The doctors have all told us how impressed they are with his progress how they all expected him to reach this point but not this fast.
The doctor also told us that our son almost died, he would have died had we been at home instead of the hospital and if the staff at our birth hospital hadn't acted appropriately. He then survived sepsis at 5 days old and also a condition called DIC that only about 10-50% of people survive (adults). He is our miracle child and I am very lucky to have him home he is my world!
I am trying to get in the habit of stitching some when he is napping if I'm not cleaning or napping myself! If I can get 30mins in a day I will feel very happy!
