WHEW! This week has been an absolute blur! On Thursday, August 20th we got up to go to our weekly business networking meeting. Nothing was out of the norm. From there we were going to Kelli's doctor appt for what we were hoping was our final pre-baby appt. While there, Kelli told the doctor that the baby hadn't been moving as frequently and with as much conviction as he had been. The doctor decided it would be a good idea for all of our peace of minds to go over to the hospital for an out-patient stress test and to schedule an induction for Tuesday, August 25th in case the baby still hadn't come by his due date on Saturday.
So we drove across the street to Summerville Medical Center, checked in and Kelli was hooked up to monitors to monitor both her and her contractions and the baby's heartrate while having contractions. Now all along, Kelli had told her doctors she may not even know she's in labor because her pain receptors are a little screwy. At llam Kelli was hooked up to the monitors. Sure enough, the monitors were saying that Kelli was already contracting...once she knew what they were, she told her other doctor (Dr. Sutton-who was on call at the hospital that day) that she'd been having those for at least a month. Well, what was supposed to be a stress test for the baby turned out to be a test that Kelli failed. Her blood pressure was all over the board and through the roof. At one point it was 169/110. So they admitted her and told her she wasn't going home and they were inducing right away. They started the Pitocin drip at 12 noon. By 7:40 that evening she had not progressed more than a 3 so they broke her water. While contractions were still frequent and building in strength, by 1am there was still only .5 cm progression so Kelli asked for an epidural hoping that it would speed up the progress. That didn't happen. It was a very long night with very slow progress. At 9am another one of Kelli's doctors, Dr. Campbell came on shift and by then Kelli was finally at 9 1/2 cm and they decided to have her push. They took her off the epidural pump and she pushed for an hour.
Unfortunately, the baby was stuck behind the little tail bones and couldn't seem to find his way around. Meanwhile Jayden's heart rate was dropping lower with each contraction and Dr. Campbell said that she didn't think he was coming out that way and that it was dangerous for him to continue the distress. So at 10:15 am they decided to have her stop pushing and wheeled her in for a C-section. Fortunately the epidural catheter was still in so they just had to push the blocker medication. Unfortunately, it didn't take everywhere. The C-section went well, even though they ended up having to cut her more because Jayden was a little stuck in the birth canal and they couldn't get him with the smaller incision. But when the were cleaning Kelli up and putting things back where they were supposed to be, part of the spinal block hadn't taken and she could feel everything! Talk about uncomfortable! So the doped her up pretty good.
But ALL of it was worth it and from the moment they brought Jayden around the curtain so Kelli could kiss him she was HOOKED! There really are not words to describe it. Jeremy left the room with the baby to go to the nursery and watch his first bath. The anesthesiologist P.A. was talking to Kelli and told her that Jeremy was crying like a baby. He said it was really sweet to see dads like that get emotional with their babies. Makes me cry just thinking about it...wait, maybe that's the post-partum sneaking in! :)
Jayden was allowed to stay with us in our room that day but we decided to send him to the nursery late that night since Kelli hadn't gotten any sleep for almost 2 days by that point. The next morning Dr. Lowe came in (the pediatrician on call) and said that because Kelli had spiked fevers while in labor they were concerned that her uterus was infected and may have passed that infection on to Jayden before birth. He was going to have to stay in the nursery and they had sent the placenta out for testing but the results would take three days. Meanwhile, they had to put an IV in and started him on antibiotics. If the results came back negative, they would take him off the IV and he could go home. If the results came back positive they would have to do a spinal tap and depending on how far the infection had spread would have to keep him in the nursery for 7-10 days for IV antibiotics. Plus, they were monitoring his heart rate since he'd been in fetal tachicardia while during labor. That was bad enough. Then they said his jaundice had jumped quite high and had to put him under the lights. So not only could we not have him in our room, we now could not hold him.
As a new mother, still doped up on meds and having had the delivery experience that she told her doctors was her worst fear going into it all, you can imagine how Kelli's mental state was! She felt like she had rolled with everything quite well to that point but just couldn't take one more thing. Fortunately, a good friend from church said that she would have it announced that we couldn't have visitors or phone calls for a little while. We hated to be anti-social, but both of us were so exhausted and Kelli was doing all she could not to lose it and telling the story out loud was a straw she didn't want to take on.
By Sunday night, Kelli was thinking a little more clearly and insisted that Jayden receive a Priesthood blessing right then. It was time to call in the big guns from up above for some help. Since only 2 visitors could go in the nursery at a time, just Jeremy & Kelli's dad went in. Jeremy said that in the blessing Heavenly Father was aware of Jayden's situation and even though he was no longer with him in the spirit world, he was still by Jayden's side. He said he felt prompted to command Jayden's body to heal in the name of Christ, a prompting he doesn't get very often while giving blessings. That was enough for Kelli to relax.
Monday rolled around and Kelli was released. The placenta had tested negative, but Jayden's jaundice had improved significantly but was still a little high and they wanted to keep him one more night. So we went home empty handed, but with hearts full of gratitude that he was going to be okay. Tuesday was the longest day ever while we waited for the doctor to do the circumcision, get the final test results and give him release papers. Then when we got to the hospital Tuesday night the nursery was closed for shift change and they of course ran late. We felt like we were never going to get him home! Kelli half expected someone to chase them down in the parking lot and take him back!
He got a clean bill of health on Wednesday from the doctors. He is a little spell-caster. He is absolutely addicting and hooks anyone who comes in contact with him. We couldn't be more in love with him if we tried!
It was a rough start and one of the longest weeks EVER, but he is home. He is PERFECT. And his is all ours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
