Me, looking super sexy in my Darth Vader breathing machine. This was the 2nd night in ICU. I was doing much better than the night before.
Krew loved hanging out in his jaundice tanning bed. He never fussed or anything, just hung out and relaxed.
The sweet nurses up in the mother and baby floor arranged for Krew to come and visit me in ICU. It was a surprise and I was so happy for it! This was on Monday night.
On his way home. Check out how super tiny he is in his carseat. The buckle is bigger than his chest and then it touches the bottom buckle. The shoulder straps are too wide and I swear he could just pop out the top of it. So little :)
My mom and Ann set him up in front of the big sliding doors for some sun tanning the day after they got home. He loved it. Check out his frog legs. I could just chew on him :)
Peace out cool guy.
Kam loves to "help" with Krew. I ended up not being able to breast feed because of the mass amounts of meds that I am on and the risks that they could have for him are unknown. There are not many 26 year olds on heart meds, so they don't really have studies for it. Krew doesn't seem to mind, he eats like a champ.
This was on the 4th of July. Just relaxing outside.
One last one...we think he is super cute, even if he does look a little like ET :)
Okay, so for those of you have not heard...we had our little angel baby early Saturday morning at 2:40 am. It has been a wild and scary ride, but we are both home and doing pretty good. Krew is absolutely perfect in every way and when he gets older...we have got quite a birth story to tell him!
Warning: this is a LONG story and you may be bored to tears, but even though I really would like to forget most of it...I feel like I should try and explain a few things. Here goes:
At my doc appt on Thursday June 25, we were sent home with a pee jug and told to go labor and delivery 24 hours later for some tests. We got to the hospital at 3:00 on Friday afternoon. They hooked me up to the monitors and checked me out, my blood pressure was actually lower than it had been, so we were hopeful that they would just get us out of there so we could get home and get some things done. We were still trying our hardest to get the nursery done and things like that. Well, after the urine results came back (extremely high in protein) we were still thinking they would just send us home and put me on strict bedrest. Then they did some blood work. The blood work came back indicating that I had a pretty bad case of toxemia, so the doc was called in to let us know that we were having a baby tonight. I was feeling very mixed emotions. I was excited but also very, very scared. My doctor was also in China, so I was nervous about the on-call doc that I was stuck with.
They moved me to a delivery room and got me hooked up with my IV. The plan was to insert a balloon in my cervix to help me dialate and give me pitocin to start the contractions. The doctor checked me and I was only a 1 1/2 and 70% effaced, so we had a ways to go. He told us it could take up to 24 hours before I was actually ready to push...it was going to be a long night! They got everything started and we called our moms. This was about 6:00 pm by now. By about 9:00 pm I was very uncomfortable and I wanted my epidural. The anesthesiologist came in and broke the news that I was at a "high risk" for complications because of my blood work, so he wanted to have some more blood work done before he could give me the goods. So we worked through it a little longer while I cried like a baby. I am not sure if it was from the pain or from the possibility that I might have to keep this up and have a natural child birth for the next 24 hours. Anyways, he came back in after about 30 minutes and gave us the go-ahead :) I was so relieved!
After the epidural, I was a happy camper and we all just hung out and tried to get some rest. Spencer's parents and my mom and step-dad were all there waiting to meet our new little guy. By about midnight, my cervical balloon fell out which indicated that we were ready to get aggressive with the pitocin. They upped my dose, and then started me on the devil juice (aka magnesium sulfate). This stuff is NOT FUN but they have to give it to people with toxemia while in labor and for 24 hours after labor to prevent seizures. It basically makes you feel like you have a really bad flu bug. It made me lightheaded and dizzy and really hot and I wanted to throw up.
