M’s Story February 11, 2007

T and I waited ten years before we decided we were ready to welcome a child into our family.  We tried for 18 months before finding out M was on the way.  I can remember seeing that positive pregnancy test and waking T up to tell him that we were finally pregnant. 

For the most part, my pregnancy was uneventful.  I had the nausea of morning sickness but no actual vomitting.  I felt so blessed since I’ve had friends who had morning sickness with horrible vomitting even up to the day of delivery.  The hardest part for me was the extreme fatigue of the first trimester.  There were many days that I longed to nap in my car on my lunch time at work.  I was so glad when I finally had a little energy again.

Then, I went in for a check-up on March 18, 2005.  I was 28 weeks along.  They did all the normal checks at the obstetrician’s office, weight, blood pressure, pee in the cup, etc.  The doctor came in and listened to M’s heartbeat.  She asked me if I was having any headaches, blurred vision, abdominal pain and seemed suprised when I denied each one. 

“Did they tell you what your blood pressure was,” she asked.  “It’s 150/100.  The protein in your urine was up.  I’m sending you over to the hospital.  You’re showing signs of pre-ecclampsia.”

She gave me all the instructions for what floor to go to at the hospital (which was attached to her office building) and said she would see me over there a little later in the evening. 

I walked out to the car and sat there for a minute before I called T who I knew had just gotten home from work. 

“I don’t want you to worry,” I said to prepare him, “but the doctor is sending me over to the hospital.” 

We talked for a minute so I could tell him the things I wanted him to bring for me, and I headed up to the obstetric floor at the hospital.  They got me all checked in and sent me for an ultrasound to check M before hooking me up to the fetal monitors to keep an eye on her and a monitor to check my blood pressure every 30 minutes. 

Before the weekend was up, I spent a day on magnesium to bring my blood pressure down, was given 2 doses of steroids to help M’s lungs develop in anticiation of her early arrival, and met with the neonatologist who informed us that a baby born at M’s gestational age had a good chance of surviving. 

Let me just say that while I was so grateful for the information shared by the neonatologist, the magnesium remains the most potent memory I have of those first few days.  For any other ladies out there who’ve experienced it, you know what I’m talking about.  I was in a fog the entire time I was receiving it.  T said I spent the day asking him the same questions over and over or just trailing off mid-sentence when I was trying to speak.  That stuff will throw you for a loop.

Anyway, I spent a week at the first hospital before my OB felt I would be better served at the women’s hospital in the medical center.  So off I went in an ambulance and everything. 

Here I am in the back of an ambulance in rush hour traffic trying to stay calm so my BP doesn’t get any worse than it already was.  The EMT with me kept monitoring my pressure and asking me if I felt okay.  Before long, she leaned up and said to her partner, “you might want to light it up.”  That’s reassuring. 

Once we arrived at the hospital, I was whisked to a labor and delivery room where the nurses settled me in for….you guessed it….more monitoring.  At one point, they had T go down the hall to fill out some paperwork, and after he left asked me the standard domestic violence screening questions that I’m sure they ask all patients.  One of the questions was “do you feel anyone is trying to control you.”  My reply was, “just this baby!”

Seeing as the L & D room was filled with all kinds of delivery equipment (hence the deliver part of Labor and Delivery), I was glad when they shipped me down the hall to a regular room after a night or two.  This was where I spent the next two weeks trying to keep M cooking for as long as possible. 

During the frequent ultrasounds to check M, the perinatologists found that she wasn’t growing and the amount of amniotic fluid was getting very low….only about 25% of what it should be.  They speculated that my BP spikes had damaged the placenta, and M wasn’t getting the nutrients she needed to grow.  It was time for her to come on out.   She would be 8 and 1/2 weeks early. 

We spent the day waiting for the time for my c-section to arrive.  Finally, I was brought into the OR and given my spinal.  I was nervous about the surgery, M coming early, and the thought of a needle in my spine.  The anesthesologist had to give me a little Versed to help me relax enough to get the spinal going.

I have to say that having an epidural is one of the strangest feelings.  I could feel them touching and pulling and what have you, but felt no pain at all.  That was very strange!  Not that I’m complaining.  Not feeling pain during the surgery is a good thing for sure!

Before we knew it, they were pulling M out, and she gave a little cry immediately!  We hadn’t expected her to make any noise at all!  She looked bigger than we expected too which was reassuring.  She was 2 pounds and 11 ounces and 15 inches long.  Her apgar scores were 8 and 9, another unexpected blessing.  Amazingly, she also never needed supplemental oxygen or assistance breathing.  She did have some apnea episodes, but the fact that she never required extra O2 or mechanical ventilation was “a miracle” per the neonatologist. 

T stayed with her until they whisked her off to the NICU.  He came with me to recovery and stayed with me while I dozed and shivered under all the blankets they piled on me.  Before long, they sent me back to my room to try and get a little rest.  But it wasn’t long before the neonatologist on duty while M was born came in with a consent form for me to sign.  She wanted to do a spinal tap on M to see if she had an infection as that was the possible cause of her apnea episodes.  I signed it while T was sacked out on the couch and tried to go back to sleep thinking about M.

