The Sattler Scoop: July 2014

Well it has been an eventful week! Travis Chase arrived on July 2 at 9:03 a.m. As expected, he was a big boy, weighing 9 pounds 2 ounces and he was 21 inches long. So, I made it to the month he was due...by 2 whole days! I went to my scheduled high risk appointment last Monday at 37 weeks 5 days, and everything looked good and they estimated his weight at 8 pounds 10 ounces. I joked with the lady doing the ultrasound that I really hoped she was wrong, and wouldn't you know she was, but in the opposite direction than I was hoping. My high risk doctor said there was no medical reason on his end to deliver me early. I headed straight to meet Brian at my regular ob appointment from there, and immediately when I sat down for my vitals the nurse asked if I was feeling okay, and said she didn't think I looked great (Gee, thanks!). She took my blood pressure, and that is when things got a little more serious. It was elevated and she told me she suspected my doctor would send me to the hospital to be monitored. Initially after my doctor came in, she wasn't too concerned but wanted to have them check my blood pressure again before I left. It was exactly the same after two hours (the office was crazy busy that day), so she told us to go ahead and run home to grab my hospital bag and head to the hospital just in case. I was monitored for a couple hours, and although my blood pressure did start looking better, I was having some contractions and my doctor came by after she finished a delivery and said I was making her nervous enough that she felt it was best to go ahead and induce that night. We agreed that there wasn't a lot of benefit in waiting the extra week until my induction date, and decided to start pitocin at midnight so I could eat dinner and get a little rest (Ha!). It turns out when she came back to check me, I was already dilated to 6cm and was in labor on my own. She broke my water about 2 a.m. and eventually started pitocin a couple hours later to help speed things along. At about 7:30 I was ready to push, and at 9:03 he was here. Most people assume I had a c-section with Casey, but I actually did not. Let's just say there is a big difference between delivering a 2 pound 6 ounce baby and a 9 pound 2 ounce baby. A big, painful difference, and recovery has been a bit more challenging as well! There was a NICU team in on the delivery because of my diabetes, but after an initial evaluation, they decided that he was doing well enough to stay with us. After a while, they checked his blood sugar and his first reading was 28. They want babies to be at least 40, so they recommended that the best thing to help bring it up and control his jittery symptoms (an indicator of low blood sugar) would be for him to remain skin to skin with me all day . This is a very typical problem for infants born to insulin dependent moms, and they continued to check it before every feed. His blood sugar fluctuated between the 40-50 range throughout the first day, but he continued to be very jittery and became very upset anytime he was removed from my arms. On Thursday morning the pediatrician came by, and we discussed the option of sending him to the NICU to have an IV put in to help stabilize his blood sugar. The pediatrician seemed to think he would be there 1-2 days, and then we would head home. Then the Neonatalogist came by and that's when reality really set in. She estimated it would take 3-4 days, and in our NICU experience, that usually means longer. There tends to always be something else that comes up once you get there! I got pretty upset when she mentioned that as long as he was eating enough, he would go home. Not eating is what kept Casey in the hospital for two months, so that was the first thing to send me into a panic! Then, she mentioned that this is just one of those things with "preemies," and my poor husband held his breath just waiting for my reaction to the first person to utter the "p" word. Travis was born at 37 weeks 6 days, and 38 is considered full term. We missed it by 1 day! I had already mentioned to Brian that I hoped no one dared to mention that word, so cue hysterical mommy now! I think the hardest thing was having my arms empty again after basically not putting him down for 24 hours (then add in the frustrations with trying to explain my own diabetes management needs to the hospital staff and the fact that I was in a LOT of pain on top of it, and it made for a pretty overwhelming and emotional few hours). Brian went with them to get his IV started and get him settled, and then when I thought I had it together a bit later, he took me to see him. Almost immediately after they put him back in my arms, one of his alarms went off and I lost it. In that moment it was as if I was immediately transported back 3 years, and every emotion that came with spending 4 months in the hospital watching Casey fight for her life came flooding back. Rationally I knew the situation was very different, but it was very hard to separate the two. I have done a lot of reading about other preemies and their stories, and I think most preemie moms can agree that there is absolutely some PTSD that comes from the struggles of having a child born so early. I so vividly remember how annoyed I felt when crying moms came in to Casey's NICU room with their giant babies and got upset about a 2 day NICU stay when we had been there for months, but I was now officially THAT hysterical mom. Things calmed down a little (and by things I guess I mostly mean me, and for the record I think I have done pretty well controlling my tears ever since that first really bad day), and his blood sugar was under control by Saturday morning. The doctor had planned to discharge him that morning, but when they ran his labs, his bilirubin came back at 15 so they decided he needed to go under a phototherapy light. That afternoon we noticed his oxygen saturation alarm was going off a lot, and we agreed with the nurse that we would rather start him on a nasal cannula sooner rather than later to give him some breathing support. We all thought he would only need a few hours of oxygen support, but by that night he had his oxygen turned up several times, and they had not been able to wean it off. He spent all day Sunday on the cannula, and the doctor came by and explained that these were all pretty typical issues related to my diabetes. He has now been off oxygen since this morning, and now it is a waiting game to see if Travis can keep his saturation level up. A new doctor came on today, and prefers to wait 24-48 hours after oxygen is turned off before discharging (instead of the 12 hours the doctor on yesterday said), so we are on pins and needles tonight waiting to see if our boy continues to behave himself. I joked with the nurse today that I may need a nasal cannula by the time this is over as I hold my breath watching his numbers fluctuate on the monitor. Travis has also developed quite the reputation in the NICU as the giant, demanding, loud baby and I think it is safe to say that eating will NOT be what holds this boy back from going home! Brian and I were laughing that for the first time ever we know what a hungry (or shall we say hangry) cry sounds like! I think that is the super long version of his birth story and the events that have occurred since. We can't thank our family and friends enough for your outpouring of love and support. We feel your prayers, and we know that the reward in all of this will be bringing a healthy boy home soon!