Callie Ann

After 2 weeks of bed rest and thinking I was going to have a baby anytime, the doctor finally induced me on Monday August 20.  They took me over to L&D on Sunday night where I promptly started freaking out for the first time all pregnancy because I decided I wasn't ready to have two kids.  Nate kindly reminded me it was too late.  After a night of sleep and all needles were taken care of, however, I felt much better.  They let me sleep for a long time an it was about 10 am before the started the petocin.  My favorite nurse, Christi, who had taken care of me during most of my antepartum stay volunteered to be on call that day so she could deliver the baby.  I can honestly say I love that woman.  Everyday that she was there was somehow easier.  She was great to joke around with and took very good care of me.  Unfortunately, Callie decided to show up exactly one hour after she left for shift changes.  The next day she came to see me, walked in my room and goes, "8:09 girl? Are you kidding me?", which is pretty much how I felt.

Anyway, I slept and watched shows with Nate most most of the day.  The only hiccup came in the fact that I had a "hot spot" that the epidural has seemed to not take effect on which happened to be the whole left side of my uterus.  It really didn't bug me for 95% of the day, but things were moving slowly.  Around 5 Christi came in to check and decided she thought she felt the sac of amneotic fluid, which was supposed to have ruptured two weeks ago.  She called the doctor who cam in and broke  it.  He said that somehow it must have sealed itself back up while I was on bedrest.  I got another dose of epidural medicine and went back to sleep.  Christi checked me at 7 and I was only 4 cm, so she had to leave.  My left side was starting to get more and more uncomfortable and about 7:50 I suddenly got a taste of what natural childbirth must feel like. Now I was in pain, so I rolled over to call the nurse and decided that the baby was coming right then.  At first I'm not sure the nurse believed me when I told her but then she felt baby's head and everyone started to scramble.  Nate said the NICU team was literally running to get to our room.  That was that.  I powered through a few bad contractions and little Callie was born at 8:09pm.

NICU was concerned about her lung development, but she came out crying, which was a great relief.  After the nurses did their thing they let me hold her.  She stopped crying the second they handed her to me and I started talking to her.  She was trying really hard the whole time to open her eyes and look at me, but couldn't quite get her right eye to open all they way.  She was adorable. I got to fall in love for a couple of minutes before they had to take her.  Poor Nate didn't get to hold her at all and had to wait until the next day.  On the way back to my prison cell...I mean my antepartum room, we got to swing by and see her.  It was really hard to look at such a small baby with so many wires and tubes.  She was upset at all the poking so I put my hand in with her so she could hold my finger and cried.  I felt bad for her but it was the best I could do.  I talked to her while I was holding her finger and she calmed down.  The nurses were worried because she was breathing too fast and thought she might need oxygen, but fortunately she up being okay and never needed it.

I had convinced myself that having a baby in NICU would actually be a blessing in disguise, and in some ways it has been, but as we were leaving the hospital I saw all the other couples taking their babies home and had total melt down.  It was really hard to leave Callie when I knew I was leaving the hospital.  I pulled myself together to come home and see Kenna.  She and Nate had decorated the house with pink balloons and she was waiting out front to see me.  I got the world's biggest hug and she immediately had to show me how she could ride her scooter up and down the sidewalk. I'd forgotten how much I love my life and my house and how good it was to be with my family.  It was good to be home.

It is still great to be home, but life with a baby in the hospital is a lot harder than I thought it would be.  For the first several days I felt like I was drowning and I'm not sure my life has ever been this stressful.  I feel pulled in so many different directions and I feel guilty over every decision I make. I feel like I have to spend time with Kenna because I was gone for so long.  I feel like I need to go see Callie during all of her feeding times.  I hate leaving her alone.  I worry that she cries and the nurses, while they're great don't respond as quickly as a mom would.  I have pump, make sure I'm drinking enough, eating well, and then there is the whole rest thing. Somehow on top of everything I'm supposed to be relaxing and recovering.  Not only am I recovering from having a baby but it seems like every muscle in my body, especially in my back, atrophied from bed rest.  Everything is twice as exhausting and today is the first day I've been able to talk about or go visit Callie without bursting into tears.  For the first several days poor Kenna was constantly asking me why I'm crying and I'm not quite sure my answers were good enough for her.  At one point I think she'd had enough and just told me to stop whining.

We are very, very slowly getting into a routine and I am learning that at this my day is actually less stressful when I do relax instead of going to see Callie at every feeding, which of course makes me feel horribly guilty but the nurses have convinced me that I will be no use to her if I'm completely exhausted when she finally does come home.

