Dr. C has been amazing through all of this. This entire pregnancy we have been watching Coen really closely with weekly non stress tests and biophysical profiles. I have been shooting myself up with heparin and insulin roughly six to eight times a day. I finished my course of progesterone for the first time ever. Things were great. But in the past couple of weeks, Coen, who has always performed great for all the tests he gets each week, started to be really inconsistent. His biophysical profiles began to suffer. My blood sugar readings began to get a little wild, giving me vastly different readings on the same meal. On Friday, Dr. C did a cervical check for the first time and I was effaced and already dilating.
After calling a few of his colleages and having a long talk with me about when it was time to "pull the trigger," he told me he thought it was time to get Cohen out even if it meant a NICU stay. Given my history and the way things were going, he thought he would do better out than in. So he gave me 48 hours to get off the heparin for surgery and we scheduled a cesarean section for first thing Sunday morning.
I know I should have been better prepared since I was already three weeks further along than when I delivered with Evany, but I wasn't. I spent all day Friday and Saturday trying to finish up my work for the semester and get everything situated at home. By Saturday night, I was as prepared as I could be, and Sunday morning I woke up pretty excited to meet the baby boy.
Logan and I headed out to the hospital bright and early and my friend Aimee was kind enough to take Seth and Evany for the day. My aunt and uncle brought my grandmother and Ava and Jace to the hospital, and my mom rolled into town after driving basically straight through from Florida just in time. Kara brought baby Charlie and we all hung out as they prepped me for surgery.
The actual surgery went great. The hospital I'm in has been amazing. The nurses and doctor were great. The spinal went great. They had some trouble getting Cohen out as he was really packed tightly in there, but he did great and cried right away and had APGARs of 8 and 9. He has more hair than any baby I have ever had, and it's black just like Eli's.
They took him up to the NICU to keep an eye on his blood sugars while I went to recovery but within the hour he was following in the foot steps of his big brothers and was grunting and retracting. Throughout yesterday and today he held his own and was doing great just on CPAP. The NICU here is AMAZING and so peaceful with all private rooms for each baby. My family all came out today and got to meet him. It was s really nice day.
Within an hour after they all left, though, he started to decline. His oxygen, which had been turned pretty low, had to be increased to 100%. When the doctor ordered an x-ray to see what was going on, he saw that Coen's right lung had collapsed thanks to a pneumothorax. He came and talked to me right away, and within the hour they were working on removing the air in the cavity in the lease invasive way possible. This neonatologist is just amazing...he is really trying hard to treat Coen effectively while minimizing the risk of complications as much as possible. He put in umbilical lines tonight and is continuously checking his lungs. He's in the process of deciding whether or not to intubate Coen and give him surfactant to help his lungs develop. On the upside, his breathing did improve as soon as they removed the air from his chest cavity, so hopefully that is the main issue and the pneumothorax will heal and stop affecting him.
For me emotionally, I feel like the other shoe totally dropped. I feel terrible that Coen is having to go through this. I was so excited about how well my pregnancy was going, and I really thought I would get to have a "normal" delivery and keep him out of the NICU. I know there were reasons to deliver and that my OB carefully considered all the options, but seeing yet another baby hooked up to all the equipment and unable to hold him really sucks.
Tonight will be really important for Coen in terms of what the doctors decide to do for him. I really would love to avoid him going on a ventilator, but I also know that we need to do what's in his best interest. I just want him to be healthy.
On a good note, the doctors have been so kind and considerate here. They have been very understanding about the boys' history and have made changes in treatment for Coen based on issues both Seth and Jace have had. I couldn't ask for better, more flexible and understanding doctors to be treating him. It's been a great silver lining. For instance, as soon as they found out about Seth's hearing loss, they took Coen off the Gentamycin he was on so that he wouldn't be at risk for hearing loss as well.
So that's where we are tonight. I just finished a couple of tests for school and I'm in the midst of pumping and running milk to the NICU and trying to get up and walk and work through this C-Section pain as well as I can. Thank you for all of your comments and well wishes...they cheer me up a lot! I know God's got this. I just have to remind myself of that sometimes.
I hope this entry made some sense...my head is all over the place. Here are a few pictures of the boy, although unfortunately you can't see his cute face or full head of hair.
The actual surgery went great. The hospital I'm in has been amazing. The nurses and doctor were great. The spinal went great. They had some trouble getting Cohen out as he was really packed tightly in there, but he did great and cried right away and had APGARs of 8 and 9. He has more hair than any baby I have ever had, and it's black just like Eli's.
They took him up to the NICU to keep an eye on his blood sugars while I went to recovery but within the hour he was following in the foot steps of his big brothers and was grunting and retracting. Throughout yesterday and today he held his own and was doing great just on CPAP. The NICU here is AMAZING and so peaceful with all private rooms for each baby. My family all came out today and got to meet him. It was s really nice day.
Within an hour after they all left, though, he started to decline. His oxygen, which had been turned pretty low, had to be increased to 100%. When the doctor ordered an x-ray to see what was going on, he saw that Coen's right lung had collapsed thanks to a pneumothorax. He came and talked to me right away, and within the hour they were working on removing the air in the cavity in the lease invasive way possible. This neonatologist is just amazing...he is really trying hard to treat Coen effectively while minimizing the risk of complications as much as possible. He put in umbilical lines tonight and is continuously checking his lungs. He's in the process of deciding whether or not to intubate Coen and give him surfactant to help his lungs develop. On the upside, his breathing did improve as soon as they removed the air from his chest cavity, so hopefully that is the main issue and the pneumothorax will heal and stop affecting him.
For me emotionally, I feel like the other shoe totally dropped. I feel terrible that Coen is having to go through this. I was so excited about how well my pregnancy was going, and I really thought I would get to have a "normal" delivery and keep him out of the NICU. I know there were reasons to deliver and that my OB carefully considered all the options, but seeing yet another baby hooked up to all the equipment and unable to hold him really sucks.
Tonight will be really important for Coen in terms of what the doctors decide to do for him. I really would love to avoid him going on a ventilator, but I also know that we need to do what's in his best interest. I just want him to be healthy.
On a good note, the doctors have been so kind and considerate here. They have been very understanding about the boys' history and have made changes in treatment for Coen based on issues both Seth and Jace have had. I couldn't ask for better, more flexible and understanding doctors to be treating him. It's been a great silver lining. For instance, as soon as they found out about Seth's hearing loss, they took Coen off the Gentamycin he was on so that he wouldn't be at risk for hearing loss as well.
So that's where we are tonight. I just finished a couple of tests for school and I'm in the midst of pumping and running milk to the NICU and trying to get up and walk and work through this C-Section pain as well as I can. Thank you for all of your comments and well wishes...they cheer me up a lot! I know God's got this. I just have to remind myself of that sometimes.
I hope this entry made some sense...my head is all over the place. Here are a few pictures of the boy, although unfortunately you can't see his cute face or full head of hair.
