A Week We Will Never Forget

As many who may be reading this know, this week has been an unforgettable one for our family. This week was planned as being a Fourth of July vacation with Ryan's family. We arrived at our destination Monday, July 1st, in the early evening. We were able to surprise Ryan's parents (they didn't know we were visiting). And very shortly after the surprise I talked to my doctor on the phone about the spotting I had been having, which he seemed not too concerned with the week before. I talked to him because upon arriving in Michigan, the signals my body was giving had changed. The spotting was only slightly worse than before, but it was now red, which was enough for me to be worried. And I was thinking I was feeling some cramping, but wasn't sure because I thought it could be my mind playing tricks on me.

When I talked to my doctor, he told me to go to labor and deliver right away as it was something that concerned him. Well, I was out of state, so I just had to go to the closest hospital that took our insurance. We arrived at the hospital sometime around 7 or 8 that evening. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lot of people that needed medical attention that same night, so we had to wait until I could be taken back to be examined. During our wait time, I noticed what I had thought might be some cramping was definitely turning in cramping. They checked me and said i was dilated to 2 cm. Which is not horrible in its self, even if it is undesirable. But when I said the contractions were beginning to come about every 3 to 5 minutes and they were beginning to hurt,  this seemed to kick them into gear a little bit. They hooked me up to the IV and some magnesium sulfate and put me in a labor and delivery room. I would like to add that magnesium sulfate is no fun to have running through your veins as it makes you feel like you're on fire, and it makes you feel like you have the flu.

After being on the magnesium to help protect the baby's brain, and being given two steroid shots to help develop the baby's lungs, and getting the contractions under control, they wanted to see if an infection was causing the premature labor. The reason for this is, if there was an infection they did not want to stop the labor as it would be safer for the baby to be outside of the infection rather than inside with it. Plus, if there was infection, there was a threat to myself as well. In order to test for infection, they had to do an amniocentesis. A procedure I did not enjoy, and prefer to never have to do again. It was also a hard decision for us to make as there were pros and cons to doing the test and pros and cons to not doing it.

After the amniocentesis, the labor seemed to be under control, so they moved me to a different room. Things seemed stable at that point, and my mind switched to thinking about how long I was going to be on bed rest, which at that point was seeming like a very long time. I was still able to get up to go to the bathroom though, so it really wasn't as bad as I had thought. As the day went by on Wednesday, toward evening I began experiencing more bleeding. The doctor came in to do an ultrasound to check the amniotic fluid to see if it was leaking. When she saw that the fluid looked fine, she decided to do an exam to see if maybe I had dilated some more. What she found instead was the amniotic sack that was trying to make its way out through the room the cervix had given it by being 2 cm dilated. They immediately rushed me over to labor and delivery, thinking the baby was going to come at any second. This was very emotional for us, and everything was very rushed and intense.

Surprisingly to the doctors, my water never broke, and our sweet baby girl continued to hang out in my uterus. This was a huge answer to prayer, because the longer we could keep her inside the better chance she had of survival. Night turned to morning, and combined with the medicine they were giving me, and being laid completely flat, and even sometimes with my head lower than my feet, we had another several hours of her staying in the womb. This wast great! As another surprise to the doctors, our sweet little girl was able to stay in the womb until she she was 24 weeks and 2 days, on Friday evening.

Everything happened so fast on Friday, it seemed like. I had begun feeling frequent, painful contractions, for which we decided an epidural would be the best and safest option for relief and in case of an emergency c-section. The epidural seemed to help the pain for a couple of hours, and then I began to feel contractions again. At one point, I had a pretty strong contraction, and felt a gush of fluids, which up until this point had just been blood. When the nurse checked me, she had a somewhat quizzical look on her face. She was trying to figure out if my water had broken. After a minute or two, she said she thought the color change in fluid was due to the catheter line leaking. But, the doctor, who had also come in to check things out, decided to leave the room to get the ultrasound machine so she could make sure I wasn't more dilated. No sooner had she left the room, I looked at the nurse and said, "She coming out!" The nurse was quite calm, and paged for the NICU team to come down. A new doctor, the main delivery doctor (whom I had not met up until his point), came into the room, took a glance and gave me instructions to push with everything I had as soon as I felt pressure. My nurse was not quite as enthusiastic just yet and leaned in closely to me and said, "Don't push yet, wait for the NICU team to get here. There will be here any second." So I listened to the nurse, because I realized the team needed to be there as soon as this baby girl was born. Thankfully, they arrived seconds later, because I had another strong contraction and needed to push. This baby girl was coming, and she was coming fast! I only had to push once and she was born. Everything happened so very quickly--all in about three minutes.

After she was born, the NICU team began quickly working on her. I don't remember much of this part. I felt like I was in a daze. We had been warned ahead of time that the NICU team would be calling out information and orders that might sound pretty scary, so I tried not to listen. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult to block out all the sound. I felt like I wasn't even really in the room. Everything was so surreal.

Those next few minutes follow the birth where full of anxiety though, even though I was attempting to not listen to what they were saying. We had to wait to see if she was going to stay alive. Those are difficult thoughts to deal with. But God was hearing all of the prayers for our little girl, and it was in His Will to answer them. So our sweet baby survived and was rushed up to the NICU, where she has been residing since Friday evening.

This week will be one we will never forget. We will never forget the anxious thoughts and feelings. We will never forget the hundreds of people who prayed for us and our baby girl. We will never forget the peace that God gave us the whole way through. A peace that makes no sense, that surpasses all understanding. This week will be one to remember always. The birth of our perfect baby girl, Serenity Hope.