After about an hour, the nurse checked me and I was a 7. My epidural was starting to wear off, but I wanted to be able to feel when I needed to push, so I decided not to have them re-dose it. By about 2:15 am I was feeling lots of pressure and a very strong urge to push. The nurse checked me again and said it was time. By now I was wishing that I had a re-dose of the epidural, but it was too late and all I could think of was pushing so the pressure was gone. They called in the doc, the respiratory team (for the baby, just in case) and we were set. Six pushes later he made his debut. His cord was rapped around his neck twice, so he wasn't crying right way...which freaked me out a bit, but everything was fine. They were amazed at how tiny he was and how perfectly healthy he was. He weighed in at 4 lb 14 oz and 17 1/2 inches long. He was even small for being 36 weeks.
After a ton of tests and monitoring in the nursery, they couldn't find anything wrong with him. He is perfect :) He eats well, never ever cries, and is just the sweetest thing ever. Saturday we spent the day with lots of visitors and me on my magnesium IV. I felt crappy the whole day and couldn't wait for them to take me off of it at 6 pm that night. By about 3:30 that afternoon, I was having a hard time breathing. This is when things went really bad, really quick.
I called the nurse in because I was having some vision problems and it was feeling like work to get air in and out. Spencer had just ran home to shower and get his stuff for the night, but my Mom, Gram, and Ann were all there with me. The nurse checked my vitals and was a little concerned about things. My pulse was racing, like 140 + BPM, my blood pressure was really high, and my oxygen was really low. She decided to call the doc. He told her to stop the magnesium and see if that would help. So while we were waiting for the magnesium to get out of my system, she gave me some oxygen to see if it would help. I was still having a hard time keeping my oxygen levels above 90 (anything under 90 is apparently really bad) and this was with the oxygen maxed out. I could tell things were getting bad, because all the sudden there were lots more nurses and they were taking blood and my mom was on the phone telling Spencer he better get back to the hospital fast. They got out a different oxygen mask and had me try breathing with it, things were still not working out.
Through all this all I could do was concentrate on trying to breath. I didn't open my eyes, I was just trying to not be scared and focus on staying alive. It was a horrible feeling that I NEVER want to feel again. By this time, the nurses and doctors had decided I must have a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs) because of how fast it came on. They ordered a CAT scan to confirm it, but they were pretty sure that is what it was so they started to treat me right away. They began giving me antibiotics and injections of blood thinners. There was a lot of action down in the emergency room, so they kept bumping me because I was not the priority. Finally a head nurse came up and told us she was taking me down to do the CAT scan, but we had to hurry because there were two more traumas on the way in right now. She rushed me down and they did the scan. By this point I was really, really struggling. When we got back to the room, I started to cough up blood. This is when they called the code blue and brought in the crash cart. Spencer said he knew things were bad when he looked out in the hall and it looked like the verizon wireless commercials with "the network". There was every nurse, doctor, and specialist in the hospital there, some all sterile and ready to go at moments notice. I am glad that I was out of it and didn't really know what was going on, I think if it were the other way around and it had been Spence in my place, they would have had to medicate me to just be in the room. Spencer was awesome and just stayed by my side the whole time, reminding me to breath.
The CAT scan came back and said I did not have a blood clot. Now they were thinking I had pneumonia, they were just very concerned and confused as to why it came on so fast. This is when they decided I must have the swine flu, I just didn't have a fever. Sometime after this I opened my eyes and everyone in the room was now wearing a mask. Great, I thought...what now?! They moved me down to ICU and put me in isolation. Spence stayed with me the whole time, while my mom and Ann stayed with Krew (who was now being quarantined also). Once I got to ICU, they put me on a star wars type oxygen mask that helped force the air down my throat and into my lungs. They had to give me something for anxiety because the mask freaked me out. I felt much better after that and tried to get some sleep.
That next morning at around 5 am, a team of doctors showed up in my room...all without masks. They looked at Spencer over in the corner, trying to sleep in the armchair with his face mask on, and told him he no longer needed to wear that. They knew what I had. I had just fought through congestive heart failure. I have a really rare type called peripartum cardiomyopathy, brought on in the last few weeks of pregnancy. The symptoms are basically the same as toxemia and just being pregnant: fatigue, shortness of breath, retaining water, just feeling crappy. Nobody really knows much about it because it only affects 1 in 15,000 pregnant women. They don't know why you get it, it is not caused by heredity, or diet, or anything like that. It just comes on.