Callie about the same.  I'm very grateful that she still has not needed oxygen.  Her IV is out and she is keeping down her food though she is not taking a bottle.  She was back in the incubator for  temperature regulation for a day and a half.  The nurses wanted her to focus her calories on gaining weight instead of keeping herself warm.  She is out now though and snoozing like a champ.  Apparently this is normal for a 34 week old and the nurses tell me she will start to wake up sometime during her 35th week.

 I love the time I get to spend with her.  She makes cute little faces and I can see that she makes and effort to open her eyes and look at me when I talk to her.  I feel like she knows who I am and I think we are going to have a special bond.  She loves to hold my finger when she sleeps.  I love to hold her and smell her little, teeny head.  I can't wait till she gets to come home and I can hold her whenever I want.

Kenna got a bubble gun in her big sister box.  She spent a good 15 minutes shooting the bubbles at me, throwing her head back and laughing hysterically.  I'm glad she's hanging in there.

Callie Ann

I am a lucky guy.  I had a quiet 45 minutes with my baby this morning at 5am.  She was awake for the first 15 minutes and was just looking at me.  I can't believe I have another girl in my life.  I already am in love with her and think she is the best.

 

It has almost been 3 weeks since this whole ordeal started.  I have to say that the end result is worth it. Little Callie showed up Monday night.  She is a little miracle and we are really lucky to have her.  I I think this is the first instance in our married lives where we really needed the prayers of all of our friends, family, and even people who may not like us very much.  Our prayers were answered and throughout the whole ordeal I could actually feel extra strength and comfort because of all the people who were praying for us.  God was and is very good to us.

The real hero is Dawnene.  As soon as she heard that Kenzie was weaksauce and had to stay at the hospital for as long as she could stomach it, she hopped on a plane and headed out to be Kenna's personal play pal.  Kenna ate it up.  This morning was actually the first morning that I have been home when Kenna woke up and she was not asking for mommy or daddy to get her out of bed, but was saying "Grandma".  Having her home allowed me to remain employed and I got to sleep over at the hotel with Kenzie every night, which made Kenzie a little bit less likely to go insane or blow her brains out. Thanks thanks thanks.

 I know this blog is gonna be a little scattered, but I will try to go a little chronologically now.  Our ward here is awesome.  We had tons of friends from the ward swing by to keep Kenzie company during her time in the big house and it really kept her from having time to realize she was stuck in a room for 350 hours.  People brought us dinner, brought her food, brought her gifts, and some of our Delaware friends even shipped supplies out for Kenna!  Her cousin sent her a package, Cyle and Athena sent flowers, all sorts of people let us know that they were thinking of us and helped us out.  It was amazing.  One of my co-workers said that she wanted to become a Mormon because she saw my post on Facebook and couldn't believe how many people wanted to help.  I was chatting with Kenzie about that one night and we realized that we feel more at home here in Texas than we have anywhere.  Sure there are things we miss about Virginia, but our friends here have made us feel like we belong in Texas.  Also we can't afford to move so we are stuck.... :-)
 

When Kenzie was first admitted, the bambino was breech and so it looked like she was going to have to have a c-section.  Luckily that changed and the baby did some gymnastics in Kenzie's tummy to flip around the right way.  So the doctors scheduled Kenzie for an induction on Monday August 20, right smack dab on Callie's 34 week mark.   The Petocin (sp?) started that Monday morning and Kenzie got her epidural a little later after the wavy contractions showed up on the screen.  And we waited.  Kenzie slept.  I got Chipotle.  Kenzie woke up.  We watched Rookie Blue.  Kenzie slept.  I ate a meat that could not be identified for dinner.  We waited some more.  We finished the season of Rookie Blue.  We waited some more.  We ran out of shows to watch so watched Bachelor Pad on Hulu.  Around 7:50, Kenzie sits up, says "woah" and tells me that the baby is coming.  Within 5 minutes there was a NICU team, our doctor, and a whole lot of nurses.  10 minutes later, the little girl made her debut.  It all happened very quickly and I was nervous that something would be drastically wrong with her since she was a premie.  They cleaned her up a little, which made her cry a lot, and then they handed her to her mamma.  Time slowed down a little at that moment and Callie stopped crying, opened her eyes, and looked at her mom.  She was beautiful.

 

She has not been on oxygen, and after the first day she got relegated to a plastic bed and is in charge of regulating her own temperature.  Yesterday her IV came out of her hand and all that is left in her is the feeding tube.  I didn't get to hold her for a while, as they were doing tests and making sure she was ok, but I got to hold her for a half hour at 5:30 the next day.  I made Kenzie stay sleeping and went to hold her while she ate.  She is perfect in every way (except the size).  I really feel lucky that she has done so well and that Kenzie is already back home.

Kenna was more excited than any of us to meet her baby sister.  She couldn't contain herself and has been fascinated by baby Callie.

