Natalie loves to hold her bubba
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
7 Weeks!!
Oh WOW!
I knew time was flying by fast with Natalie, but this is no contest. Two babies make the clock spin out of control.
Elijah is now 7 weeks old!! And he is getting soooo BIG! He is also getting better and better at letting me sleep at night...so far 4.5 hours is a row.
The last Dr.'s visit we had went pretty good.
They took a chest x-ray - oh I wish I'd had my camera - they put him in this clear tube with his arms up over his head! It wasn't funny - but it was interesting. He did really well for them...so well that the x-ray tech was telling him to cry (because she needed to know when he took a deep breath so she could take the picture!)
His x-ray looked just fine.
Then the cardiologist checked his blood pressure with a dopler machine and found that he has some discrepancies. Usually the blood pressure in your leg is the same or just a bit higher than in your arm. Elijah's was different....his was lower in his leg than in his arm about 12 points higher - they get concerned at 13 points higher.
Needless to say he is still on his blood pressure medicine. They will re-check it in 2.5 months and they will do an echocardiagram.
On Sept 11 we will take him to a nephrologist (sp) - a kidney Dr. They will run a dye into his bladder and see if both of the lines to his kidneys are working and not swollen any more. He has something called - hydrophranosis (sp) Which is reflux of the kidney. So hopefully he will check out fine and we can take him off his antibiotics.
He is a wonderful baby! Hardly cries at all, except for during his fussy time - from 6pm till 9pm - He isn't crying the whole time - he is just hard to pacify during that time.
He loves his sister - he would rather look at her than me! I know this because I will be lying on the floor talking to him and then she comes over and steals his attention away. Natalie really loves to kiss him and to tickle his face with her hair.
Elijah is cooing and making all the sweet baby noises. He loves to watch his mobile and kick up a storm.
Otherwise he isn't doing much else.
I will post pics soon. Hopefully I can catch his contagious smile and show off his dimple!
I knew time was flying by fast with Natalie, but this is no contest. Two babies make the clock spin out of control.
Elijah is now 7 weeks old!! And he is getting soooo BIG! He is also getting better and better at letting me sleep at night...so far 4.5 hours is a row.
The last Dr.'s visit we had went pretty good.
They took a chest x-ray - oh I wish I'd had my camera - they put him in this clear tube with his arms up over his head! It wasn't funny - but it was interesting. He did really well for them...so well that the x-ray tech was telling him to cry (because she needed to know when he took a deep breath so she could take the picture!)
His x-ray looked just fine.
Then the cardiologist checked his blood pressure with a dopler machine and found that he has some discrepancies. Usually the blood pressure in your leg is the same or just a bit higher than in your arm. Elijah's was different....his was lower in his leg than in his arm about 12 points higher - they get concerned at 13 points higher.
Needless to say he is still on his blood pressure medicine. They will re-check it in 2.5 months and they will do an echocardiagram.
On Sept 11 we will take him to a nephrologist (sp) - a kidney Dr. They will run a dye into his bladder and see if both of the lines to his kidneys are working and not swollen any more. He has something called - hydrophranosis (sp) Which is reflux of the kidney. So hopefully he will check out fine and we can take him off his antibiotics.
He is a wonderful baby! Hardly cries at all, except for during his fussy time - from 6pm till 9pm - He isn't crying the whole time - he is just hard to pacify during that time.
He loves his sister - he would rather look at her than me! I know this because I will be lying on the floor talking to him and then she comes over and steals his attention away. Natalie really loves to kiss him and to tickle his face with her hair.
Elijah is cooing and making all the sweet baby noises. He loves to watch his mobile and kick up a storm.
Otherwise he isn't doing much else.
I will post pics soon. Hopefully I can catch his contagious smile and show off his dimple!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Arkansas Children's Hospital
When we arrived at Arkansas Children's Hospital there were friends from the Monticello Church waiting for us - what a blessing.
We were updated by a young female Doctor...she was very sweet and kind to explain everything to us. She told us that Elijah was a very sick little boy and would need surgery. Elijah had a coarctation of the aorta. Along his aorta there is a "kink" or a narrowing - like in a water hose. This caused him to have minimal blood flow to his extremities. This "kink" forms at about 6-8 weeks of gestation...so the problem was there before we knew we were pregnant. So, why didn't we see a problem during pregnancy.....you see, God is very clever. In the womb babies have a "bypass" this is a small tube that bypasses the lungs and sends the blood elsewhere - it is called a ductus arteriosus. This is lined with special tissue that slowly closes after birth. When there is a narrowing this causes the left ventricle to work harder, since it must generate a higher pressure than normal to force blood through the narrow segment of the aorta to the lower part of the body. If the narrowing is significant enough - the ventricle may not be strong enough to perform its task which results in congestive heart failure and shock.
