More surprises

The beginning of the school year was going well and I was feeling pretty good for the most part. I was concentrating on getting things ready for a sub and preparing my kids for the time that I would be out. Time was flying by as it seemed like the month of September came and went.

We had a wonderful baby shower and got so much wonderful stuff. It made me realize how much there was still left to get done before Baby P was supposed to be here. At the shower a lot of people commented on the size of my ankles. They were pretty swollen, but they didn't really bother me and I was still feeling really good.

The next Tuesday morning I was feeling a little weird. It was all I could do to make it to my conference period at 9:00. Once my kids were in PE I had the school nurse check my blood pressure and sure enough it was really high. When I spoke to the doctor's office they told me to go straight to the hospital for observation. Ten minutes after being there my blood pressure was way down. I was so worried that my doctor was going to put me on bedrest....thank goodness he only ordered me to stay home for the next two days. It was enough to make me really start getting everything ready at school though.

The next week I talked to a few people about being my long-term sub. Luckily, I secured on Friday. That same day I started feeling weird again. During dismissal I felt like I was going to pass out. So again, I had the nurse check my blood pressure...and again, sky high 141/114. I had to go right back to the hospital. We had only been there for about 45 minutes when the nurse came in to tell me that Dr. Thigpen said no more work for good. Talk about panic! It was only September 26th. I hadn't planned on being out until October 20th. I couldn't even think where I needed to start with the next step. I had left my room at school an absolute disaster so I made Brian go with me to clean up and get some stuff together. I cried the whole time I was there.

The next five days seemed to go on forever. Not only was I done with work, I had to lay on my left side in the bed. It's so much harder to be lazy when someone tells you that you have to be!

We had our regular weekly appointment with Dr. Thigpen the next Wednesday, October 1st. It was nice to finally get out of the house, even if it was only to go to the doctor. We were excited because we knew that they would be measuring the size of the baby at this appointment (they could only do it every three weeks). We went through everything as normal. As the nurse was doing the sonogram she asked if he was always a little smaller than he should be. Three weeks earlier he was right on track at 4 pounds 3 ounces. She was estimating him at 4 pounds 7 ounces, a gain of only 3 ounces in 3 weeks.

When Dr. Thigpen came in he looked again and again at everything and was certain that the baby had stopped growing. He looked at me and said, "do you have plans tomorrow?" I knew exactly where he was going. He told us to go home and get our things together and be back at the hospital by 6:00. That gave us 3 hours to get home and back!

We were so frazzled. I knew I should've listened when people told me to get my bags packed! I hadn't started washing baby clothes, I had no idea what I would need, who did I need to call?! We rushed around and got back to the hospital just fine.

We had to go in that night so that I could start Cervadil, a medicine used to soften the cervix. Since I was only 35 weeks, I hadn't started progressing at all. I wasn't dilated or efaced at all. My nusre started the meds at 7 and they actually started working pretty fast. We had some visitors and it was great to keep our minds off of being nervous. By midnight I was cramping really bad and having trouble sleeping. I didn't sleep at all that night, but Brian got enough sleep for both of us!

The plan was to start my Petosin at around 7 or 8 in the morning. I got up and showered at 6 and was already in quite a bit of pain. I don't think I was having contractions, just cramping still. When my nurse was trying to get my IV started my water broke on its own. That's when things really started to move. She started the Petosin at 9:05. It wasn't long before we started seeing a lot of doctors.

We had been prepared to expect a lot of people in the delivery room, especially now that Baby P was going to be born premature. We met with the neonatologist from Harris and her crew of nurses, the neo who would be with him over at Cooks, and our wonderful Dr. Roten too. They were there to help us understand what could happen when the baby was born. They were very clear on the fact that he could be born blue, not breathing, and unresponsive. It was one of those situations where we had to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

It wasn't long after the swarm of doctors were in that my labor started moving really fast. I gave in and got an epidural at 10:45. It wasn't terrible, but they made Brian sit on the other side of the room. Wow! Why didn't I get that earlier?!

The next time my nurse checked my progress about an hour later, we were ready to go! Dr. Thigpen came in, I pushed 3 times and we had a little baby P at 12:20 pm!! It was so incredible. I didn't know what to think, I can remember saying in my head...cry, baby cry! That's all I wanted to hear. I think I was concentrating so hard on saying that to myself that I have no idea when he actually started crying! The power of prayer was obvious right away. He was breathing, he wasn't blue, and although he was small, he seemed to be bigger than anticipated.

I got to hold him for about thirty seconds before they took him over to Cook's. Brian walked over with him and stayed for a little while. When he came back he told us that he weighed 4lbs. 13.6oz. and was 17 3/4 inches long. I was so relieved that everything was going so well so far!

As long as the journey behind us seemed, now I knew that we had an even longer one in front of us.

Getting the news

The past nine months have changed our lives so much that I don't even know where to begin. On February 21, 2008 we were ecstatic to discover that we were going to have a baby. We were quite shocked considering we had only been married for four months (almost to the day)!

