An Overdue Birth Story (Part 2)

Looking at our perfect little girl we would have never guessed she would have ended up in the special care nursery hooked up to machines with tubes flowing from her and unable to breathe on her own...

The only thing we had on our minds was celebrating the birth of our new little love.
After such long, hard work, what better way to celebrate was there other than with FOOD?!



I had been told that food would be the furthest thing from my mind while I was in labor. However, towards the tail end of all that work I couldnt stop thinking about how I was going to finally get to hold Charlotte, sleep, and eat everything edible within an arms reach.

Does that make me a glutton?

Because let me tell you, hospital food never looked so good.

While we ate, Zach started giving me detailed descriptions of Charlotte's birth from his point of view.

I quickly stopped him. It was wayyyy too soon for that.

So we sat and enjoyed eachother.

We stared in awe at the little angel we had a hand it making.

By this point there had already been a couple of scares.

I had been GBS positive and I am allergic to penicilin (the antibiotics that would treat it) so Charlotte was completely unprotected as she passed through the birth canal.

Charlotte had miconium towards the end of my labor and they feared that she had swallowed some. When she came out she didnt really cry very well so she wasnt able to feed right away. She looked ok so they said they were just going to keep a close eye on her.

They also noticed that Charlotte's ears were shaped differently and they had an extra pit in them.

(You cant really see the extra pit in this ear)

They were afraid she was deaf.

I had zero concern. God had just carried me through 28 hours of natural labor and birth...He wasnt going to forsake us. I also knew my baby wasnt deaf because anytime I would drop something in the sink while I was pregnant, she would leap and give me a good kick in the ribs for scaring her.

So I wasnt afraid.

Notice my face?

 Its huge.

Those who followed my pregnancy pics know my face didnt get very big during my pregnancy. No one seemed to notice too much at the hopsital. But I had been asking (either towards the end of my pushing or right after Charlottes birth) "whats wrong with my face?"

They just told me it was a little bit of swelling, no worries.

I had been feeling a shooting pain up the right side of my neck, into my right cheek, and up into the right side of my head with every push.

May sound silly but, like my mother, I always consider the extreme bad things that could happen in situations. I was afraid I was having a stroke (go ahead you can laugh).

After I had little Charlotte in my arms I forgot all about that pain. Until I went to rub my face from being tired and it crackled.

Then I felt my chest, neck, cheeks, and head and it was all crackly.

I thought it was kind of funny. I didnt know what it was, I had never given birth before or been on an IV for that long. I thought it was just the swelling from the IV.

Then I had Zach feel it and of course it completely grossed him out. Neither of us thought anything of it though until I talked to my mom on the phone:

"Thats not normal, Alex. That never happened to me from IVs when I had you and Connor." She said. "You need to talk to the doctor about it."

I still wasnt very worried. Then Karissa walked me to the bathroom and I couldnt stand up straight at all. There was so much pressure in my chest that I had to remain hunched over. I thought it must have been normal though. I mean I had never had a baby before and didnt know what to expect.

Then Karissa told me the same thing- tell the doctor.

So I told the nurses and all they would say is "oh rice krispies."

Uhh last time I checked rice krispies were a tasty treat...not this nasty crunchiness in my body.

Then my doctor came in and started to explain to me that it was subcutaneous emphasema. Essentially, I had pushed so hard that I popped my lungs. The air had nowhere to go when I was pushing and there was so much pressure in my lungs that the air escaped them and entered my chest cavity, neck, face, and head.

I still wasnt very scared until she said that the surgeon was coming down to talk to me.

The surgeon reiterated what the doctor who had delivered me had said except he added a few things.

Things like pulminary embolism and torn esophagus.

Symptoms of a pulminary embolism included "difficulty breathing, chest pain on inspiration, and palpitations. Clinical signs included low blood oxygen saturation and cyanosis, rapid breathing, and a rapid heart rate."- Wikipedia

Well I had the difficulty breathing, chest pain, rapid breathing, and rapid heart rate.

"Severe cases of Pulminary Embolism can lead to collapse, abnormally low blood pressure, and sudden death."- Wikipedia

Ok, now I was scared.

Then, worst of all, he told me I wasnt allowed to eat or drink anything for the next 24 hours. They wanted to rule out a torn esophagus before I ate anything to insure that I didnt have food/drink leak into my chest cavity and cause infection.

I had just done the hardest work of my life for 28 hours and had only finished the cake on my lunch tray (of course) and now I wasnt allowed to eat or drink ANYTHING for another whole day?

I cried. Over the food part. Yes...Im serious.

They scheduled an EKG, chest xrays, and a gastroscopy.

I looked at Zach, full of worry and he tried to comfort me. God was in control and there was nothing to fret over. Something he would have to continue to remind me over the course of our long stay at the hospital.

They told us we had to stay in the labor and delivery room because they wanted to keep a close eye on me overnight.

The first test they ran was the EKG and that came back normal. Everything with my heart looked fine and they were no longer worried about the pulminary embolism. Praise God.

Then I had to have a chest xray. I was wheeled downstairs and the radiologist who was going to take my xray told me not to worry. He was sure that I didnt tear my esophagus, the doctors just wanted to be extra careful. So he made me drink the most disgusting stuff I ever tasted in my life. It wasnt barium, it was this clear liquid that burned like if I were drinking fingernail polish remover. This was safe for me to drink because it would be ok if it leaked into my chest cavity due to a torn esophagus. The liquid would light up in the xray and would show if there was any tearing.

There wasnt.