Callie is tentatively scheduled for 2-3 weeks in the NICU before she can come home.  Grandma Dawnie headed back to Utah today, I made it back to work, and Kenzie is home.  The trips to the NICU have started, and Grandma Nancy is going to come out to help us out soon.

Hospital Rest

You’d think I’d have thrown a blog up a while ago, given that I have had nothing to do but sit in a hospital bed for over a week now, but its funny how when you have nothing to do and no end to that nothingness you lose all motivation to anything but sit and stare aimlessly.  This has been a really hard week and a half for me.  I hate being away from home and from Kenna and Nate.  I hate being stuck in bed and not being able to do things for myself.  I have been homesick and the thought of and open-ended stay has been depressing.  Last night I had a total breakdown after I saw my dinner.  I know that that is a ridiculous thing to cry over but food is literally the only thing I have any control over here and they kept sending me the wrong food all day long.  Normally I’m not picky but when you do feeding/swallowing therapy and you’ve seen hospital food hacked, puked, snorted and then had to clean any excess of out of someone’s mouth it really limits what you’re able to eat.  Even though the food here is actually quite good I can’t stand anything on a tray that reminds me of what I work with.  Bacon, eggs and pancakes don’t sound like a bad breakfast, but it is just the way they all look on the plate together.  It is a very “hospital” meal.  So anyway yesterday was the breaking point.  All my favorite and familiar nurses were off, all of my food was wrong and I just really wanted to go home.  What can you do? I took Ambien early and went to sleep for 12 hours.  I’d still rather be home but now that I had my one breakdown I feel better today and I think  I can survive the rest of my stay.

Nate put a blog up about what happens but for anyone who wants to know, here is my version (in probably more detail than anyone wants) -

Anna came to visit for two week and I took advantage of her babysitting while she was here.  Kenna had a great time with her and Anna definitely makes a great playmate, but she is not used to entertaining a three year old for days at a time and I think she was as tired as I was by the end of most days.  Some nights we just both fell asleep on the couch and Nate laughed at us.  I tried to squeeze some fun things in along with work during that first week, but my plan was to spend the second week not working and taking her to do fun Texas stuff.  Well, baby #2 had different plans.  

I went in to my doctor appointment early Monday morning and had no idea anything was wrong.  I felt fine and the baby was moving fine.  Luckily, my doctor is amazing and he does quick check ultrasounds at every visit for his and his patient’s peace of mind (blessing #1).  At the end of the visit he checked they baby really quick and goes, “uh…have you noticed any leaking fluids? Your fluid levels are really low.”  He did some test which was inconclusive and then looked at some fluids under a microscope and told me I had ruptured and that that meant I had to get right to the hospital.  He also told me the baby was breech and that she wouldn’t be flipping because my fluid levels were too low.  Bring on the C-section.  When I asked if I could go home before the hospital  he told me just to quickly grab what I needed and be back within an hour.  

My immediate concern was actually for Kenna.  For anyone who doesn’t know she’s kind of a mommy’s girl and I didn’t know how I was going to explain to her that I had to be in the hospital for an undetermined period of time while not having her be scared.  Luckily Anna was there and she took her shopping and Kenna breezed through the first day and has been a champ ever since.

I got to the hospital and they immediately started poking and prodding and monitoring.  My doctor told me that the biggest risk was infection and that over 70% of premature ruptures result in delivery or infection within the first 48 hours, but his goal was to get me to somewhere between 34 and 35 weeks.

Nate showed up at the hospital a little freaked out and we met with someone from the NICU who walked us through what would happen if the baby was born anytime in the next three weeks.  Kenna and Anna came to hang out and Kenna was happy to bounce around the couches and play with the toys she brought. 

That night they decided I was safe enough to move from the L&D unit over to antepartum where the beds are much more comfortable.  I had a horrible time sleeping that night and started to have contractions early the next morning.  By the time they hooked me up to the machine, the contractions were less than two minutes apart, so they took me back to L&D and started me on magnesium which is apparently relaxes your whole central nervous system.  That was fun.  I had to stay in the bed, get a catheter, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and my brain was functioning about 4 steps behind the rest of my body.  They had to keep drawing my blood to make sure my levels weren’t getting too high and I had to have two steroid shots – one for each cheek.  By Wednesday morning the top part of my lungs didn’t feel like they were working and my whole IV arm was burning.  I’d decided in the night that if the doctor was going to try to keep me on the mag for another day I was going to say some very rude things and ask him to just deliver the baby.  Luckily, they unhooked me Wednesday morning and my brain started working again.  That was the end of my contractions.  I haven’t had any signs of labor since that first night (blessing #2).

So they moved me back to antepartum, unhooked me from all my tubes and even pulled my IV.  The neonatologist came in and did an ultrasound and it turns out the baby flipped (blessing #3).  Looking back I realize when she was flipping because she was moving A LOT and it was actually quite painful.  Anyway, now that she’s flipped the leaking has slowed down and having her head down also blocks against infection (blessing #4).

