Happy Birthday to My Miracle!

Andrew is graduating 8th grade this year and moving on to high school. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Over the last couple of weeks, I've written Andrew's birth story. I left out a lot of minutiae and copied a bit from a previous post. 

Andrew’s Birth Story

On Thursday I fell getting into my car. One of those odd things where your foot just slips out from under you. I went to the OB, had an ultrasound, got a clean bill and went on my way.  On Saturday night I ate at a Chinese buffet (this is important). Sunday morning I woke up feeling sick. Really sick. My stomach was cramping. I called my husband, who worked overnights, and told him to hurry home because I wanted to go call the doctor. I thought I’d eaten some bad Chinese at that buffet, but since I’d fallen a few days earlier, I wanted to go get double-checked. He hurried home, I called the doctor, and the service said the on-call doc would meet us at the hospital. We hopped in the car and drove the 20 minutes to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, they put us into a room to wait. There was no obvious emergency, no real pains; I just felt like crap. I decide I better go to the bathroom before anyone comes in and I’m stuck in the bed. As I wipe, I notice blood. The bright red kind. And I start yelling for my husband. We get a nurse and I get in bed. They’ve told the doctor to hustle. I’m hooked up to a fetal monitor to get a heart rate and contractions. That cramping I had? Contractions. Turns out they’re not strong enough to detect on the monitor, so I’m given a button to push every time I feel one. At this point everyone realizes that I’m in labor with contractions every 3 or 4 minutes. I am now admitted to the hospital. On the last day of week 22. In 1998. 24 weeks is considered viable.

They proceed to pump me full of enough magnesium-sulfate that I can’t see correctly. It is a muscle relaxer used to stop contractions. Then they add something to calm me down because I’ve just had the first panic attack of my life. A neonatologist comes in and tells me that if my baby is born today, it will be dead. At this point I become hysterical, more drugs come. All the while doctors and nurses keep telling me to calm down. I need to stay calm if I have any intention of keeping this baby in. I need to keep him in for 4 weeks. Then I get something to help me sleep. I’m now on bedrest, but not just any bedrest. I’m kept in trendelenburg. My feet must remain higher than my head. They’re hoping gravity will keep the baby in.

12 days later. May 1^st, 1998, at 24 weeks 5 days I start contracting again. The nurse (who was someone I’d never had) tells me I’m constipated. There is no way I’m in real labor, despite the fact that I’ve been contracting on and off for a week and a half. She doesn’t call the doctor and won’t call my husband (I can’t reach the phone). After a couple hours of this, I start making a real fuss, and she has no choice to get my regular night nurse who had been in another labor. Luckily, she realizes something is wrong and gets the OB. They call my husband and tell him to get to the hospital as fast as possible – he’s at work an hour away, and the room fills with people. There had to be 10 people in there. Several for me and several for the baby. I still don’t know if I’m having a boy or girl. It had stopped being important days ago. I never pushed. Someone asked about extraordinary measures. I said yes. He, quite literally, slid out. I didn’t even know he was out until someone told me. It was 6am. They worked for a couple of minutes, and my nurse told me he was a boy and asked me if I had a name. Andrew. They whisked him away and all I saw was a purple shape in the isolette. My husband arrived about 20 minutes later.

It felt like days before I was able to see him. In reality it was a couple of hours. My husband had been able to see him briefly through a window. I had a Polaroid picture of him. Just in case. Just in case he died before I got upstairs to the nursery. Since I’d been on bedrest for so long, I had to be wheeled up to the nursery on a gurney, and that only because I threatened the staff. No one wanted to be the one blamed if I never got to see my baby alive. Odd the threats you resort to when under duress. So, off I wheeled, lying on the gurney. It was shocking to see a baby so small. I had never seen anything like him and neither had most of the nurses. 1 pound, 11 ounces. 14 inches. He was the youngest baby born at the hospital…ever. He was hooked up to tubes and monitors under insanely bright warming lights. Machines breathing for him, checking his heart rate, monitoring his oxygen levels, IVs for fluid and medicine. His first nurses were Mickey and Laura. Talk about drawing the short straw. I remember little else from our first meeting, Andrew and I. But he wasn’t dead.

