Celebrating Prematurity Awareness Day with Gunner's Birth Story

Yes, I wrote this on Gunner's due date and yes, it did take a long time to write and an even longer time to publish. The memories are just getting to where they are acceptable and I am ready to share. What better day to share them than on National Prematurity Awareness Day. In celebration of my preemie, I give you his birth story.

On the supposed to be "birthday" of my little man, I thought I might reflect with the attempt of a birth story.This of course, will not be an ordinary birth story, because they usually encompass only a day or two. Gunner's story started on May 6th even though he was not born until June 5th....Thank God.

On May 6th, I was having a great day. An uneventful trip to the grocery store. Greyson was good and rewarded with a happy meal. We came home for nap time, he went down easily, I relaxed with a book, feet up and all. Daddy got home from work gave me a kiss and then went to the bathroom. While he was in there, I felt a gush. What the heck? Did I pee my pants? I am only 28 weeks along....it cannot be my water breaking.

As he comes out, I go in....obviously looking shaken. He says to me "are you ok?" I replied "I don't know, something doesn't feel right." I went to the bathroom, more little leaks. Yep, it was my water breaking.

I call the doctor, who hesitantly tells me to head to labor and delivery. I rush to Borgess, crying, praying and stressing the entire way there, all the while not even knowing they don't have a NICU, which if the baby was born he would need. When I get there, they confirm that my water has broken and I am having contractions.

They put me on the fetal monitor, start an IV and give me betamethazone shots. All of these are to help the baby stay in or develop if he was to come soon. They do a bedside ultrasound to check on baby. He looks great. (notice I am using he, this is because it was after the fact) They make conversation..."do you know if it is a boy or girl"...not yet, that is supposed to be a surprise. They tell me little girls do better than little boys if born premature. Suddenly, I need to know, is it a boy or girl? I tell them my gut is a girl. They confirm my suspicions.

Then they come in to tell me I need to be transferred. Bronson, which has a level III NICU is full, so I am heading to Spectrum Hospital in GR.

In the ambulance, they are giving me magnesium sulfate, which slows and diminishes the contractions. By the time I make it to GR I am contraction free. They have me on 48 hours of IV antibiotics. By day two of my hospital stay, I am no longer leaking amniotic fluid. During the next two weeks I am monitored twice daily for the baby's health, I am given 3 ultrasounds, and relax as I am not leaking and everyone thinks that the amniotic sac has resealed. Rare, but a good thing.

In the ultrasounds, they do at Spectrum, I notice the small talk is normal. They always ask if it is a boy or girl. So on the first in depth ultrasound, they ask me. I smile and say we didn't want to know, but in all of the stress of this situation, we caved and found out it was a girl. Hmmm, says the tech. Yeah, everyone's buying girl preemie clothes. The tech then says, I hope they kept the receipts....what???? Yep, I am 90% sure, looking at it from this bad angle, that that is a penis. Penis? What?

She changes the angle and gets 5 money shots. All labeled BOY, pointing to the family jewels. So we found out, it, who we thought for a few days was SHE, was in all actuality HE! I had in the drama of the initial situation came up with a name for a girl. Jillian Elyse. I figured I had better since it seemed at the time, SHE was coming fast. Now, we had to settle on a boy's name. Damn.

So we continued the facade we didn't know...I just refused to believe after all of this anyone knew what the baby was.

Fast forward 14 days of monitoring, 3 ultrasounds, lots of hospital food and visits from Daddy, Mimi, Aunties Sunny, Lindsey and Jen and Uncle Ben and Bryan...I get discharged with a referral to Dr. Austin at Bronson. Good thing I got the referral, I needed it the next morning, when I woke up at 5:30am unable to sleep and noticed I was leaking fluid again.

That morning, we went to Bronson. They confirmed that I was indeed leaking fluid. This was May 21, 2009. They admitted me immediately and then did an ultrasound and a biophysical to check the functioning of the baby. He was doing awesome. He already was showing a movement in the diaphragm, indicating some maturity of the lungs. I got my second round of betamethazone to help mature the baby's lungs

So again in the hospital, this time close to home, again great nurses and doctors. All was well until Memorial Day, I was groggy and managed to tangle my foot in my sheet and hit the floor, breaking my fall with my face and knees. Yeah, that hurt...and really messed me up mentally. I had to be on the fetal monitor for 5 hours to make sure baby was ok. Of course, the baby was perfect. No contractions, good strong heartbeat.

