Keeping The Faith...: October 2007

On Thursday Sept 27th I was sent to the hospital after Dr. H found my cervix to be 6cm dilated. I was 35 weeks and 6 days pregnant. The plan was to have a spinal and C-Section. I was given the spinal and it didn't take so they had to give me general anesthesia. This was a little disappointing since J couldn't be in the room and obviously I was completely put under which was scary.

Andrew Patrick arrived at 2:58pm and was 5 pounds 15 oz and 19 inches long

Matthew Alan came one minute later at 2:59pm and he was 5 pounds 1 oz and 19 inches.

Andrew was taken immediately to the ICU special nursery. Matthew was allowed to stay with me for an hour or so before they wanted to watch him a little closer too so he also ended up going to the ICU special nursery. I was in recovery for about 6 hours. I lost a lot of blood and they were concerned. They pushed hard on my stomach every 15 minutes the entire time I was in recovery to see how much blood I was losing. That wasn't fun. Eventually I was put on medication to help stop the bleeding. I couldn't stop shaking and I was upset that I couldn't be with my boys. I knew I'd have to wait a whole day to see Andrew for the first time b/c you have to be able to get into a wheel chair to go into the ICU nursery and that wouldn't be for at least a day.

Finally the next day I made the nurses get me into a wheel chair so I could go see my babies. It was so hard to see Andrew b/c he had so many tubes, an IV, oxygen etc. hooked up to him. His arm looked like it was in a cast since they had collapsed so many veins trying to hook up the IV. After the first few days they finally had to use the veins in his head. Matthew wasn't hooked up to nearly as much and I was told he'd be released to my bedside later that day. So even though Matthew was almost a pound lighter he was doing much better. Basically Andrew was dealing w/ wet and premature lungs and he wasn't able to regulate his body temperature.

I was so thrilled when I got Matthew! I think he looks a lot like me where as Andrew looks more like J. They are both so beautiful! Matthew has been so easy to care for. He rarely cries and took to the breast very easily! He immediately knew how to latch on. If I wasn't able to breast feed he'd also take formula or breast milk by bottle with no problem. I wanted to start nursing right away so I started nursing and pumping milk on the day after I gave birth. The only difficulty was trying to keep a premature baby awake long enough to feed them. After just a few minutes Matthew would be dead asleep so I'd have to try all sorts of things to try to keep him awake.

I spent 4 nights in the hospital and during that time I cared for Matthew in my room. I would visit Andrew and I tried to recover from the surgery. I can honestly say that I felt pretty good on the 2nd and 3rd day. I was getting up and walking around. The only pain was getting up and down on the bed. I had a lot of swelling and still do. I had nausea and found that it was difficult to eat much. And the worst complaint I had during this time was the itching... My whole body and face itched like crazy. I was told it was a side effect of having a spinal and general anesthesia.

So I had them on Thursday and was released w/ Matthew on Monday afternoon. We've been driving to the hospital every day to visit Andrew. I'm pumping breast milk and taking as much as I can for him to eat. It's been exhausting b/c I'm feeding Matthew on demand at the breast and pumping on an every 3 hour schedule for Andrew. But- I'm thrilled that I'm able to produce so much milk already and not supplementing much at all. J will maybe supplement one bottle of formula at night so I can try to get a block of sleep that is more than just two hours.

Today when we saw Andrew they said he may come home soon- tomorrow is even a possibility. He was taken out of the incubator and is in an actual open air crib. He had his IV and oxygen removed. He's no longer on Antibiotics and he looks great. I'm really praying that he continues to do well so that he can be home where he belongs. It's hard to drive an hour each way to the hospital. We take Matthew with us and it's very tiring. My Mom is here for the week and that has helped a lot. She doing all of the cooking and cleaning so that we can just focus on the babies.

So that's all I can think of right now. I hope I came across making sense. I'm seriously sleep deprived and lucky to remember my name :-)

Here are a few pictures!