A few thoughts

What a difference a week makes, huh?

Last Wednesday, I was just a girl on the cusp of 26w pregnant. I was nervous and just reaching the full reality that I was very likely REALLY going to have a baby. I'd finally gotten confident to order maternity clothes.

Thursday morning, I was just a pregnant girl wondering why her stomach hurt, but expecting to visit the doctor, maybe argue about whether or not I should take prescription medicine for my "heartburn" and be sent home.

I didn't know about pic lines or oxygen levels, CPAP was just the thing my husband uses for his sleep apnea. PDA was what teenagers do at the movies. I was convinced I had a baby girl kicking me in the bladder and was looking forward to spending the next few months feeling it stronger and stronger.

A week later I'm a mommy.
To a little boy. (Sorry again, Tater Pie.) To a perfect, if impossibly tiny baby boy. I have learned to tell what the numbers on his monitor mean (well.. some of them.)

I think I've met 150 new people and loved almost all of them.

I've been astounded by the goodness in people.

My faith has grown.

I've fallen more in love with my husband that I thought was ever possible.


What a week. What a stressful, awful, terrifying, emotional, draining, exhausting, perfect week.

.......

Robbie is trying to give me a heart attack today.

This breathing stuff is HARD, man.

As of a half an hour ago, he's still on CPAP. They've actually got him going on a weird combo of vent and CPAP. He's not intubated, but the vent adds some oxygen to the pressure or something. (I'm sure my technical medical knowledge is blowing you away.)

But he's forgotten to breathe what seems like a lot to me. She warned me that he'll probably be vented again sometime today.

They always tell me that like they expect me to be upset about it. It's almost convincing me that I should be.

The way I see it, he wasn't supposed to know how to do this for another 13 weeks. (Yeah, should have been 27w pregnant today.) All this breathing on his own stuff is just like lung exercises. If someone told me tomorrow that I was going to have to do a sit up every couple of a seconds for the rest of my life, I'd probably be a little cranky about it and need a lot of practice and sometimes get tired, too.

When I told her that's how I felt, she praised my positive attitude and agreed that was pretty accurate. Maybe people think vent=bad? I don't know. I mean, obviously no vent=great, but he was awfully early. I think expecting no vent is unrealistic. I'm not a medical expert by any means, but it just doesn't seem logical.

That being said, when he stops breathing and his machine alarm goes off and I see his heart rate slow, well.... That's stressful.

I've learned how to nuzzle him a bit to wake him and remind him to breathe, but man.. it's scary.

Seeing him struggle is hard. I know he has to. But man, I just want to fix it. And I feel guilty. After one apnic episode, he fussed at my attempts to rouse him. I welled up with tears. All I could think was how he shouldn't have to be working this hard. He should be still floating around in amniotic bliss, practicing his breathing at his leisure. It wasn't his fault he was ripped out of it. My body did it. It's my body's fault he's having to work so hard. Mommy guilt bites.

I know it's illogical. Really, I do. But I just hate it. I posted last week about feeling cheated by my body. That feeling is almost completely gone. I love Robbie too much. How can I be cheated of anything when I ended up with the sweetest, most perfect baby in history?

But knowing that it causes him pain. Well, it sucks. I would trade places with him in an instant if only it were an option.

.....

They're officially releasing me today. Ordinarily I'd be gone already, but they're nicer to NICU mommies. David had to work today, so they'll let me stay until he gets off and comes to get me. They wrote me down as leaving "after dinner" so that we can visit with Robbie again before we go.

My dad is off tomorrow, so he's going to bring me to the hospital in the middle of the day tomorrow, then David will pick me up after he gets off. Hopefully in a day or so, my blood pressure will drop enough that I'll feel okay driving.

I'm 2 days w/o any narcotics now and moving quite well. I'm a little slow to stand/sit, but once I'm up or down, I'm pretty good. If I wasn't worried about maybe passing out from my BP, I'd not worry about driving at all. I've had a few pressures that were a bit lower, though, so let's hope the trend continues.


I'm off to grab something to eat and then head back to the NICU. After 4 or 5 apneas while I was visiting, I had to get away. Plus if I don't eat something, they won't give me one of the medicines and I guess I'm messing up my nurses record keeping.

More later.

Trish