It’s been crazy. We haven’t been exactly on top of keeping family informed and events documented what with graduating, and moving, and having a baby. It’s amazing that anything gets done at all it seems. I’ll sum up some main points and then flesh out some more detail on the last week of our lives.
Summary: I have my Ph.D., Katie has her Ph.T. (ask her about it), I do have a job, we are moving to Rio Rancho, NM in about two weeks, we are not packed up, we do have a plan, we do have a place to live, we will not have time to say proper goodbyes to everybody who deserves one, the baby was born (more below), and our immune systems are so far holding up.
Now, as for the baby. A week ago we left the kids with my parents and went home. Katie at 9 months pregnant suddenly decided that now was the time to deep clean the entire house despite the fact that we were supposed to be at the hospital in about 7 hours. Given that she couldn’t really do much about it she had to settle for me doing the dishes, some vacuuming, and a load of laundry.
We got to the hospital on Monday morning at about 5:30 am. This baby has been carrying much lower than any of the other children and putting a lot of pressure on Katie’s hips. So she has had to waddle, and she waddled into the hospital and was immediately escorted to a room where a team of nurses descended on her with an array of cables, tubes, and diagnostic equipment despite the fact that she had been perfectly fine just a minute ago.
Ten minutes before the C-section this baby who has been trying to fall out of her for the past 2 months suddenly decides something is going on and he doesn’t want any part of it. You could literally watch Katie’s belly shift as the he wedged himself sideways as far up under her ribs as possible. She was able to walk perfectly normally all the way to the OR without any problem.
The problem came later when after cutting my wife open at the midsection the doctor’s first words were, “where’s the baby?” Unfortunately, he was only half kidding. The baby was literally up under Katie’s ribs and apparently not very willing to come out. This doctor delivered our last two kids in under 30 seconds each (probably even under 30 seconds all together), but Zach took almost 20 minutes. I’ll spare the details but in the end it was pretty traumatic for both Katie and Zach. Zach was born at 7:54 am, was 19” long, and weighed 7 lbs. 5.6 oz.
Zach came out yelling like a banshee. Disparagingly for him, he was no match the nurses who decided they ought to clean him up and such. He stopped screaming when the brought him over to Katie and he could hear her voice and then started up again when they took him away.
For Zach the trauma in the delivery came on two fronts. First, the placenta got in the way of pulling him out. It was pretty beat up and ended up getting delivered first. This is much less serious than a placenta previa during a vaginal delivery but still managed to drain a significant blood volume out of his little body. The second was that he managed to swallow and aspirate blood and amniotic fluid during the delivery.
He was immediately whisked off to the NICU on account of the placenta issue and it was while there that it became apparent that there were other problems. An X-ray showed the fluid in his lungs and stomach. It also showed a small hole in his lungs due to the force of screaming his head off combined with breathing at about 150-200 breaths per minutes.
Luckily, he did not lose enough blood that a transfusion was necessary. He did require an IV to help with the blood volume because an infant does not have the ability to constrict the blood vessels in an effort to maintain blood pressure. As his energy began to be spent a nasal canula at a flow of 6 lpm at 36% oxygen was placed on him along with the two IVs (one in each hand). Despite the loss of blood they had to draw more blood for his labs since the placenta had also drained the umbilical cord of blood.
The rest of the week was spent in the hospital. The IV lines in Zach’s hands finally gave out and when they placed one in his foot his vein burst and his leg swelled up with fluid. They had to poke a bunch of tiny holes in his leg to help the fluid drain out. The IV was next placed in his head and was followed by a PICC line on the other side of his head. They tried to do the PICC line through his arm initially, but the vein collapsed on it. When the jaundice showed up he also got placed on a light blanket.
With the bed completely closed and a huge cord of fiber optics delivering UV to his blanket he kind of reminded me of an infant superman in his space pod being sent off to find earth. I resisted the urge to do my best Marlon Brando impression.
Thanks to the delivery and a bout of food poisoning Katie got to spend an extra 2 days in the hospital as well.
Today Zach is a week old and things are looking fantastic. He was moved from his NICU bed to an open crib today, was allowed to breastfeed for the first time, can pretty much be held anytime we want, is off the bilirubin lights, no longer has a PICC line or an IV, has finished his antibiotic therapy, and his lungs are clear. With any luck we’ll have him home by the end of the week.
Katie is doing great as well and is doing her best to ignore any doctors orders regarding “taking it easy.”
. I love you and hope your day is fantastic! Hope your brownie tastes yummy!