The story of Keira, Part 3

Read part 2 here.

Quick, fun side note: Yesterday (provided that I can get this published before midnight, ha!) was the 32 week, 3 day mark of this pregnancy--the day Keira was born in my pregnancy with her. So thankful to have made it past that point!

Writing Keira's birth story out has been a bit of a trip for those of us who love her. It's hard to reconcile our tall, curly-haired girl who reads and talks non-stop and loves to "research things" and uses ridiculously big words with ease with that tiny little quiet infant. The day I posted part two I may have gotten a little choked up, reliving it through writing it has been a bit more emotional than I'd ever imagined--I posted it, then we went to swim lessons and I watched her swim her beautiful crawl stroke and execute flip turns way better than I ever could, and felt so overwhelmed by the blessing that she is. 

God is SO good to us. We are SO very thankful for the gift that she is, and that she's part of our lives. And, we're thankful for her story, even the hard parts, because they show how very interested He was in the minutiae of her life as it begun and how He undertook for us in SO many ways. She is our eldest blessing, in ways that we could never have foreseen but are thankful for every day. And, we are thankful for this story.

So, once they made the decision to do the c-section I was pretty much out of it, due to one of the drugs they put me on. Garrett reminded me of some stuff that I'd forgotten about (or possibly deliberately blocked from my memory, ha) after my last post. Once he reminded me of it, it came flooding back--I'll recap shortly here, and then pick up where I left off from the Part 2 post. 

When they were prepping me for surgery part of the prep was to hook me up to all manner of IV's. I didn't realize it at the time, but they were prepping me for many hours of miserable immobility and discomfort. Insulin, Pain Medicine, Magnesium Sulfate. With how busy everyone was, and how fast they were trying to get me into surgery, there wasn't really time to sit down and talk about what would come after.  They made the decision to do a c-section, and within an hour Keira was here. 

After they gave me the heated blanket and I'd warmed up a bit the nurse let me know that I was going to be getting rid of that heated blanket real fast as soon as they turned on the Magnesium Sulfate drip. And she was right. She was standing there at the ready with a puke pan when they started that drip. Garrett says I told her I felt like hot lava was going up my arm and down my body--I remember now feeling like I was on fire, and I immediately felt horrible and sat up and puked into the pan she was already holding out for me. That was the intro into that horrible, horrible medicine.

Now, to be clear, I am SURE there are drugs that are more horrible than Magnesium Sulfate. I am sure there are a lot of people in that hospital who were in much worse shape than I was. But, I was pretty darn miserable.  

The second time I got to see her. :-)

After surgery and after I'd been in recovery for a bit they gave me an orange popsicle. I remember thinking how silly it was, because at home I wouldn't have ever bought those popsicles with all that high fructose corn syrup in it, but in the hospital that's what you get. Garrett wasn't anywhere to be found for quite a while. But I was happy with that since he was with Keira--it comforted me immensely to know he was with her. I just wished I felt well enough to be with them. They weren't giving me liquids, and I was SO SO SO thirsty, so I was just going through ice like crazy and willing myself to feel better. Coming out of surgery isn't fun.

Finally Garrett came in. And he had this look on his face that, in 8 years of being with him I'd never seen before. I'm pretty sure it was awe. "She is SO beautiful," he said. "I had no idea I could love someone like this. It's amazing! I had no idea I'm loved like this!" It was so good to see him--we were parents now! And every bit of me, aside from my misery, was straining to be with him and Keira, wherever they had been. It didn't really feel real for me, because I hadn't seen even a tiny bit of her, I hadn't heard her, and quite frankly, I was so out of it and miserable that suddenly not being pregnant any more didn't feel real at all. He got down to business after that--he'd been with her doctors and nurses, and gotten an overview of her care. She was healthy and well, all things considered. He got to change her diaper. She didn't need any help breathing, so basically (provided that nothing went wrong) she would be in the NICU until we could teach her to eat and she gained enough weight to maintain her own body temperature. During her time in the NICU we needed to keep her as secure-feeling as possible, so he and I would be the only ones that would hold her. When you have a baby that little, the tiniest little things can cause them to lose weight. And, at 3 pounds they don't have any weight to lose. So even being held by unfamiliar people can stress them out, and cause weight loss. They actually wanted to limit how much we held her too, they just wanted her to sleep in her little heated dome as much as possible. We pushed the limits on these guidelines a lot, and held her as much as possible. I'm so glad we did, because we walked into this not knowing anything about preemies or having time to research, but doing our best to do what felt right and natural for us. But after the fact I did research and there's a lot of studies that suggest that for preemies it's actually healthier for the parents (and even older siblings also) to follow Kangaroo Care guidelines as much as possible--keep baby nestled, even when sleeping, on bare chest so they can hear your heartbeat and voice (like they would in the womb) and keep warm through physical contact with another human.  I think the fact that we held her as much as possible, despite constant cautions about it really helped her to come home earlier than most babies who are born that early.