After she explained all this- I just asked "So he is going to be o.k...you can fix him?" and she replied "Yes, this is not the most common thing we see, but we do see a lot of them."
This made me feel much better and the crying stopped.
She did inform us that sense Elijah's coarctation had went so long undetected he had damage to his internal oragans and they were going to have to wait for him to heal a bit before they did the surgery.
Just a note - the coarctation is very detectable. My advice to every new mother is to have the Dr. check the babies blood pressure in both legs and both arms...at every Dr. appt until he/she is at least a month old. The blood pressure in the arms and legs are supposed to be the same...if one is higher than the other it is usually in the legs and not by much. So if there is a difference have them do further tests. Especially if the pressure is lower in the legs.
Oh and if you are worried about your baby...don't wait go ahead and call the Dr. and if they say its nothing....go ahead and go to the ER - its not worth it....trust you instincts.
It was really a sad sight to see Elijah hooked up to every machine known to man. He had so many "holes" in his little body from iv's and such. I could barely get my hands in around all of it to touch him. I constantly wished to hold him. I was able to stay in the room with him. He had one nurse every twelve hours. That was really nice, because I knew that they only had to think about my son and no one else. We spoke to about 15 Dr.'s in our 9 days there. They all explained and re-explained everything. Tiring- but real nice.
Elijah had his surgery on July 4th. This is a rundown of the procedure; They made an incision inbetween his ribs under his left arm - they cut through the muscle and then pried his ribs apart - When they found the narrowing they put a clamp on both sides of it and then cut it out, then stitched it together. Then they closed. I don't remember how long it took. The nurse came out and showed us the part that was cut out - it was so tiny. He said that the surgery was really boring and he even had to wake one of the scrub techs. So that was good...no surprises.
Elijah stayed in CVICU (cardiovascular intensive care) for a couple more nights. We really liked his night nurse - Joe. He would encourage us to help take care for him; oral care and changing diapers.
It took awhile, but they finally took out the ventilator and he was breathing on his own and beginning to eat.
We were there for nine days...We were able to sleep in the waiting room until he was moved to a semi-private room where I could stay with him.
Things progressed very slowly...I was finally able to try nursing Elijah...oh it was rough...he had forgotten everything we had worked so hard to accomplish. It didn't help that they gave him a bottle first, but I understood, they had to see how much was going and coming out.
Before we could go home we had to do a car seat test. We had a, what we thought, was a two hour drive (really 1h 20min) so he had to stay in the car seat for two hours straight, no interruptions, hooked up to machines monitoring his heart and his blood oxygen levels. He passed! We did have to console him with sugar water on his paci...another reason nursing didn't go well.
After that we were finally ready to go home....we made it!
OH, Natalie stayed with her Nana 8 hours away!!! I had never been without her for more than a few hours and I had always been able to get to her quickly if needed....so that was hard for me...easy for her.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Elijah was slowly dying
July 2nd 2008 -
9pm - Elijah had been trying to nurse every hour and a half without much success and he was acting very sleepy. (not uncommon for a newborn) He was also breathing rapidly. Not struggling just breathing fast.
10pm - We put Elijah in the bed with us because his skin was cold...I wrapped him in a blanket and slept with him bundled next to my chest. A little later he woke me with a weak scream - He was sweating so I put him in his changing pad (which was in between Steven and I in the bed) I looked at the clock and noticed that it is time for him to eat. I tried to nurse him and he just wouldn't eat. It had been 6 hours since he had really eaten. I tried to feed him with a medicine dropper and he took in just a little and he went back to sleep. He was still breathing fast. We searched the internet to see if this was a cause for alarm and everything we read said "it's normal."
Around 1am Elijah was crying- he was cold again. I figured he was having trouble keeping himself warm and I checked his temperature. It was 96 degrees. Babies are supposed to at least be 97. I tried to warm him again. And he began to sweat. We checked his temp with a temporal thermometer and it reads 97.3. Normal. I checked it with the arterial thermometer again and it still reads 96. I think the thermometer is broken.
We were up and down all night.
We called the Dr. office at 8:00 they didn't seem alarmed so we made an appointment for 4pm.
Steven leaves for work telling me to call if he gets worse.
About noon - Elijah broke into a cold sweat - still breathing fast and every 30 minutes is screaming - his temp reads 95.
I call Steven and tell him to come home.
When Steven arrives Elijah has calmed down...not sweating....still breathing rapidly.
We took a few more minutes to get ready.
1:40pm. We are all in the car heading towards the Dr. office.
