Before I got pregnant with my last child I had had 7 healthy children and 3 miscarriages. I did have one of the miscarriages right before my last child. All of the healthy children were healthy pregnancies. I did start having complications with two healthy ones that were born before my last one.
(note: I wanted to post some newborn pictures of Nehmiah, but couldn't find them, so I will post some later)
It all started with Nehemiah. He was born close to his due date, but not late. He was a big baby 9 lbs. 3 ozs. My pastor, his wife and a couple of missionaries who were in town for a missions conference had come to the hospital and came in right after he was born. I started feeling uncomfortable and as soon as they left I asked to go to the bathroom. My husband walked our company out and I got up and started feeling funny. I sat down on the stool and a massive amount of blood and blood clots come out and I felt like I was fading out of reality. So I called for the nurses and 2 of them came in. They got me right to my bed and as I was laying down all I remember was being all cold and peaceful, except for the hollering going on. Next I remember my husband looking right into my eyes, looking very worried and scared, I could hear him talking to me but it was so far away and I couldn't move or talk by then. My uterus couldn't clamp down (something like that) and my blood pressure dropped way down. They got the doctor back up to see me and he had them get some medicine that he injected with a needle into my abdomen, to get my heart beat to go back up. Next he cleaned out my uterus in case something was still in there. After he was done 2 nurses took turns massaging my uterus (pushing down on my stomach and rubbing) which by then I was coming to and it was getting to be a bit more painful. If I remember correctly I was all better about two hours later and finally got to just lay down, rest, and enjoy my new boy!
The doctor said that having multiple pregnancies might have weakened my uterus, but he mainly thought that he was big for me and that my uterus was just floppy afterwards because of that. He said he felt like it would be safe for me to have another baby. I was weak for a couple of weeks, and other than developing a problem with dropping dishes a lot, nothing new came from that.
We ended up moving about 2 hours away and were living in a camper when...
Next came Samuel, the doctor wanted to take him early so I wouldn't have the same problem. Even though I had moved away I wanted my same doctor and my in-laws lived close to that town so I went to stay with them the week they induced me and my husband met me down there the night before. I think he was due in the 20 something of May. So we picked May 16 to induce him. He was born 7 pounds 5 ounces. Labor and delivery went well with him. He seemed healthy and I was feeling fine so the next day he sent us home (which was my in-laws home). That first night he cried and was fidgety the whole night. It was a very long night for me I was sore and very, very tired. Since I had been released before he was 24 hours old I had to see the doctor one more time before I could leave to go to our real home. When we got him there he was as orange as a pumpkin. He sent us for lab work and then asked us to wait for the results. They put him right back into the hospital. He said he had severe jaundice.
Well I stayed in the hospital with him and thankfully my mother-in-law was able to take care of the other children (who at the time were 15, 8, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 0 ). He ended up spending a total of 12 days in the hospital. Every morning they would stick him for blood, it was horrible watching them. Sometimes it would be more than once a day. He seemed way to little for needles. He had to spend all his time in an incubator with lights on him. They couldn't get the levels to go down so they made me quit nursing him for 24 hours. I fought them on it, I really didn't see the point but they said my breast milk could be causing it. So after a couple of days that's what they did. So there I was a new mom, away from my kids and husband, wasn't allowed to hold my baby unless he was eating and then I had to quickly put him back.
Finally they released him to a pediatrician that my Mom had picked out of a phone book in Wichita. He needed to be under the care of a specialist and to get that I needed to have a pediatrician to refer me to him. There was only one hematologist that specialized in children so that was who we ended up with. Oh and the first visit to the pediatrician was a nightmare in itself. The nurse (which I quickly found out wasn't a nurse) had to take blood from his foot. She couldn't get any blood to come out and is sticking him over and over. I showed her a trick this lab tech had showed me to get the blood to come easier. Well she tried it for about 30 seconds then quit and went back to her old way. Her reason... it was just to hard to hold his feet in that position... she was too tired.....! It took her about 45 minutes to get a little tiny vial of blood. I'm a very easy going / forgiving person, but that was the first time I ever truly wanted to punch her and grab my baby and run.
We found out he had hemolytic anemia . Every week I had to take Samuel to the lab to have his blood drawn. Then, when he was about 6 weeks old, his levels dropped to a dangerous level (can't remember all the correct terms) and he had to have a blood transfusion. I was a bit nervous of him having to take in someone elses blood, but the doctor said we wouldn't have enough time to get the blood drawn and tested, so we had no choice but to proceed with it. I thought having his blood taken was bad, but it was much worse getting the IV started. It took at least 3 tries to get it started, his veins were so tiny compared to the needle they were using. In a couple of days I took him back and his levels were much better.
He got critical one other time, but the doctor saw some good numbers in the lab and had us wait over the weekend, then we came back to have it checked out. His levels were rising back up on their own! He never had to have another transfusion, and eventually we went from every week to bi-weekly, then to monthly on the lab work. When he was a little over a year old we met with the doctor again and he told us that we could do lab work to find out which part of his blood was causing it, but he felt like he might not ever have any more problems with it and the test took a lot of blood. He gave us symptoms to look out for, such has bluish lips, yellow eyes, ect.. but praise be to God, Samuel has never had anything more to date. 
Kati and Samuel at a little over 24 hours old.
Samuel on 2nd or 3rd day looking a bit more orange.
Samuel back in hospital under/on top of the light.
No comments:
Post a Comment