However, the next morning, I freaked out. More fluid leakage, but it was tinged with blood. This to everyone but me was no big deal. Emotionally, physically and mentally, I was spent. At this time, I was at almost 4 weeks of bedrest, in a hospital, without any comforts of home except those who came to see me.

I continued to intermediately leak fluid, which ended up being a good thing as they were able to test a sample of it on Sunday, May 30th to see how mature baby's lungs were. The FLM (fetal lung maturity) test showed a score of 49, which was an intermediate score, 55 is the beginning of mature. So, although this wasn't showing completely mature, it was definitely showing progress.


That Sunday was a very emotionally stressful day. If you read my blog, you know that was the day where the intern said one thing (we won't be rushing to deliver anytime soon), the doctor came in and shocked me with the question "so how do you feel about having a baby today" and then after I managed to get ahold of Brian who was on his way to the hospital at lord knows how fast of a speed, when she said "oh you have had a past section, I don't want to induce for stress on you". This was a relief, but it certainly didn't help my mental state of mind. Thank God for my nurse Mari, who advocated for my concerns. She is the biggest reason, baby got another week in the tummy.

The week up to his birth was rough. As I said, I was spent in many ways. I cried daily, just the topping of every emotion I had that I couldn't deal with. I totally lost my appetite, couldn't eat, and was loosing weight, which isn't good for the baby I was already terrified would be too tiny. I was given an antidepressant, which takes a week to work, convinced it never helped, but did give me more to worry about exposing my baby to. I tried to eat as many high calorie food items and ensure drinks to just maintain weight.

So while dealing with all of the stress, I tried to go about my "normal" bedrest routine: mind numbing tv, books, journalling, trying to eat (after 5 weeks of hospital food), going to bed only to sleep for 2 hours max at a time, due to left side restriction (pain, sore muscles) and frequent bathroom breaks which required someone to take off and put back on my leg exercisers. So as you can imagine, not fun.

On Friday, June 5th, I had a couple visitors. Mimi and Maureen came to see me around lunch time. Maureen brought me the best thing that I had eaten since the BLT she brought me the day before...a gyro, which was a new and delicious food, I just wish I could have eaten the bread on it. Wow, it was good, even with no appetite! However, the onions would come back to hunt me as little did I know, it was my last meal for the next 20 hours. And I distinctly re.member my mouth tasting like ass all night long, with nothing to help it, but ice chips!

That morning, they wanted me to try to get another sample of amniotic fluid so they could do another FLM test. I attempted to a collection at about 2pm and found that instead of fluid, I was leaking blood. I immediately called the nurse, who called the doctor, and then I called Brian. Needless to say, he was on the other side of town and he beat the doctor to the room, who was there a few floors down.

The nurses started "just in case" procedures, starting an IV, taking all my vitals, calling the doc on call, and making arrangements with anesthesia and L&D floor. Soon, I met Dr. Hamilton, the smoother than smooth doc, doc that delivered the baby. He told me we would be going to L&D to get the baby out, depending on the traffic, it could be 15 minutes or 2 hours. It was 4pm, because Judge Judy was on, and they said, "ok, let's have a baby!"

I was rolled down to anesthesia, got a spinal, which was delayed for 7 minutes, because Dr. Hamilton had to sneak out and deliver a baby...it took 7 minutes, seriously. Which is about half of the time my whole procedure took.

It was a very routine c-section, he said he just "followed the dots" from the last one as the nurses chatted about the delicious brownies that they had for lunch. I
was kinda drugged, but I do remember these things from the birth:

1. He said he made the incision small because he was thinking baby would be small and he was pleasantly surprised he was bigger than expected.

2. I saw and heard my little boy for the first time, wailing like crazy and he didn't really look that small.

3. His apgar scores were 8 at 1 minute, 9 at 5 minutes (better than Greyson's for the record)

4. Brian and I melting in emotion when he took his first real breaths with no assistance needed

So, from the time we left our room to the first cries of the little boy who stole our hearts, it was only 40 minutes. Now our little family is complete!

Teaser..birth story to come

I have finally finished Gunner's birth story, a labor of love in itself. I will be posting it on November 17th in honor of National Prematurity Awareness Day. Stay tuned!