Happy birthday week to us!
We had a busy, eventful week at Two Jack Ranch, with the highlight being
the birth of baby Jude.
On Monday Phil
took Maggie to the vet for a follow up appointment for her valley fever.
Her blood test showed that she’s starting to
develop antibodies, which is what we expected since she’s been on
medication.
She’s feeling better too and
getting around more easily. Monday was also my first official day of maternity
leave and I spent the time with some last minute touches to the baby's nursery and
packing our hospital bag.
Tuesday morning I was in Tucson for my final NST which went
well.
Phil drove me to the appointment and waited in the
car for me to finish.
We came back into
Sahuarita and Phil treated me to a trip to the nail salon.
I was able to have a manicure and pedicure
and relax a bit.
They even let him sit
in the massage chair next to me while he waited.
In the afternoon I went back into town for a
last minute hair appointment.
Phil had a meeting on Tuesday evening and when he was done
he met me at Pinnacle Peak for a final “before baby comes date”.
We had a gift card to spend so we enjoyed the
nearly empty restaurant to ourselves and had a nice steak dinner.
Wednesday morning was full of last minute tasks: cleaning
up, gathering all of our hospital things, and I finished quilting the crib
quilt I’ve been working on.
I didn’t
manage to get it binded, but was happy to at least have it quilted.
Around noon our friend Randy and his wife
came over and he and Phil gave me a priesthood blessing before we left for the
hospital.
I remember having feelings of
disbelief that my pregnancy was almost over, that the next time we would be in
the car we would have the baby in the seat behind us.
We arrived at the hospital at about 2pm which was our check
in time and got everything squared away and got all my IVs and such placed
along with doses of antibiotics because my strep B test was positive and TXA
which was to prevent or reduce bleeding, since that’s a risk in a delivery where
a placenta previa is present.
It was a
funny coincidence, we had not one, but two friends who were also having babies
at St. Joes on Wednesday: another captain in Phil’s district and his wife, and
a couple from our ward.
The anesthesiologist came in a little after 4PM and explained
how everything would go down and asked if we had any questions.
We didn’t, as this would be my third
experience with a spinal block and honestly I was trying not to think about it
as it’s the most awful part of surgery in my opinion.
I hate it in fact and had a little bit of
panic attack when I had my last one.
We ended
up being put on standby as another of my doctor’s patients was ready to deliver
and we had to wait for her to finish, lucky for us she didn’t take very
long.
I went back to the operating room
around half past four for my spinal while Phil had to wait in the hallway.
I tried really hard to hold it together and
not panic, cry, or move, and while it took longer than I would have liked, he
was able to get the needle in the spinal space and the medication in without
too much pain and discomfort.
Phil came
in and the doctor got me draped and prepped and we were ready to have a
baby.
I had told Phil my main concern for him was to actually
watch the procedure and if possible take pictures since I’ve never been able to
see any of my children born.
He must
have done some major charming with the nurses and doctor, because she not only
let him take a ton of pictures over the drape, she even let him come to the
other side of the drape to watch the baby’s delivery.
I guess because of his medical background, she wasn’t
afraid he’d pass out or touch anything he wasn’t supposed to.
He actually got to watch our son come into
the world from what I would consider the best seat in the house.
Jude was born at 5:05 PM.
He had his umbilical cord wrapped around his
neck twice, but it wasn’t wrapped tightly and didn’t cause him any harm.
The anesthesiologist pulled down the fabric
part of the drape (leaving a clear plastic barrier between my face and the
surgical area) and the doctor held the baby up to the plastic so I could see
him.
He cried immediately, a loud,
strong cry, and began to pink-up nicely, his Apgar was very good (Phil said he
would have given him a 9), although he did a fair amount of grunting and
laboring as he worked the fluid out of his lungs.
Phil followed him out of the room to get
cleaned up and for observation after bringing him by for a quick stop to say hi to his mama.
I thought he looked an awful lot like his big
brother Arlo.
I was anticipating that the last few steps of surgery would
be over quickly, but it didn’t work out that way. My doctor found that not only was the baby’s
placenta covering my cervix (the placenta previa previously diagnosed), but
that it covered the cervix completely and was also on both the posterior and
anterior sides of the cervix, her words were that it “was everywhere”. Not only was it covering areas it shouldn’t
have been, it had actually started to grow through a weak spot in the uterus, a
condition called placenta accreta. You
may recall that I had a uterine window when Arlo was born, this is where the
uterine wall becomes as thin as Saran Wrap and the baby can clearly be seen
through the thin uterine muscle. Jude’s
placenta had adhered to this thin spot and started to grow through the uterine
wall so that when his placenta was delivered it didn’t come completely free of
the uterine wall, it tore the uterus and the laceration began to bleed.
I could hear bits and pieces of the conversation between the
doctor and the surgical nurse and knew there was a problem. After a few minutes, the doctor asked me from
the other side of the curtain if I wanted to have more children. I told her that I would like to have one more
if possible. Heaven bless her, she tried
for several minutes to repair the damage and save the uterus. The nurse told me
afterward that the obstetrician tried to sew the edges of the window together,
but the tissue was shredding as she was trying to suture it, it was too
stretched and worn out to be repaired.
