26 weeks pregnant, end of March 2010 was when our lives took a turn down a road we never expected. I had my second ultrasound because in my first one (18 weeks) they thought my placenta was low, so they wanted to do a follow up.
Turns out my placenta was fine. but something else looked wrong.
we got called back in a day later. told us to be in at 5:00. when you get a call like that its the scariest thing. you know its not good. you never want 5:00 to come, because you dont want to hear what they have to say. but at the same time you want it to hurry so you can just KNow what it is.
our doctor told us about how it looks like CDH, but they are going to send us to Valley Childrens to Really check, he told me not to look it up, because if i do, im going to be scared, and it may not be that at all.
Ry told me not to look it up until we knew for sure. our appointment at childrens wasn't scheduled for another 3 days. i didn't look it up for a whole day, but by the second day, while Ry was at work, i just had to. I told him when he got home that i looked it up...well, he knew because i had a swollen red face from crying so much.
So, we go to valley childrens..and they confirm that it IS a Diaphragmatic Hernia. More Tears. We weren't going to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl, but on this day, we really needed some good news, so while we were getting the ultrasound, we told them to just tell us. a Boy! we knew it!
they lay it on us, the good, the bad, the ugly.. the baby might not make it, they dont deliver at Valley childrens.. if he needs ECMO they only do that in San Francisco... SO many things, we were drowning in information. the baby could have a chromesome disorder, downs syndrome, heart problems, his brain spaces didn't look right and his heart was moved over.
i was so sad all i wanted to do was cry. i kept praying to just make it Not be CDH...but everytime i'd say that in a prayer it was like i KNew it was. something kept telling me to say 'if it IS CDH, just help it not be the worst case, help him not to have a chromesome disorder..and all these bad things'
Ry would come home from work and i'd be in bed... or looking it up online just crying my eyes out.
No matter how many ultrasounds you get, they cannot tell how big his hole in his diaphragm is, how big his lungs are.. anything.
we just kNew he HAD to be OK.
we decided we'd deliver him at UC San Francisco. better safe than sorry when it came to the ECMO...(ecmo is a process where the blood comes out of the baby, gets oxydized and then goes back in, acts as a lung basically) He didnt end up needing it. thank goodness.
i was induced at 38 weeks. when we walked into the room to start being induced on June 6th i was so overwhelmed, i just cried.. i try to never cry in front of people, but i just couldnt help it. i tried to smile/laugh it off.... and i looked at Ry and he looked teary too. Its so scary not knowing what to expect...we Knew we wouldn't be able to hold our baby right after he was born, and we knew we'd be in the hospital for a while...but expecting that and actually seeing your baby get taken away right after he is born is not the same.
he was born at 8:52pm. he didnt cry, but he was trying to. his arms were stretched out and he was making crying faces, but no sound.. we got to see him at 10:51 pm..didn't get to see him move or cry for days and days...I stayed at the Ronald McDonald house a week later until August 13th.Ry was with us for a while, but eventually had to go back to work, so came up on the weekends.
its The hardest thing seeing your baby with all these IV's and wires and stuck to a bed, when all you want to do is hold him...take him home, want him to be OK
People have been telling us how strong we are and commenting on how tough this must be to go through... Yes it is tough...but i dont think it has anything to do with being strong...its just something that was placed in front of us and we have No choice in the matter.
our only option is to be strong.
we've cried, privately...we've felt sorry for ourselves and our baby..but we tried to stay positive.
in the ICN we'd only dwell on good things. his BIg lung, the fact his heart and brain turned out COMPLETELY normal, he passed the hearing test and the vision test...MRI was perfect. So much to be thankful for.
we were always positive in UCSF's abilities to help him.. i never once believed REALLy that he wouldnt make it... i knew it was a posibility, but we believed everything will work out.
It just had to.
above his him four days old, right after surgery, they gave him a cute dog patch over his incision..he's swollen, but did SO well during surgery..surgery only took 2 hours when they thought it'd take 3. below is the first time we got to look into eachothers eyes.. swelling has gone down a lot (on his right side) and he was able to wake up... he's so handsome.
No comments:
Post a Comment