Anyway, after what felt like forever, but was actually just a few hours I got wheeled down to meet her. She was in the high-observation, introduction part of the NICU still, I think they were waiting for me to come through and meet her because my whole bed would fit in that area.

I remember this interlude like I'm looking at it through a sheer curtain. I was still pretty out of it, but when you meet your child it's certainly enough to break through any medicinal haze and imprint on your mind. I remember Garrett getting her out, and me watching him with her and falling in love with him again, not just my husband anymore, but also the father of my child. He's confident, like he takes care of preemies every day. I remember the little yellow hat she had on her tiny 11 inch head. Garrett held her while the nurse opened my hospital gown for me and straightened out all my IV cords so my hands could move and she could settle against my skin and hear my heartbeat--a familiar, comforting sound for her. And she was SO beautiful. And SO tiny. Nothing prepares you for how you love your children. It's a fierce, amazing, incredible love.

They had told me my time with her would be short. And they were right, it was much too short. I remember insisting that I was ok, and the nurses exchanging glances over my head.  It feels like minutes before they're taking her away, and wheeling me off to a different room. Stupidly enough, before Keira was born we were right across the hall from the NICU. Now we're in a completely different wing. Makes sense, right? Someone had moved all our things, and I get settled into a new room. I don't remember any of that though, because I am just waiting, in agony, for this Magnesium Sulfate haze to be over.  I'm additionally irritated, because I don't understand why I'm still miserable, and they still have me on these horrible drugs. I'm not pregnant anymore, right?! So my blood pressure shouldn't be an issue anymore. I didn't know this was actually the most dangerous time for me.  I vaguely remember family visiting to see Keira and to check in on me. Garrett goes home to shower and get some much needed sleep.

I meet my night nurse. And, I will say without hesitation she is one of the best nurses I've ever had. She is caring, sweet, and cheerful, and I'm SO happy every time she comes through the door. I'm miserable, but at this point I've been that way for so many hours that the distraction of having someone to talk to helps a lot. She has the cutest haircut--it's a pixie/mohawk thing that suits her down to the ground. I tell her that I love it, and she grins and says thank you. It used to be pink, she says, but the powers that be decided that pink hair wasn't a good idea for a nurse to have. I find this absurd. Just because someone's hair is pink means that they're less knowledgeable, or less compassionate than someone with a "normal" color of hair?! If you really think about it, that's the stupidest thing ever. We commiserate about the lame-oh world we live in for a few minutes--somehow this was a nice distraction from the agony of magnesium sulfate.

I'm not eating right now... because of the Magnesium Sulfate they aren't feeding me, or giving me anything to drink other than ice chips. I am still ravenously thirsty. I find out at this time that I'm going to be on it for somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 hours at least, or until my blood pressure comes down, which might make it longer. 

Eventually it's lights out time, which is ridiculous since I can't sleep. I just lay there miserable, still getting my blood pressure taken a lot and with about 40 bajillion tubes everywhere. I am puffy, and huge. I can't move. I can barely lift my head, and when I do and I look down at myself, I'm so puffy it makes my eyes water, and I don't recognize myself. None of my limbs are working properly, and I'm not entirely sure that they didn't cut out all my core abdomen muscles while they were in there--I don't appear to have a single one anymore. I feel simultaneously dried out and swollen and itchy and insane from head to toe. I desperately wish I could slice my skin open and crawl away from this strange, horrible thing that is my body.

