I have desired to write about Jack and our child rearing experiences in general for a while and I frequently push it off and it just simply isn't a "right now" priority. Starting today, on what would have been Jack's 2nd Birthday, I am going to write daily (or try to) for the next 35 days in remembrance of the 35 days he lived on this earth. It will likely be unedited, imperfect, and intentionally raw - partially for the sake of time (I work, do school and we have a toddler in foster care ok?!) and partially because that is the theme of our story, imperfection (made perfect through Christ).
Today, I want to talk about birth. More specifically, medically complex birth. I get asked often if I had to have a mandatory c-section - thankfully no I did not. But I also did not expect to go into labor at 35 weeks and 5 days either and I am certain that is the worse option here. We came home from a week at the lake with Ike's family and as we are getting into bed Ike said "Gosh I really don't want to go to work tomorrow." And I think my body heard that and said "ok, it's go time!" because two hours later, I woke up in a panic when I realized my water had broke! My due date was Aug 11... it was midnight on July 12. We called the on call doc at our local OB office and they casually said "looks like you should head over to UVA" as if it isn't a 1 hour drive in the middle of the night 4 week earlier than it should be!!!
We got to UVA, they checked my fluid to confirm (HAH - it was so obviously amniotic fluid) and moved us to a delivery room. They told us "you will have this baby today" and then we texted our family so they wouldn't lose their minds when our moms eventually checked find friends and see us at the hospital. They started me on pitocin around 3 or 4 am and Jack's heart rate bounced all around for the first few hours. By 8am, they turned off the pitocin and his heart rate calmed down. A quite nasty young male doctor came in and "told" me (it felt more like a lecture) that we would likely have a c-section if the baby's heart rate would not tolerate the pitocin. Thankfully, when they restarted it around 9am, it was as if Jack had got with the program and his heart rate was stable. We walked around in the room, bounced on the peanut ball, etc all while we watched shark week on the discovery channel. By 3pm, I was in significant pain, tried nitrous oxide for a while to help me rest between contractions - that stuff was a miracle and that hour was a blur. By 4pm, the doctor checked and I was only 5cm dilated (and I was pissed since I felt WAY more than that) and the nurse asked about my pain level. I said I needed something more than nitrous so she left the room to get a med to help. The next contraction, I was grabbing Ike's shirt asking for an epidural (to which he said "ok, we can get you one" and later told me he wasn't actually going to let me since I had previously told him I didn't want one if possible). The following one, the nurse could hear me from the hallway and wondered if it was the TV or me. 5cm, mhm sure. Then the next one, she was calling the delivery and NICU team to get in there ASAP! 18 people filed in the room and 45 minutes later, he was out. So purple but screamed immediately and had the smallest little cone head and big eyes and TONS of hair. Ike cut the cord. He was on my chest for about a minute for delayed cord clamping. There were two things I wanted on that day - to avoid a c-section if possible (I didn't want to be recovering from a major surgery and trucking back and forth to the NICU) and at least a minute of delayed cord clamping in order for Jack to get all the good stuff in here. He was then pulled over to an isolette/crib/table and about 4 people (as many as there was room for) sucked out his nose and mouth, started hooking him up to an pulse oximeter, started forced Oxygen, etc. A few minutes later they brough him back to me and Ike for a photo and then straight upstairs to the NICU. Ike went in the elevator with him and I finally got that pain medicine I had asked for about an hour earlier.
Let me back up a little bit. We knew Jack had a heart defect that would require palliative surgery as soon as he was born. We learned that he had a birth defect at 11 weeks when they saw a cystic hygroma on the back of his tiny neck. We were told multiple diagnosis before going to UVA that were wrong. At 20 weeks they could not visualize his heart well enough and Maternal fetal medicine looked for an hour plus at all his organs only to say that we should do an MRI to check out his brain (we did so, nothing remarkable). At 24 weeks, they could finally see his heart enough to say he had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome - a congenital heart defect that did not have a cure, only a palliative surgery series. A surgery series that was started in the 1980s, thus the oldest people who had this procedure done are reaching their forties and quite a few have had heart transplants - so no answers in life expectancy and overall terrifying. We felt confident in UVA's care, we looked into other hospitals and stuck with UVA. We had the privilege of talking to a neonatologist for about 30 minutes at one of our Maternal Fetal Medicine appointments -we asked tons of questions about the NICU, breastfeeding, pumping, etc. But genuinely nothing prepares you for what we were going to experience.
Jack's birth had small hiccups but generally I am proud of the team that was present to serve us that day. I am proud of us for the bravery it takes to deliver a fragile baby in the way he had hoped (and in front of a freaking crowd). I cannot compare our story to others - I will always feel less than for obvious reasons (other babies don't leave their mothers arms for the first 8 hours, other babies don't go to the NICU, other babies go home when mom goes home, and on and on). But God was gracious to us through all of it, and it was very apparent that day.
Jack = God is gracious
Edgar = wealthy spear - our little warrior, rich in spirit
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