I was SO happy.

Maybe I could have something to drink now?!

Unfortunately, the surgeon still wasnt convinced (meaning I still couldnt eat or drink) and scheduled the gastroscopy for the next morning. He told me that hopefully they'd have me in by 8 am at the latest and if things looked ok I would be able to eat, if they didnt then I would have to be moved to another hospital for surgery.

Since the first xray looked good, they decided it was ok for the three of us to move up to the mother infant ward and Zach was so happy. We were finally able to get out of that tiny, cramped room and he was going to have his very own chair that pulled out into a bed.

We settled into our room and both Zach and Charlotte passed out.

I couldnt sleep for the life of me.

All I could think about was water. And gatorade...ooo grape gatorade...or grape soda.

I stayed up all night fantasizing about what I would eat and drink first and crying due to thirst (you'd think I had gone a week without water or something).

Finally, 8 o'clock rolled around. I still hadnt slept and the surgeon still wasnt there. He wasnt there at 9

or 10

or 11 either.

Apparently he wasnt too worried about me. At least not enough to hurry up but worried just enough to make me wait to eat or drink. (Keep in mind I'm nursing all the while)

The nurse came in and told me that the surgeon wasnt going to be able to do the gastroscopy that day and he was just going to have me do another chest xray instead. This time with the barium (horribly nasty but I confess I was so hungry that the weight of it felt nice in my stomach)

Everything came back fine again and I was allowed to eat at 3:30.

I was so excited and my sweet husband pulled out a bag of goodies he had bought for me while I wasnt allowed to eat.

He had listened to all the things I had said I wanted to eat and bought all of them.

Purple gatorade (mmm grape), mashed potatoes, yogurt covered pretzles, and chocolate.

I have such a great husband.

I went to town. Then they brought me a dinner tray and I went to town again.

We decided we were ready for our first guests and our good friends Candice and DJ came to meet baby Charlotte.

After a nice visit, we went to bed (only for a few minutes) with the good news that we would be taking our darling daughter home with us the next day singing in our ears.

Then around midnight, the nurse looked at us with a concerned look on her face while checking on Charlotte and said

"She's breathing really fast guys. Im going to call the pediatrition."

At three am the pediatrition came in and listened to her heart, her breathing, checked her reflexes, and then listened to her breathing again.

He kept listening for what seemed like forever and I watched anxiously.

He looked at me and began to whisper what that meant and what he wanted to do next. He informed me that rapid breathing in infants could be a sign of infection and that he wanted to move her down to the special care nursery.

I started crying and made him wake Zach up before he finished.

He told us about the tests he wanted to run on our little angel.

Blood work, xrays, catscans, heart tests,

a spinal tap to rule out meningitis.

He left the room to let Zach and I discuss what he had just told us and I broke down. I was so scared. They were going to take my sweet little baby to a different room while we had to stay upstairs. They were going to prick her with needles. She wasnt going to be allowed to eat...she had to stay on an IV. They were going to insert a needle into her spine and draw out spinal fluid.

It was going to hurt.

She wasnt going to understand why she was being hurt.

I wouldnt be able to be with her for all of it.

She would wonder where I went.

She would be scared.

I was scared.

Zach stayed sturdy as a rock through the conversation we had while the pediatrition was outside. I bawled. He looked at me with big eyes that were also filled with concern but any worries he had, he swept aside and reminded me "God has us, Alex. He loves Charlotte even more than we do and he will protect her. He has a plan." He knew he couldnt show his fear because I needed him to be strong so I could lean on him as we both leaned on God.

I confess...even though I knew God had a plan, a voice in the back of my mind whispered

but what if his plan is to take her home with Him already?

I prayed outloud.

I prayed over Charlotte and our circumstance.

Then we told the doctor we were ready to take her down to the special care nursery.

We held her for a while and then he told us we should go upstairs and try to sleep and that he would start the tests in the morning.

The next morning we went downstairs to see her. We held her and loved on her. We prayed some more.

Over the next few days she was poked and prodded.

Test after test was performed.

Her breathing didnt improve.

I didnt sleep.

I didnt eat.

For four days straight.

I was so sleep deprived that I began to hallucinate.

We would go down to see our baby and I felt like I barely even knew who she was because I had had no chance to bond with her.

I started to have panic attacks and the hospital began to feel like a prison of sorts.

Finally, some test results came back.

Everything was coming back negative.

Praise God.

They werent finding any sign of infection whatsoever and they told us if Charlotte was able to breath normally on her own without oxygen then she could go home the next day.

We went in the next morning and she was back on the IV and oxygen. She had only lasted a few hours on her own.

The staff for the weekend came in and one of the nurses told us about kangaroo care. She wanted us to do skin to skin therapy with Charlotte to see if that would help slow her breathing. She said this sort of affection and contact was better than any medicene there was.

We sat like that for hours on end. We would only leave to go to the bathroom or grab a drink or a snack and we'd only leave one at a time.

They ran a final test to rule out heart disease.

Her heart was perfect.

With the kangaroo care, we kept Charlotte's breathing down all day and she was able to go off of the oxygen and stay in our room with us for the night.

Our good friends Anthony and Lacee blessed us by bringing us pizza and homemade brownies and Zach, Charlotte and I kind of had a little party in our room.

That night we prayed and declared in faith that we were going to bring our baby home the next day.

And we did.

7 weeks later we are a happy little family with a beautiful, healthy baby girl.

Our experience, long, trying and exhausting as it was made us stronger and God used it to remind us that He is bigger than our circumstance.