I call the office and tell them that he needs to be seen sooner and the lady tells me that if I can be there by two she can get me in. Perfect...It takes us 20 min to get there.
In route, Elijah cries and then sounds weak....cries...and then is weak again.
We arrive at the Dr. office and I get him out of the car...his head feels REALLY cold and he is sweating again.
Inside there is a line...Only takes one minute.
The receptionist asks me what I need and I tell her, "I have an appointment for 2 and you said that I could go right in...He is really cold."
She answers the phone....
I start to cry.
God walked a nurse by the window and made her look up at me.
She came to me and asked, "Are you o.k?"
I choke - "He's so cold."
She reaches through the window and grabs Elijah.....I watch him go limp in her arms....
She runs to the back motioning for me to come back.
Steven sees the nurse run with him and grabs Natalie up to follow us. They take us to a room where they have his clothes off with an oxygen mask on him....he's blue and not moving.
The Dr.'s came in and told the nurse to take him to ICU across the parking lot.
They usher us over there and put us in the ICU waiting room.
We wait.
Finally a sweet nurse comes in and touches my shoulder she says, "I'm not supposed to tell you this but your baby is going to be o.k." We calmed just a bit and then she continues, "The helicopter will be here in just a few minutes."
WHAT??!! I was thinking - If my baby is o.k. why do they need a helicopter?
About 40 min later the Dr. comes in and tells us that Elijah is stable. There are two things that could be wrong.
One is that he could have a bacterial infection in his blood - treated by lots of antibiotics and fluid and time in the hospital.
Two is a heart condition. They needed to do an ecocardiogram on his heart which they were not equipped to do.
They tell us that we can see him before he goes on the helicopter - but warn us of the iv's and wires.
We go in to see him and we are shocked even though we were well warned. He had several things hooked up to him including a tube down his throat and an i.v in his head. He was on life support. If we would have waited another 20min....he would have died. They had also tried to put iv's into his leg bone so he was bleeding there.
The helicopter arrived shortly after and they assessed him.
The Dr. from the helicopter administered a med called Prostaglandlins (sp) This was to re-open a valve in his heart...more on that later.
The helicopter then flew away with are baby.
9pm - Elijah had been trying to nurse every hour and a half without much success and he was acting very sleepy. (not uncommon for a newborn) He was also breathing rapidly. Not struggling just breathing fast.
10pm - We put Elijah in the bed with us because his skin was cold...I wrapped him in a blanket and slept with him bundled next to my chest. A little later he woke me with a weak scream - He was sweating so I put him in his changing pad (which was in between Steven and I in the bed) I looked at the clock and noticed that it is time for him to eat. I tried to nurse him and he just wouldn't eat. It had been 6 hours since he had really eaten. I tried to feed him with a medicine dropper and he took in just a little and he went back to sleep. He was still breathing fast. We searched the internet to see if this was a cause for alarm and everything we read said "it's normal."
Around 1am Elijah was crying- he was cold again. I figured he was having trouble keeping himself warm and I checked his temperature. It was 96 degrees. Babies are supposed to at least be 97. I tried to warm him again. And he began to sweat. We checked his temp with a temporal thermometer and it reads 97.3. Normal. I checked it with the arterial thermometer again and it still reads 96. I think the thermometer is broken.
We were up and down all night.
We called the Dr. office at 8:00 they didn't seem alarmed so we made an appointment for 4pm.
Steven leaves for work telling me to call if he gets worse.
About noon - Elijah broke into a cold sweat - still breathing fast and every 30 minutes is screaming - his temp reads 95.
I call Steven and tell him to come home.
When Steven arrives Elijah has calmed down...not sweating....still breathing rapidly.
We took a few more minutes to get ready.
1:40pm. We are all in the car heading towards the Dr. office.
I call the office and tell them that he needs to be seen sooner and the lady tells me that if I can be there by two she can get me in. Perfect...It takes us 20 min to get there.
In route, Elijah cries and then sounds weak....cries...and then is weak again.
We arrive at the Dr. office and I get him out of the car...his head feels REALLY cold and he is sweating again.
Inside there is a line...Only takes one minute.
The receptionist asks me what I need and I tell her, "I have an appointment for 2 and you said that I could go right in...He is really cold."
She answers the phone....
I start to cry.
God walked a nurse by the window and made her look up at me.
She came to me and asked, "Are you o.k?"
I choke - "He's so cold."
She reaches through the window and grabs Elijah.....I watch him go limp in her arms....
She runs to the back motioning for me to come back.
Steven sees the nurse run with him and grabs Natalie up to follow us. They take us to a room where they have his clothes off with an oxygen mask on him....he's blue and not moving.
The Dr.'s came in and told the nurse to take him to ICU across the parking lot.
