This may be a little tooo much TMI, and I know everyone who knows our story already knows all of this, but for anyone else who is interested...
I was due with her at the end of March, I was guessing it would be more April, but to my surprise March 14th I went into labor, her at 38 weeks. Which isn't that strange, but with my first she had to get an eviction notice. While I wasn't sure if it was true labor or not, I hung out in our house waiting around for contractions to either stop or get worse. Of course my doctor told me months before hand she would be gone this day I went into labor, so I was hoping that it was just false labor. But at 5pm on the 14th things started to really move along and we started our 1 hour and 15 min. drive to our hospital. Everything was moving well I was pretty far along and everyone was expecting this baby to come pretty quickly. But once I hit 8 cm everything seemed to stop and we waited and waited and waited for three hours before I finally made it to 9cm. So the decision was to start pitocin to see if we could move along, this was almost 5am the next morning and my contractions started at 3 am or so the morning before! Once that started it was with in 5 mins water was everywhere, with the signs of the baby being in distress. And soon our baby literally popped out and landed on the bed. She was white, purple, blue, all the shades of a baby who was not able to breathe. I tried to look down at her and only saw this white ball and I thought i heard the doctor say, he needs the cord cut now. I was shocked that it was a boy! I asked in confirmation, "Oh it's a boy?!" and my husband said "No, it is a girl!!!" He cut the cord and they took her to work on her, right next to me but I couldn't see her at all. So many people showed up. The doctor did an amazing job trying to get her to breathe and then resuscitating her, he worked really really hard on her but it just was a complicated situation ... They called for help from the children's hospital which got there 30mins later and intubated her then took off. My husband left to follow her to the hospital and left me and my sister at the hospital, my sister had been with us for most of the time we were at the hospital. So honestly at this point, I didn't really understand what was wrong with my baby, I didn't think it was SO bad, the one nurse did tell me she didnt know if everything was going to be okay, but I still couldnt comprehend what had happened to her, especially since I didnt really see her. Then my husband called. The worst phone call I have ever received. He told me the doctor told him they would have to turn off the support in 24 hours and that she probably wouldn't make it. So, crying, I got up and got ready then went out to the hall and told the nurse, I'm ready to be discharged now. She hesitantly said, "Oh, okay, I will get the papers ready" and just 6 hours after having my baby I was discharged and heading over to the childrens hospital to see my baby.
When I got to the hospital I was able to go right to my baby. OH how that hurt. My poor little girl. I'll admit, I heard she had some stiffness problem and was contracted in her joints, I was a little scared of how she was going to look, but when I saw her, uuugh, it was wonderful and painful all at the same time. It hurt so bad because she was so beautiful, her beauty literally blew me away. Seeing her in that situation broke my heart to pieces, my stomach dropped to the ground, I couldn't breathe, and I felt like my heart was going to stop. The doctor then told us they thought her leg was dead or not working because it was so blue and limp, her jaw was too small, they couldn't be sure if her brain was ok from the amount of time she went with out oxygen, or how her heart was, they didnt know if her kidneys were working, they said she was missing a rib and had two fused together on one side, she had a cleft palate, club feet, and skeletal dysplasia. The hardest thing ever to finally see my baby and I can't hold her and I find out they think she isn't going to live.
This is all that same day of me just giving birth to her, so they gave us a room and let me take a nap for a bit. They started doing tests on her that day and week and we started getting results back. Her heart was good, her brain showed nothing abnormal, they found the missing rib, and the other two were not fused together, she didnt have skeletal dysplasia, her leg wasn't dead but bruised from having blood taken, and later when she was transferred to a larger hospital, they found she didn't have a cleft palate. What she was diagnosed with was having arthrogryposis where most her joints were contracted and stuck in position. She was stuck like a froggy and her wrists were pretty bent inward. Arthrogryposis isn't actually a diagnoses though, it is just part of another condition that caused it. Unfortunately to this day we still do not know what her condition is, or what caused it.
Though later that week I found out from the doctor in the first childrens hospital we were at, that it should have been impossible to deliver her naturally because of her condition, it doesn't allow her to lengthen her body out like normal babies do when being delivered. She seemed very amazed with the delivery and i was wondering why she kept telling my husband that he needed to make sure i was resting! Although it would have been better for Lua if I had gotten a csection, but we had no clue anything was wrong with her before she was born.
I realize this is very long, so if you would like to know more about her story I will add the caring bridge site to the bottom of this. The start of her life was rough, but each day she seemed to get stronger and stronger, when she ended up catching a cold from her big sister we were blown away that she wasnt able to beat it.
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/luasouza
No comments:
Post a Comment