Although there were a few bumps in the road, the spring went by so fast. When I was six weeks pregnant I came down with the flu for the first time in my life. Wow! Talk about miserable!! I was able to stay home from work for a week...thank goodness. The Monday that I returned after recovering from flu, the beauty of morning sickness reared it's ugly head. It seemed that this baby didn't like the scent of shampoo or warm running water. It was all I could do to get through a shower! Luckily that only lasted for about three weeks. By the time that summer came around I was still wearing my regular clothes and had only gained six pounds when school let out. I was happy that as the weather was heating up I was staying relatively comfortable.

The wait to find out the gender of the baby wasn't too bad. Time was going by so quickly that 20 weeks seemed to almost sneak up. Our appointment was scheduled for June 17. Brian and I truly did not have a preference about the baby being a boy or a girl, but we both had a strong feeling that it was a girl.

I had been in California for my cousin's high school graduation the week before our appointment. As I walked out the door of my aunt's house on June 16th, everyone was so anxious about the next day. Well, after sitting on the runway for 2 hours, my flight was cancelled. There was no way that I would make it home for my appointment...we were so bummed! The news seemed to get worse when they couldn't reschedule until July 2nd! Two more weeks to wait. Oh well!

20 weeks seemed to fly by, but the two week wait until July 2nd was so long! The day finally arrived and we were pretty excited. Apparently we were the last appointment and there was no one else in the office. As the sonographer started the sonogram the very first thing she said was, "we've got a boy!", I was so surprised. All Brian could was, "really?!" She was very thorough and told us about all of the measurements she was taking. It was so neat to see him and actually be able to make out body parts instead of looking at what looked like a peanut. She was trying the whole time to get him to turn around so that she could take a few more measurements. After about 20 minutes she decided to give him a break. Brian went to get me a coke and we waited in the waiting room for about half an hour. We called our parents to give them the news about the boy. I was still pretty shocked about it and my mom didn't believe me.


We went back in to the room and she continued the sonogram. She poked around a little more and we could tell she was looking closely at the heart. She then, very bluntly said, "this baby has a heart defect." Never did I think it would turn out to be so serious. With a long family history of heart problems, I figured it was something minor and somewhat common. My doctor then came in to look at the sonogram and proceeded to tell us that she had never seen this before. This is something that I began to hate hearing!


As I think back to that day I still have a very hard time dealing with those emotions. When we walked away from that appointment we had no idea where to begin with the next step. My wonderful doctor told us not to go home and get on the internet and that she would immediately get on the phone with colleagues and get back with us as soon as she found more information.


The next week, she had us in with the best doctors in the world. We began our journey at Cook Childrens in Ft. Worth. Technology is amazing. They were able to perform an echocardiogram on the baby inutero. The incredible Dr. Roten was able to tell us a lot more about what was happening with the baby's heart. He has a congenital heart disease called a single ventricle.


As Dr. Roten was talking I can vividly remember thinking, I know she is talking but I have no idea what she is saying. I was emotionless. I truly thought that we would get there and their state of the art equipment would show no problems. I had convinced myself over the past few days that my ob's equipment just wasn't good enough and wasn't showing a clear enough picture.


The next twenty minutes spent with Dr. Roten were so full of information and I could hardly concentrate on what she was talking about. Needless to say, she explained that this defect comes with a series of reconstructive heart surgeries to correct. Over the course of the operations they will re-route blood flow from the heart through the lungs. Preston's lungs will eventually work as a bypass machine for the heart and basically take over the function of the missing ventricle. There are a possibility of three surgeries...one at birth (baby P got to skip this one), one between 4 and 6 months (we're aiming for the 6 month point), and one at three years old.


After meeting with Dr. Roten we were able to meet with three families whose children were in recovery from their 3 year surgery. The kiddos were up playing and didn't seem to be in any pain. I was very hesitant about agreeing to meet with them, but in the end I was glad we did. We talked with the families for about three hours and were able to get a better point-of-view of what the journey ahead of us will be like.

Over the next few months leading up to baby P's arrival we met many more doctors that will be in our lives for years to come. His surgeon, Dr. Tam, an amazing man, met with us for over 2 hours. Incredible! He studied under Dr. Norwood, the doctor who pioneered the three step procedure needed to correct the single ventricle heart defect.

So many changes came our way. We had fully intended to have the baby at the brand new hopsital that is walking distance from our house, with our great ob, Dr. Z. However, since we now needed to be near Cooks, we had to transition care to a doctor who would deliver at Harris Methodist Ft. Worth. That's when I realized how much God was leading the way for us.

My mother-in-law had been telling her brother about the baby's condition. He thought that it sounded strangely similar to his friend Jason's daughter's condition. That's when we began corresponding with Jason and Destiny, whose daughter has a similar condition. They were able to guide us in the direction of their doctor, Dr. Thigpen. What a small world...my friend Cortney also knows Jason and Destiny!

Anyhow, we planned with Dr. Thigpen to go as long as possible with the pregnancy and we would induce labor sometime around 39 weeks. He felt like this was the best option so that everyone would be in place when the baby was born, rather than having a surprise delivery. He was getting married at the end of October, so we decided to settle on inducing October 22.

Ok, longest post ever! I'm done now for now :)

Great idea!

So a few of my friends have had this genius idea to blog while undergoing some life changing events. What a great idea! Most of you know that I'm not much of a go-getter, but I am going to do my best to keep posts about the latest news on Baby P's little heart. We are in and out of so many doctor's offices right now that I'm hoping doing this will help us to keep up with everything, too. Here we go:)