In the morning, T talked to me about how scared he got when M had her apnea episodes after delivery.  He said he felt so helpless watching her stop breathing.  I asked him to go to the NICU to look at her for me since I couldn’t yet get there.  I could tell he was nervous about  if he could handle seeing her do poorly, but he went and came back before long telling me how good she was doing.  Later that day, I was able to climb into a wheelchair to see her myself.   She was so small inside that isolette.  I remember that the nurse took the time to talk with us about how she was doing and explain the tubes and leads.  I think I was still in a little shock at this point. 

M was several days old before I was able to hold her. She was doing well and holding her own, but I just broke down in tears after holding her. Just taking in her fragility and the road she had to travel was hard. But it was also an amazing joy to feel my child in my hands.

Much of my remaining time in the hospital was spent attached to a breast pump. The lactation consultant had wheeled a pump into my room early in the morning after M was born and worked with me on how to get my milk established so they could eventually give M mamma’s milk.  Since then, I had been faithfully pumping every 3 hours while praying for M the entire time.  I had decided that pumping sessions would also be prayer sessions where I prayed for M and for peace.  That way, she was being prayed for around the clock all day long. 

A couple of days after starting my affair with the breast pump, my milk really came in with a vengeance.  I could have fed 2 or 3 babies I think with the amount of milk I produced.  M finally was able to receive some through the feeding tube in her nose after she was a couple of weeks old.  They started off just giving her 3 ccs every three hours and then slowly increased it every day or so as long as she seemed to do okay.  For anyone who wonders, 30 ccs make 1 ounce, so that tells you the miniscule amount that M was getting.  They go slow with preemies to be sure their intestines can handle the nutrition and watch for signs of NEC (necrotizing entercolitis).  M did well and never showed signs of NEC. 

We finally were able to try giving her a bottle by mouth with the OT when she was about a month old.  It took her nearly 25 minutes to finish less than 2 ounces of breastmilk.  Preemies have problems with energy and endurance.  We had to try to keep her awake to eat and hope that she was able to finsh her bottle in 20 minutes or less.  Otherwise, she’d end up burning more calories than she consumed.  It was slow going, but over a few more weeks, M finally was strong enough to take all 8 of her feedings by mouth. 

After hitting feeding milestone, she also was able to maintain her body temperature without being in an isolette, and went for long enough without an apnea or bradycardia episode that the doctors said she could come home.  Oh Happy Day!  She was 4 pounds and 4 ounces (not counting the apnea monitor she kept for a month at home) when we brought her home on May 11, 2005. 

The next couple of months were in that newborn stupor that comes with a new baby.  We just had the additional fun of an apnea monitor that would go off for no reason that we could determine waking us all up, taking extra time to pump milk and then give it to M in a bottle since she still didn’t have the endurance to nurse while praying that she’d take the whole 2 ounces this time (feeding a preemie is an amazingly hard thing to do), and what seemed like 47,000 visits to the pediatrician and various other specialists to make sure M was progressing with no problems due to her early arrival. 

Despite all the extras, I feel so blessed that M did so well and progressed like she did.  When she went to the pediatrician for a check the day after what was supposed to be her due date, she weighed a wonderful 6 pounds and 2 ounces, which would have been perfectly acceptable for a full-term baby.  God blessed us mightily with her.

Everything was pretty calm for a few months until we noticed a bump on her back at the base of her spine.  When I asked the pediatrician about it, I didn’t get the “that’s normal” answer I was expecting.  Instead, we got scheduled for an ultrasound of it at Texas Children’s Hospital.  When the ultrasound didn’t provide as much infomation as was desired, we got schedule for an MRI which would be complete with sedation and a 12 hour stay to monitor that she came out from under the drugs with no problems. 

The MRI showed that the mass was probably not into her spinal chord yet but gave no real answers about what kind of growth it might be.  We then were scheduled to see an oncologist in the “solid tumor clinic” at the hospital.  Let me tell you, that was a hard thing to sit in the waiting room with all those parents and kids who were sick and wonder if you would become one of them. 

The oncologist sent us to see the surgeon for a consult, and it was decided to remove the mass so we could determine exactly what we were dealing with.  So a month later, M had the tumor removed by the chief neurosurgeon and spent a night in the hospital, where amazingly, she slept all night.  A few weeks later, T, M and I went back to see the oncologist to get the verdict on the tumor. 

Praise Him!  It was a benign growth and required no other intervention.  Again, a blessing from above.  God had definitely had His Hand on M.  Although, I would be saying the exact same thing if any of her outcomes had been different.  He still would be there, just supporting us and working in a different way than He is now.  

So that’s M’s story…at least up until she was 6 months old.  Her story continues to unfold each day as she grows and becomes an amazing little girl.  I praise Him for her every day.

24 hours old

10 days old

3 1/2 weeks old