My blog became unimportant to me on January 18th 2016. The night before I couldn't sleep. I got up to clean the house in the middle of the night for the first time in my life. I just "needed to". At 3am I convinced my pregnant body to go and get some sleep before the alarm went off.
6AM came around and when I went into the bathroom I panicked. Was that my mucus plug? It couldn't be I was only 24 weeks pregnant. I called the doctor and my husband drove me to labor and delivery to be checked out. They monitored me for 3 hours. Not one contraction and I was closed. They said this happens and 99% of the time the mucus plug grows back, no worries.
By noon contractions started but they told me to expect cramps due to the exam. By 3 they were 90 seconds apart and lasting 45 seconds. My boss wanted to call an ambulance, but I convinced her to simply have my husband come pick me up. Somehow he turned a 30 minute commute into a 10 minute one and the same on the way to the hospital.
It was only a few hours later that I gave birth to our son, F. Labor was awful. I had planned out how to natural birth and knew that back labor was the worse, but I had to stay on my back to try to slow down labor. I had steroids and magnesium shooting through me making me itch and burn on top of everything. The contractions seemed to stop and they didn't believe me when I said it was time the baby wanted to come. The machines were detecting zero contractions, but at last I convinced the nurse to have the doctor check. By the time he was there the baby was on his way. The doctor screamed push and I screamed "No! He isn't ready! He'll die!" But push I did. Two pushes and he was out. The NICU team was there an shoved a camera in my husbands hands to capture the moments of life that possibly would be his only ones. I got up off the bed and walked across the room the doctor followed me and held a towel between my legs to catch the blood as I watched my son breathing with tubes. He was beautiful. He was scary. They took him away.
Back on the bed, it was time to push. It didn't work. The placenta wouldn't come. K was with the baby as I requested he do when they took me off to surgery. When I woke up I tried to sit up. I wanted to see F. I needed to know he was okay. They kept pushing me down. Finally they let K come and see me and together they brought us back to the NICU. The next four months were the longest months, days, and minutes I have ever endured.
There were several times we never thought he would make it. Helicopter rides to a different city to live for three of the months in a Ronald McDonald house. Surgeries that lasted twice as long and where the nurse comes and says "The doctor needs to speak with you in a private room" after you have seen surgeon after surgeon come out and give good news, to find out your son is in respiratory failure, and on and on and on. Those were long days when I forgot I even had a blog.
Then we came home and there were hospital monitors and oxygen tanks in our own home. We weren't allowed to have visitors. He qualified for home health care when I returned to work in August. Scrubbing stations and fast masks in our own home became the new norm. Therapies and doctors appointments kept us busy, but slowly and steadily the fear subsided and the joys of everyday moments took over. They were there in the beginning, but now they were there more than the fear. The nightmares went away and it was okay.
He will turn one next week and he came off of oxygen last month. He is crawling and doing perfect considering how young he was when he entered the world.
He has consumed every moment and that is why I haven't posted. I haven't cared. K, F, and I we cling to each moment we have together as if it were our last and we are closer for it. But in case any of you ever came looking I wanted you to know where I had gone, and what had happened.
He still wears a oximeter probe at night connected to a monitor and that is our normal. I think I might miss it when it is gone. I doubt I will write often. We are trying to get pregnant again and F is moving and wiggling. I still have one more class to take in grad school before I can keep me job without fear of losing it. That will keep me busy this semester. I work, manage his medical needs, take care of him and K, take care of our home. I had forgotten this until I went looking for a blog. A blog to help me with a question I had. When I was looking I saw blogger and remembered, Oh yeah, once upon a time I had a blog.
