I went to my non-stress test and A.F.I.(ultrasound)
appointments on Friday afternoon, my fluids looked good at my A.F.I., however Tucker was not responding very well during the NST. They like
to see him move and then have his heart rate jump up into the 150's, however he
was not moving hardly at all, and when I stopped to think about it realized he
had been moving a lot less in the last week, which can be fairly normal with
the bigger the baby gets and less room to move, so I wasn't too concerned about
it. At my Tuesday appointments we learned that sometime over the last weekend,
he had turned breech. My nurse was concerned that he was wrapped up in the cord
from moving breech, and then he had 2 drops in heart rate, down to the 90's. At
this point my nurse called my doctor(who I had just had an appointment with
that morning) and was told to take me to the hospital. From there everything
happened pretty quickly, I was put in a wheelchair and the nurse ran me over to
the hospital where I was put in a gown and back on a monitor within minutes. Tucker’s heart rate stabilized, but my O.B. was not happy with
the results and thought it best to just get him out. Luckily Chris was already
off work and heading my way since we were to meet up to go the temple one last
time that night, he made it there in time and I was rushed into the operating
room, given my spinal and prepped for surgery. The C-section went well, I had
two O.B.'s do the surgery, and I felt icky, but nothing too out of the ordinary
for surgery. I didn’t throw up at all during surgery, only once while they were
stitching me up, yea! Tucker came out and gave a little
cry, they measured him-21 inches and 9 lbs. 7oz (2 weeks early, he was a big
boy!) I got to see him and kiss his cheek and then he was off with Chris while
I got stitched up.
After some testing, they found that Tucker
had about half his red blood cells that he should have had-he was anemic and he
was jaundiced, which is normal at 2-3 days old, but not at birth . Then they
found a murmur in his heart and his oxygen was way low. It was quickly decided
that he needed to be transferred to the NICU at the children’s hospital for
more testing and better care. He was put on a respirator and a transport team
arrived. I got to hold his little hand through his plastic transfer box for
about another 30 seconds before my baby was taken and transported to children’s
hospital which is about 40 minutes away. That was really, really hard. I wanted
to see him and hold him so badly. I HATED being so far away from him, unable to
talk to him or do anything to give him comfort. I have seen Chris cry a handful
of times in our marriage, but nothing like when he came back from walking
Tucker out to the transfer. We both just cried and cried. Being pregnant for 10
months and then not having your baby with you is a horrible thing, those 3 days
away from Tucker were some of the hardest in my life.
On checking his bilirubin level, (which is related to
the jaundice), they found it to be very high, and rising. This is
dangerous, because if it gets too high neurological damage can occur. The
quickest way to get this down is to do a blood exchange, which is where they
remove his blood, 10 cc’s at a time, and replace it with new blood. This
dilutes his blood and hopefully decreases the bilirubin level. It also
helps his anemia. He had to have this done twice. All this seems to be
related to my being Rh negative. His reaction was an autoimmune one,
where his body was attacking his red blood cells, which is why he was so
anemic. The bilirubin is also related to this, and the dead RBCs.
I know that it is a miracle that Tucker is still with
us in this life. I know that it was no coincidence that the nurse I had for the
NST was on high alarm and moved quickly. When I think about how any one little
thing could have been done differently and Tucker would probably not have made
it, I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for letting Tucker stay with us. He
is our miracle baby. He is a fighter and so strong. I know that prayer and
fasting works, I could feel the prayers and love coming from Ramona and all
over the US.
We had such a huge response from family and friends and we felt incredibly
blessed and cared for.
