Happy Birthday Elijah!!!

He is finally here!!!  Sorry this is pretty long!

December 1st was an odd feeling day for me.  All day I felt a little wierd, Jenny had visited me and I had even told her I felt like I may bleed and that I just didn't feel right.  Shaun never sleeps over Saturday nights because he works at 8 in the morning but I had planned to tell him that I thought he should sleep over that night when he called on his break.

So around 530pm Jenny left and I took a shower, then I went on tthe monitor.  Elijah had 2 decels(his heart rate went down very briefly) which he has never done before.  The nurse had my turn on my side and he was back to normal.  I sat up and thought I felt what might be the start to a bleed, my nurse was still in the room so I decided to stand up.  I looked at her and said I'm bleeding.  So I went to the bathroom and sure enough I was starting to bleed again!  I had her grab my cell phone and I called Shaun right away, I was actually very calm calling him but that didn't last!  As soon as I hung up I started crying because I knew I was delivering that night and that these were the last minutes I would be pregnant with Elijah.

They got me back to bed and everything started happening very fast.  Someone was putting an IV in me (they just took mine out an hour before!), lab came up to draw blood, someone was putting me on the monitor, and anesthesiology was in talking to me.  I was shaking like crazy from nerves and I just couldn't stop.  They got everything set and wheeled me off to the OR.  I was still in my bed where they started to prep me until they moved me to the OR table which was much smaller than I imagined.  They had me sit up on the side to start the spinal, I was so incredibly uncomfortable.  I was still shaking, I had a million and ten cords being hooked up to every part of my body, I was so scared for Elijah and also nervous Shaun wasn't going to make it in time!

They layed me down on the bed once the spinal was started which went great because my legs got numb pretty fast.  They tilted me backwards a bit and towards my left side so I felt like I couldn't breath and I was super dizzy!  My blood pressure dropped a little so they fixed that but I still felt like I couldn't breath.  I was one of those crazy people yelling that I couldn't breath and that I was going to die!  The anesthesiologist kept telling me I was fine, my pox was fine, and that I wasn't going to die.  Of course being a nurse logically I know all of this but you're really not thinking logically, at one point I yelled "I want to be knocked out, knock me out and cut me now!" lol.  Needless to say they gave me something to help relax me and brought Shaun in right away.  The doctor arrived and things went even faster!  Before I knew it they had him out and I heard him cry, Elijah Mason was born at 827pm 5pounds5.8oz 18 inches!!! Things were super exciting but that changed quickly.

All of a sudden they were telling me that they were trying to intubate him, something that I never thought in a million years was going to have to happen.  They tried to intubate twice without any luck, he screamed his little lungs out inbetween.  They tried cpap which I guess wasn't enough, but his color stayed pink the whole time which was great.  They then said they were taking him to the NICU and that Shaun couldn't go with.  Once I was all stitched up they took me to the recovery room where I spent a very long, worried 2 hours.  They finally let Shaun go see him.  He was doing pretty good but they did have to intubate him and put him on the vent, they also put an umbilical IV in to give him sugar and fluids for his blood pressure.

That was the scariest and happiest day of my life!  He is now 2 days old and is so beautiful!  He is still on the ventilator but doing so well, his blood gases(which tell how well his breathing is doing) are very stable they changed his labs from every six hours to every 12.  He goes back and forth from room air oxygen (21%) to 31 % which is still great.  His respirations are much more calm now and were getting closer and closer to him getting weaned off the vent.  They started TPN tonight (total parental nutrition, which is nutrients with lipids to pretty much feed him for now).  They stopped antibiotics because his cultures came back negative.  Were hoping in the next few days they may try to do a feeding tube and give him some breast milk!  When he starts it will be such a small amount, maybe 1 cc at a time to get his stomach used to it.  I was able to change his diaper and do some cares on him today which was amazing.  Wednesday he will have a head ultrasound to check that he doesn't have a brain bleed which is always a concern with preemies.  They don't seem too concerned because of his gestation (32w6d) and size, but I am not going to breath easy until the ultrasound becasue I was certain he wasn't going on a vent.  I will pray pray pray until then that his utlrasound comes back clean.  I will also be going home on Wednesday which is going to be a super hard day for me.  The day he was born they estimated he will be here 4 weeks, I pray it's an uneventful 4 weeks or maybe less and that it goes by super fast. 

Skyler is doing great with him and even kissed the isolette window today after he brought him his first stuffed animal!  Please keep Elijah in your prayers, he is such an amazing strong little boy we love him so so so much.