They usher us over there and put us in the ICU waiting room.
We wait.
Finally a sweet nurse comes in and touches my shoulder she says, "I'm not supposed to tell you this but your baby is going to be o.k." We calmed just a bit and then she continues, "The helicopter will be here in just a few minutes."
WHAT??!! I was thinking - If my baby is o.k. why do they need a helicopter?
About 40 min later the Dr. comes in and tells us that Elijah is stable. There are two things that could be wrong.
One is that he could have a bacterial infection in his blood - treated by lots of antibiotics and fluid and time in the hospital.
Two is a heart condition. They needed to do an ecocardiogram on his heart which they were not equipped to do.
They tell us that we can see him before he goes on the helicopter - but warn us of the iv's and wires.
We go in to see him and we are shocked even though we were well warned. He had several things hooked up to him including a tube down his throat and an i.v in his head. He was on life support. If we would have waited another 20min....he would have died. They had also tried to put iv's into his leg bone so he was bleeding there.
The helicopter arrived shortly after and they assessed him.
The Dr. from the helicopter administered a med called Prostaglandlins (sp) This was to re-open a valve in his heart...more on that later.
The helicopter then flew away with are baby.
Elijah's Birth Story
For about a month I pondered the thought of being induced. I really didn't want to be, some have told me that contractions are more painful if you are induced and that there is an increased chance of c-section. Well, since I had a horrible experience with an epidural with Natalie I didn't want one again and with the thought of labor being more painful I really didn't want to be induced.
THEN my Dr. decides he wants to go on vacation on my due date! I realize that doctors have to have lives too but he could have told me much sooner so I could have found one closer to home. I had been traveling two hours to see this Dr for every appointment.
SO....we start discussing induction. He thinks it would be best especially since I live so far away and I began thinking it would be easier on everyone (except my uterus) to go ahead and induce.
Well we schedule the induction for June 23 10pm. I prayed for days that I would go into labor on my own and you know what....I DID!!! It was 4 pm on the 23rd and we were half way to the city where I was to give birth. YAY!!! We had a very busy morning...packing and loading, caring for my daughter and missing our naps! Well, when we finally were in the car and down the road a bit I pulled out my pillow and began to try to take my nap. Then I had a contraction....then another...I started watching the clock and they seem to be coming every 7 min. I made a deep sigh and quietly thanked God. I then opened my eyes and told Steven...."Honey, I believe I'm in labor." So we started timing them and for the rest of the way the contractions were every 6-7 min. We were to meet Steven's mother so we could eat dinner and she could take Natalie for us.
To pass time we went to Target and bought a mirror for the backseat so we could see our son in his carseat on the way home.
Then we went to pet smart.
Then we went to Ross.
(Yes I was still in labor contractions about every 6 mins now.)
Steven's mom arrived and we went to eat at Applebee's. We had a really nice visit.
When we finished eating my mother arrived and we took Steven's mom and Natalie to the hotel. After we had them settled in we headed for the hospital. I was thinking that since I was already in labor they would let me go and walk and come back when the contractions were 3-5 mins apart. But no...they wanted to go ahead and start moving things along, so they hooked me up to a small drip of pitocin. They told me to get some rest and that the baby would be here sometime after lunch the next day.
Yeah...we turned out the lights and were about to go to sleep when I turned the lights back on and told Steven, "Get up...I can't sleep with these contractions." SO for hours we worked through each contraction...they kept getting harder and harder to handle...We finally turned on the hypbirth...it helped a lot!
Then I just became too tired...I had been up forever and didn't get a nap...I was exhausted. So I asked for some pain meds. About 10 minutes after they gave them to me I went to sleep.....only to wake up to another hard contraction. (I think the meds only put you to sleep, I don't think they help with any pain)
I finally asked for an epidural...the guy was real nice and he did a perfect job....I didn't feel a thing after about 30 min.
I slept.
2 hours later, about 8:30am....My Dr. came in the room and said that I would be having the baby around noon. About 20 min later he said it was time to push.
He asked how the epidural was doing this time and I said, "It's like Heaven."
All I could feel was a lot of pressure in my right ribs (i think he was pushing off them with his foot)
But just three pushes and Elijah was here.
He was born at 9:32 am June 24....He weighed 7 lbs 4oz and was 20 and 3/4 inches long!
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
A Hug from God - Luke 18:16-17
" But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
Then my little girl, who's bottom I had just spanked came and sat in my lap and hugged me! Not just a little hug, but she held on for quite awhile...then she sat up and took my face in her hands and looked me over and hugged me again! The next time she sat up she said some toddler jabber and smiled at me! It made me feel sooo good! So I truly believe I was hugged by God that day!
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