I went home three days later without my baby. But my mantra was “He’s not dead.” I was holding onto the fact that he’d made it through the first 48 hours so would probably make it through the week. I wasn’t looking beyond that. I had elected to keep in that hospital instead of transferring him. The hospital had the facilities and the doctors, if not the paperwork, yet. The primary doctor had worked on the team responsible for the then world record smallest baby – 9 ounces. And yes, I confirmed his story. Besides, Andrew probably wouldn’t have survived the transfer because it would have been within the first two days.

Andrew came home 108 days later on August 16^th. One day before his actual due date. I had to swear that I felt confident about taking care of him at home with no monitors.

Today, Andrew turned 14. He will be graduating 8^th grade in less than a month. With all of his difficulties, he is a relatively happy kid. Very quiet, a little shy, obsessed with Star Wars and Bakugan. He loves animals and chocolate. He is a little more than 5 feet tall and weighs almost 100 pounds. Like most mothers of teenagers, I want to kill him regularly. He knows how to push every one of my buttons.  He gives the best hugs. He’s my miracle.

Andrew's first picture, taken by the nursing staff.

Andrew's 8th Grade Graduation picture

Sugar Free

It’s not that I have to eat sweets every day but once I’ve decided not to eat them, it’s torture. 

A friend from college challenged her Facebook friends to give up sugar for 28 days. Not just sugar, but sweeteners – honey, maple syrup, artificial sweeteners included. We all know that added sugar is bad for us. I don’t think that’s really up for debate. You can read more about it here.

My point is not that sugar is bad for me, but that I have accepted the challenge not to eat sugar (or its friends) for 28 days. I’m on Day 2. I want a cookie. Or brownie. Or a piece of bread. You wouldn’t believe the number of foods with hidden sugars. It’s even in the French onion soup in my freezer. I want to cry.

I have been living with Type II Diabetes for several years now. Gestational Diabetes with my younger son was kind of the beginning of the end. Both of my parents have Type II, as do some other relatives on the tree. My diabetes is managed through medication and insulin. The insulin was my choice. I’m a classic overachiever so I asked for insulin for better glucose control. And while I have changed many things in my daily diet, I have never simply given up sugar.

“What will I eat?” my Sweet Tooth cries! So far, fruit. Grapes, kiwi, peaches. No, they are not chocolate; therefore, I am a little crabby. I’m not starving, although I feel like it. I feel hungry. Sugar really is a drug, as my friend (and others) claims, and I am going through withdrawal. I’ve told myself I just need to make it through the weekend. My husband just hopes he and the kids make it through the weekend. I’m not saying he bet the under but…..I know he bet the under.

Suz

For more information about Diabetes please visit TheAmerican Diabetes Association.

All preemies are not equal.

I belong to a Facebook group for parents of preemies. A premature baby is one born prior to 37 weeks gestation. There is a supposed/perceived ongoing battle between the mothers of micro-preemies and those babies born at a later gestation. Micro-preemie is a term typically used to describe those infants born earlier than 28 weeks gestation. Per the rights of the administrators of the group, posts that seem to “fan the flames” are being removed. It seems that many of the mothers feel that they are not treated like “preemie moms” because they have children born later – 33-36 weeks or so. I do not feel that they are any less a preemie mom, but I do feel there are some vast difference between those moms and the mothers of micro-preemies. Since I cannot explain my feelings on the board without bothering some overly sensitive mothers, I will do so here.

I gave birth to Andrew at 24 weeks and 5 days. You may smirk, but those 5 days are important. When Andrew was born in 1998, a 24 week baby had less than 10% chance of survival. Every day past 23 weeks was a smidgeon of a percentage point. In fact, when I went into the hospital at the end of week 22, I was told to prepare for a dead baby. Harsh, right? Fast forward 10 whole days of strict bedrest (as in not even able to sit up). May 1^st. 24 weeks + 5 days. He was 1 pound and 11 ounces. My only view of him was the rush of an incubator past the foot of my bed on the way out the door. I knew he was a boy and told the nurses his name was Andrew.