From the other side of the drape I started to get cold and to not feel
well. The anesthesiologist wrapped me in
a warm blanket and at about this time I heard the doctor ask for two things, a
couple units of A- blood and for Phil to come back into the OR. My blood pressure was declining rapidly and I
was losing a lot of blood. While we
waited for Phil and the blood to show up, she told me that she was trying, but
it didn’t look like she’d be able to repair the damage to my uterus. Phil came back in and the obstetrician explained
to Phil that I was hemorrhaging and that she had tried unsuccessfully for
20 minutes to stop the bleeding and couldn’t and wanted his concurrence that a
hysterectomy was necessary. She showed
him the laceration and he agreed that it was the best course of action. I was in no condition to be making medical
decisions for myself as I was exceedingly tired (from blood loss and low blood
pressure); I did understand, however, that this meant Baby Jude would be my
last.
Surgery seemed to take forever.
I was cold, tired, and lightheaded and it
didn’t seem like it was going to ever end.
My blood pressure bottomed out, I believe my systolic was 82, before I
got my blood transfusion.
Luckily it
only took 1 unit of blood plus several bags of IV fluids to turn things around.
By the time the doctor was wrapping up I was
starting to feel better and my blood pressure was coming back up.
It took about two hours and I was grateful
when they were done because I could tell my spinal block was starting to wear
off.
I lost 2200cc of blood, although
since there was probably some amniotic fluid included in that, the doctor
reported it as a liter and a half.
She
cauterized my Fallopian tubes and left my ovaries in place, but completely
removed my uterus and almost all of my cervix.
I had to go to observation for two hours following surgery where my
blood pressure slowly worked its way up, although it wasn’t normal again for a
couple of days, and got to sit under an air warmer until my body temperature
came back up to normal.
I got to nurse
the baby and spend time admiring his adorable little features and counting
fingers and toes.
I was shocked that
baby Jude has a lot of red/blonde hair.
I
figured he would either be bald or have dark hair like his daddy, so the red hair was a surprise!
Jude was born
Wednesday, January 6
th, 2021 at 5:05PM, and weighed 7 lbs. 13 oz. and was 19 ¼”
long. He had blue eyes and red hair.
We were moved to our permanent room where we settled in for
a restless first night.
The baby was
doing a lot of grunting, he was eating pretty well, but pretty much didn’t stop making noise.
The nurse changed the baby’s
first diaper while Phil watched, he got the second one and third one that was a
real mess at 3AM.
He handled it like a
champ!
The pediatrician came in to see
the baby in the morning and said he was getting good oxygen, but we needed to keep
an eye on it since he was grunting so much.
On Thursday afternoon the nurse came in to give him his first bath and he
screamed pretty much the whole time and after that, the grunting went away, so
I guess he cleared whatever leftover amniotic fluid was bothering him.
Since this wasn’t my first c-section, I knew that if I
wanted to go home sooner rather than later I needed to be getting out of bed
and walking on my own as soon as possible.
I walked to the
bathroom with help Thursday afternoon and was able to be disconnected from all
of my monitors and IVs by Thursday evening (after getting my RhoGAM injection
since the baby has O+ blood).
I showered
and put on my own PJs and made it a point to be eating breakfast sitting in a chair
out of bed when my doctor came in Friday morning.
She said that as long as the pediatrician
signed off, we could go home Friday evening.
Jude had is circumcision and hearing test late morning and we were
discharged by two o’clock in the afternoon and headed for home.
When we got home, Phil’s mom had arrived from New Mexico and
had brought the kids lunch.
They were
very excited to see their new baby brother and swarmed the car seat as soon as
we came in the door.
Everyone took turns
holding baby Jude.
My mom stopped over
for a little while to hold the baby too.
Phil had asked his mom to come stay with us, I
really enjoyed having her and was thankful for the extra help.
The baby was very fussy the first night home,
he was struggling with a gassy tummy, but after a couple of rough nights, he
started to sleep in longer chunks of time and not be as cranky during his waking
hours.
My wonderful mother-in-law made
sure we were well fed and helped wherever we needed her.
Those first days home were kind of a blur,
but I’m thankful for friends that brought by food for the kids while we were
gone and all the well wishes we received.
Now that I’ve gotten through the first week and the first
few sleepless nights, I’ve had some opportunities to reflect on what it means
to be a new mother again and to process my feelings about the finality of my
unwanted hysterectomy.
I’m in awe of the
beauty of bringing a life into the world again and am also incredibly sad that I won't ever have the opportunity to do it again. I think there's a profound difference between deciding that you're done having children and having that decision made for you. I feel like I'm not allowed to be sad or disappointed because I'm so fortunate: lucky that I got to have one more, that I never struggled with infertility or pregnancy loss, lucky we didn't have more serious complications. I am grateful, but I think its also ok that I feel loss too. My heart is both filled with gratitude for the blessing of four healthy children and grief that there can't ever be another. I know that my very skilled doctor did all she could to change the outcome and when I look at the situation as a whole, while I'm sad, I'm also at peace with it and that's a very good place to be.
