“The Baby”

On Sunday morning, Scott took a few of the kids who weren’t coughing quite so badly to church. I stayed home with the really sick ones. Keona looked like a walking corpse. Poor thing… and Jed, well he couldn’t stop coughing, but that didn’t deter him from running around non-stop.

 

Shortly after breakfast, I noticed that my braxton hicks contractions were becoming more frequent. Not painful. Just more often. Around lunch time, I decided to time them, and noticed that they were about 5 minutes apart. That lasted for an hour and then stopped. This continued all day long. I texted Scott to warn him. He told his Mom to be ready to head over ‘just in case’… but I really didn’t give it much thought. Afterall, my body refuses to go into labour… and I’m only 35/36 weeks. Mind you, my OB had told me that she wouldn’t be surprised if I went early- seeing that the baby was measuring farther along… and to come in right away if my contractions lasted more than 1/2 an hour.

 

Fast forward to Monday morning… the contractions were back. Still not “labour”… but they were definitely getting more noticeable. My back was cramping with them now, and every once in a while I had a sharp pain by my c section scar. Which was a little bit unnerving with how many c-sections I’ve had. After speaking with my OB’s assistant, we decided to head into the hospital totally expecting to be back home in a few hours.

 

At first, the monitor was picking up my contractions and I honestly started to wonder if I was crazy. I told Scott to come put his hand on my stomach just to be sure I wasn’t imagining things… After moving the monitors around and the pain getting a little more intense, they decided to start an IV to see if that put a stop to things. Nope. Still thought I was going home shortly. Then they gave me a shot of… cannot remember the name of it- but it made me feel like I was in a dream for the rest of the night. That didn’t work to stop the contractions either. Before either of us were expecting anything, the OB came in and told us that we were heading to the ER right away for a c-section. They didn’t want to risk any damage to my scar…

Yikes! Nurses were handing me papers, quizzing me on past surgeries, allergies… you name it! I could barely put a sentence together, nevermind remember any of those things! I started crying as I was telling Scott to call my Mom and scribbling down random numbers as my kids birthdates, that made no sense at all!

About 20 minutes later, at 6:12pm, a 5lb 10oz baby girl was born!

I was positive, that I was having a boy- so we didn’t have any girl names picked out! She remained “the baby” until the next morning.

The rest of the events of that evening are less than pleasant, and not particularly ones I want to remember. My perfectly healthy, crying-like-a-champ baby, was taken from me shortly after I got her because she was “grunting” (diagnosed by a rookie paediatrician) put on an IV for antibiotics it turns out she never needed, poked over 8 times as they tried to get an IV into every single one of her limbs, before they finally put it in her umbilical cord and x-rayed her to make sure it was in right, accidentally pulled it out, put it in and x-rayed her again, and then… she was diagnosed with erratic breathing. Well I guess so! I would be breathing pretty erratically after going through all of that as well! I got to see her again at 3:30am, when I was told not to touch her so that the IV doesn’t come out. The IV she never needed in the first place… But I digress…

Daddy’s hand…

The next morning after going to see her in the nursery, we named her “Lily Elizabeth.” Neither of those names had come up throughout the entire pregnancy. And… we agreed on it right away. Ha! “Lily” after my mom, and “Elizabeth” after Scott’s grandma.

Thankfully, she never had another problem for the next 4 days that she spent in the hospital.

Me, holding her for the first time after the whole ordeal…

It was not how I had envisioned her birth.

My kids were not there. We didn’t get all the pictures I had planned. My kids didn’t get to see her until Saturday, because they were all so sick that we couldn’t bring them into the hospital to visit. But God is good! My new OB was on call the day we came in and she is a brilliant surgeon. My surgery that was expected to have complications- went flawlessly. Scott was able to take the week off of work without any problems. Between my mom and Scott’s mom, we didn’t have to worry about our other kids at all. Lily, was a perfectly healthy little girl in spite of being born early. She has nursed like a little piggy from the get-go. She got to come home to the same house as our last three… Oh yeah, did I mention that we moved 9 days after she was born??? :) The rest of my kids are healthy again, and thankfully didn’t pass anything on to their baby sister. So many things to be thankful for…

Cell phone pic of her ‘going home’ outfit!

Two weeks later, and she has already filled-out that sleeper!

 

So there’s the story.

Now you’ll have to put up with me posting pictures of her constantly!

Her, and my new house… ;)

A Trip to the ER

(Back-dated for archiving sake)

It all began about 3 weeks ago, when Scott and I, went away to a church planting conference in Barrie and decided to get a hotel and stay overnight. We figured that with a new baby coming, it would be our last getaway for a while! We got home extremely early on Wednesday morning. That Friday, Scott took Keona away to a youth conference in Barrie. That same day, all of my kids decided to get sick. Not one or two, all seven of them. Poor Keona, had to sit out of several activities (including her favourite- dodgeball) because her cough was so bad that it was triggering her asthma. Back at home, I was sitting in my bed at about 1am watching a movie on my laptop. Jeddy walked out into the hall and through his laboured breathes said, “I… love you… Mom…” and went right back to his room. The way he was breathing worried me a bit, and his face looked a little odd. I figured that it was just from him sleeping, but decided to go check on him anyways. When I went in to check on him, he was gasping for each breath and his face, arms, and legs were all swollen with hives. I brought him into my room to keep an eye on him, but his gasping and coughing continued and the swelling was scaring me a bit. I called my Mom to come over since Scott was 3 hours away, and headed to the ER with him. There was no wait, they took him straight to the back when they saw his breathing and put him on oxygen. We stayed there for the next 6 hours. Breathing treatment, oxygen, repeat…

The RT came in to see him, and asked him a few questions to see how his breathing was while he carried a conversation. (Not to mention that his heart rate was in the 120’s due to the breathing treatments!) He told her right out of the blue, “The Bible is the most important thing. It’s God’s Word, you know!” She told him that he was right, and asked him about school. He continued to tell her, that He was in kindergarten and that he could spell “cat” and “Polhamus” and that Mom was his teacher, and that there were 7 kids in our house, and that Mom was having another baby in 3 weeks… Needless to say, he didn’t have a problem talking at this point! He also asked her if he was going to get a needle. When she told him “No, I don’t think you’ll need one.”

He said, “Well, you can give me one if you want to!”

I think he may have been slightly delirious at this point!

She commented on how I looked like I was ready to have the baby, and she would keep an eye out for me. At 34 weeks pregnant, let’s just say that the little plastic hospital chairs were slightly less than comfortable. She suggested that I hop into bed with Jeddy, and we both try to get some sleep.

Jed, insisted that I was NOT allowed to sleep at the hospital. He told me that he would have the nurse wake me up and send me home. When I explained to him that I wouldn’t leave him there alone, he replied, “But you need to sleep Mom. I’m fine. The doctors and  my nurse will watch me!”

We slept together for about an hour, and then a nurse came in to check on Jed and I woke up. Jed’s nurse was a 6 foot 5 inch, 250lb, black man. He lifted my hulk of a son, like he weighed nothing. It was quite entertaining to watch. He also called him “Jedi” all night. I don’t know if he thought that’s what I was calling him, or if he just made it up himself for fun. Either way, Jed seemed to like it!

Thankfully at 7am, his O2 levels were back up into the high 90’s and we were able to head home with a brand new puffer.

I’d love to say that was the end of all the sickness in our house, but it continued for the next 2 weeks! And little did we know, how right that RT was about me being back very soon to have the baby!

34 weeks