It felt like days before I was able to see him. In reality it was a couple of hours. My husband had been able to see him briefly through a window. I had a Polaroid picture of him. Just in case. Just in case he died before I got upstairs to the nursery. Since I’d been on bedrest for so long, I had to be wheeled up to the nursery on a gurney, and that only because I threatened the staff. No one wanted to be the one blamed if I never got to see my baby alive. Odd the threats you resort to when under duress. So, off I wheeled, lying on the gurney. It was shocking to see a baby so small. I had never seen anything like him and neither had most of the nurses. He was the youngest baby born at the hospital…ever. He was hooked up to tubes and monitors under insanely bright warming lights. Machines breathing for him, checking his heart rate, monitoring his oxygen levels, IVs for fluid and medicine. His first nurses were Mickey and Laura. Talk about drawing the short straw. I remember little else from our first meeting, Andrew and I. But he wasn’t dead.

I went home three days later without my baby. But my mantra was “He’s not dead.” I was holding onto the fact that he’d made it through the first 48 hours so would probably make it through the week. I wasn’t looking beyond that. I had elected to keep in that hospital instead of transferring him. The hospital had the facilities and the doctors, if not the paperwork, yet. The primary doctor had worked on the team responsible for the then world record smallest baby – 9 ounces. And yes, I confirmed his story. Besides, Andrew probably wouldn’t have survived the transfer because it would have been within the first two days.

Andrew came home 108 days later on August 16^th. One day before his actual due date. I had to swear that I felt confident about taking care of him at home with no monitors.

So, back to the beginning of this story. The battle of the preemie moms. There are some things the mother of a gestationally advanced preemie will never fully understand. Please keep in mind that, while this is not true in all cases, it is true in most.

             
          She will not have to make the decision to resuscitate or not. Answering the question, “If your baby stops breathing, do you want us to use extraordinary measures?”” If your baby’s heart stops, do you want us to use extraordinary measures?” We said yes to both.

            
          She will never realize the stark reality of her baby born with heart beat but not breathing.

               
          She will not realize the horror of having no idea what he baby looks like for hours after the birth, and after that, only with tubes and tape covering her baby’s face. Andrew was about two months old before I ever saw his face, and then only for a few precious seconds.

               
          She will never wonder what her baby’s eyes look like because, like a new kitten, his eyes aren’t yet open.

                              
          She will not wait 10 days to feel the weight of her baby. I don’t mean hold. I mean place her hands under her baby to feel what 1.5 lbs feels like (he’d lost weight down to 1lb 3oz that first week).

             
          She will not wait 17 days to hold her baby for the first time. I left my cousin’s wedding reception early so I could be at the hospital at 10pm because the nurse called to tell me I could hold him. I’d been waiting for a good day. I held him for less than hour. I didn’t get to hold him again for several days.

              
          She will not watch a machine breathe for her baby, day in and day out for a month. Then watch a machine help him breathe for the next two months.

               
          She will not wait a full month before ever hearing her baby cry.

             
          She probably won’t wait 108 days before bringing her baby home.

              
          And she probably won’t think she hit the pregnancy jackpot when she hits the 28 week mark with her next baby. (I really hit the jackpot with 37 weeks.)

Most of these circumstances are common place for the mothers of micro-preemies – 6% of premature births. While most preemies are born with some concerns – low birth weight, breathing issues, vision problems, inability to regulate body temperature, even brain bleeds – micro-preemies typically have their own set of problems. Every mother of a premature baby worries, cries, second-guesses, prays, curses, promises. These things don’t change. She needs support and love and extra care and attention. But the differences in situations based on gestational age are often vast. While I am not looking to diminish anyone’s journey, I do want everyone to realize that all premature births are not the same.

That being said, Andrew is now 13. He’s asked to wear a tie for his 8^th grade graduation pictures tomorrow. I hope he remembers to brush his hair.

For more information on premature births, please visit The March of Dimes.

Suz