That is all the eventful stuff that has happened in the last week and a half.  Other than that it has been a lot of sitting around and being bored.  Everyone has been super nice though.  My mom flew into town to help with Kenna so that Nate can be here at nights.  It’s nice to have the company and it helps take my mind off of things.  People from church have been bringing dinners, I’ve had a steady stream of visitors, and Nate’s work has been flexible.  We are very blessed and I can definitely tell that there are lots of people praying for us.  Things seem to be going our way.  Even the doctors are surprised by how well I’m doing, which I can only attribute to the huge number of prayers headed our direction.  So, thank you to everyone who has helped and prayed for us.  We really appreciate it.

I am scheduled to be induced on Monday, right at my 34 week mark.  My doctor is still very concerned about infection and he says that is the point at which the benefits of staying pregnant will start to be overshadowed by the risk of an infection.  I’m really not worried about delivery or about the baby because I know we are being watched over and the blessings will continue to pour in.

After delivering, the doctor called me with the results from the placenta.  It turns out it contained the beginnings of an infection.  We got Callie out just in time (miracle #5).

Alright.  Enough with the heavy stuff.  Kenna has been a trooper.  She is such a sweet girl and is always worried about leaving me here alone when she leaves.  I’ve reassured her that there are lots of nurses and doctors for company.  Her visits have been a lot of fun and always make me smile.  She is starting ballet in the fall and my mom took her to buy her clothes and shoes the other day.  She brought them in to show me, put them and danced and twirled for about an hour. 

 

Today her fancy European scooter (thanks Hollands!), which I order months ago finally came in the mail. She brought in to show me too.  She was so excited.  She said she had “waited ears and ears” for her scooter and that she “don’t know how it got in the mail.  It was this big (indicating about 3 inches) and now it’s a scooter!”  She rode it back and forth across my room, making sure I was watching the whole time.  I sure love that bug and I hope this next one is as fun.

Nate also got to run his half marathon on Sunday, thanks to baby #2's cooperation.  I'm proud of him and while he says he wishes he would have done better, I say, how many people even run a half marathon? How many people can run more than five miles?  He should be proud of himself, and he did it while having to act as a single parent.

Day 2...or Was it 3?

I am sitting here with my bowl of Lucky Charms and taking a break after a crazy busy couple of days.  On Monday around 10 AM, I got a call from Kenzie at work.  Our doctor noticed some abnormalities so he did an off the books sonogram to make sure our baby was ok.  It turns out that Kenzie's water was leaking and critically low.  Kenzie was admitted at the hospital within the hour and her contractions were steady and only two minutes apart.  They got the first lung steroid shot in for the baby girl, started Kenzie on Magnesium to slow down the contractions, and did a whole bunch more.  The first day was crazy busy and overwhelming, but Kenzie's contractions slowed down a little bit.  I stayed with her the first night and her contractions continued.  The second day was a blur as well.  I got to work from the hospital, so I kept busy with that while Kenzie attempted to snooze during the nasty Magnesium IV.  Her contractions were irregular by the afternoon and almost non-existent by the time night rolled around.

Anna had decided to come for a visit and happened to be in town during this affair.  She was a life saver.  I don't know what we would have done without her.  She watched Kenna during all of this, drove around, did our shopping for us, and kept Kenzie company when I was gone.  We definitely owe her one. Lixie is also a life saver and has helped a ton too.  We are lucky to have her around and are thankful that Kenna has Jenna as such a good friend.

Today - the doctor took Kenzie off the IV and she was off all fluids and able to shower by the afternoon.  Her contractions have stopped and now it is just a waiting game.  She is really susceptible to infection right now so if that happens they have to get the baby out of there.  If she has contractions again they will have to decide whether to get the baby out of there or try the Magnesium again.  Either way, we have made it past the first 48 hours so we are doing ok.

Now for a moment of brutal honesty, it has been pretty stressful to try to manage being a husband, father, and provider.  I can't do it alone and am really grateful for the outpouring of help that we have already had.  The second night when I was putting Kenna to bed, she asked "Why can't mommy come home?  I don't want her to be alone"  I had to put my head down while I cried for the first time since I was 19.  This house is just a house without Kenzie here, it doesn't feel like a home.  All I could tell Kenna is that I miss mommy too.  My prayers have gotten a whole lot more earnest, and I am just having to trust that God will take care of my little family.  I think he has answered a lot of my prayers because people are coming out of the woodwork to offer their help.

We are doing as well as we can be, and have more help than we could wish for, but it is still tough and I am not even having to be stuck at a hospital all day every day.  I am really grateful that she was at least 32 weeks along before this all started.  I will keep everyone posted.