Now that they knew what I had, they changed the treatment. I was now getting a heavy dose of a diuretic to help rid my body of all the fluid that it had been holding onto for the last month. They immediately put me on some heart meds. They did echocardioghrams and more blood work to see the extent of the damage. My lungs were full with fluid. They were really amazed that I was alive. My tests showed that my heart was enlarged and was only pumping blood at 25%, which is supposed to be pumping at least 75%. Spencer's dad had a really bad heart attack, with some complete blockages and his was still pumping at 45%.
The kept me in ICU for 2 1/2 days. I was able to wean myself off the oxygen as my lungs emptied out the fluid. My ankles came back completely. In those two days they emptied at least 8 liters of fluid out of me. I was slowly getting some strength back, enough to get up and brush my teeth with out oxygen and assistance. They moved me out of ICU and to the med-surg floor on Tuesday.
In the meantime, Krew was being taken care of by my mom and Ann. The hospital was so awesome. They kept my room up in the mother-baby floor and let my mom and Ann stay there. Krew had a little bit of jaundice, but the pediatrician kept him there an extra day, just because I was still there. By Tuesday, they couldn't make anything else up to keep him there, so he was released and went home with my mom. Spencer stayed behind with me in my new room.
By Wednesday, they sent me home. I was so happy, but I was also very scared. It was comforting to know that if things went wrong again I was already at the hospital and could get help immediately. When we got home, my mom, Ann, and Kam were all there waiting for us. I am so grateful for all of my family and friends that have helped get us through this. My house was spotless, Krew's nursery was painted, and dinner was made. I have the best family!
Now for the recovery. I will most likely be on these meds for the rest of my life. I am taking about ten different things each day. The side effects are awful, but I am being told that my body will eventually get used to them and I will feel much better. I have NO energy. I have lost 28 lbs since I gave birth ten days ago, which indicates just how much water I was retaining. I have a big problem with anxiety now. I am just so scared about not knowing what is going to happen with me. When I look on the internet at heart failure and the life expectancy after, it is not exactly reassuring. Since there are basically no cases of what I have, it is hard to give me a definate prognosis. We met with my cardiologist yesterday, and he told me to go ahead and buy green bananas. I guess that was his way of reassuring me that I am not going anywhere :) He did tell us that some people who have had their heart fail like mine, do not ever get their heart back to normal, which is not something I wanted to hear. But he also said that most people who actually get to the stage of coughing up blood, do not survive past that, so I have already been through the worst and back from it and that is a very positive thing. For now, I have a weekly appointment set up with the cardiologist. Yesterday when we went I looked pretty out of place in that waiting room. Everyone in there had about 60 years on me. The nurse even called my name, then walked right past me and to a little old lady asking her if she was her new patient.
In the meantime, I am just watching my diet, my weight, and taking my meds faithfully and hoping for the very best! I am trying to stay positive and enjoy every second with my new little family. I have breakdowns daily, but just holding our new little guy makes me feel so much better. I have so much to be grateful for. Spencer has been amazing through all this. I am not sure what I would do with out him or anyone else in our families.
Funny face.
Kam is so in LoVE with Krew. He calls him "buddy" and sings to him, kisses him, and basically eats him up all day, everyday. It is so fun to watch, even though sometimes he is just a little too loving and helpful and I have to tell him to back off a bit :)
Kam was sick of pictures and decided that he and Krew were done.
Kam made a bed on top of my bed for he and Krew to watch TV on. He made sure Krew had one of his best pillows and even shared his spiderman blanket. Now that is true love, no one gets to touch the spidie blanket.
This is one of Krew's first days in real 0-3months clothing, his preemie clothes are getting a little tight on his big belly ;)
Kam loves to feed Krew his bottle, but he just about drowns him in milk each time....for some reason he thinks he needs to shove it as far down his throat as it will go. Poor Krew is so patient and just deals with it. He is such a good baby :) 
By the way...we took 