At around 1am I HAVE HAD IT. I am done. I'm absolutely miserable, and I've had it with all of this. I want my baby. I'm not pregnant anymore, and that's shocking enough, but also I give birth to her, and we're separated for hours and hours, and I don't know anyone in the NICU. For all I know, they're poking her with sticks down there.  And I don't want that miserable drug anymore. I want to be back to my normal active self, in fact, I insist upon it. I hate chewing on ice even on a good day, I want water. I guess I essentially throw a little bit of a temper tantrum there in the dark, immobile and puffy though I may be. I'm laying there with tears streaming down my face, pissed off beyond belief when the nurse walks in with more ice chips for me. She turns on the bathroom light, and sets eyes upon me in my little rage with my tears, and immediately I get a "Oh, sweetie! What's wrong?!" I explain that I'm engaging in a pity party of epic proportions, and she's immediately sympathetic. She mops my face, and then sits down at the edge of my bed with my ice. She agrees to bring me a half cup of water, if I promise to sip it slowly. She explains that if I wasn't on such a high dose of Magnesium Sulfate right now, I'd be having bad, bad seizures. I had NO IDEA about that, so that news helps me keep perspective. I'd rather not have seizures of course, so hooray Magnesium Sulfate. She tells me she was on a low dose of Magnesium Sulfate for premature labor, and so she can sympathize with how horrible I feel, and what a awful medicine it is. And, best of all she promises to finish up with two other patients and then she'll run down to the NICU for me and check on Keira and bring me back a verbal report and a picture, if she can get her hands on the camera.

And, bless her heart, she does. It isn't too long before she comes back into the room, out of breath from running, and waving the Polaroid snapshot just below this paragraph in her hand. She's beautiful, she says, and she's doing great! Her nurse is loving her, and says she's a tough little fighter. She was awake and squawking when I saw her!  I take that photo like my life depends on it. I've never been so thankful for a piece of paper in my life. She makes me promise to try to rest, and I do, with Keira's picture clutched in my hands on the pillow next to me I'm able to get some restless sleep.

The next day is more of the same. My day nurse that day is great too. She really likes Garrett and tells me again and again how lucky I am to have such a great guy for a husband. He's back and forth between me and Keira throughout the day. As the day wears on they cut back and off my Magnesium Sulfate. I am definitely feeling better, but I am still on strict, don't get out of bed for anything bed rest. So, I can't take a shower yet, and after everything in the past night and day I feel SO GROSS. She helps me clean up, and I'm slooooowly feeling better and better, and it feels amazing to be clean. I'm still so puffy I can't look at my feet without my eyes watering (Imagine a cantaloupe with toes, that's what my feet look like!!), but she assures me that will probably start going away the next day. I am desperate to see Keira, so she says that if I agree to do my best to take a nap and rest up, after I wake up I can go down and be with her. And, for the first time since I am in the hospital I fall asleep in a deep, natural sleep. I can't even say how amazing it felt to sleep like that.

I wake up when she comes in at the end of her shift and gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and tells me with tears in her eyes that she's so thankful she got to be my nurse and take care of me, and that me and my husband's love for each other and witnessing a little piece of our marriage was such a blessing to her, and that our baby is so lucky to be going home with us. I'm pretty groggy, and the sun shining through the window is blinding my half-asleep self, but I do remember thanking her for taking care of me. I am extremely touched by what she says.  I'm feeling pretty thankful for my marriage too at this point, and also I know for a fact that I haven't been rude to any nurses, but I definitely haven't been feeling like sweetness itself, so what she says means a lot to me. Manners are the first way we show Jesus to people, and if I didn't think that before the event of Keira's birth, this whole experience would have convinced me, because a lot of the time all I had to give were manners that my parents instilled in me so they come (mostly) naturally even through discomfort and misery. After she leaves I fall back asleep for a while longer. It feels SO good to rest. And that doesn't make much sense since resting is all I'd done up to that point, but it just felt so much better to sleep naturally, without being squeezed to death by the blood pressure machine constantly, and without that awful Magnesium Sulfate feeling.

That evening I get transferred to a wheelchair, and I get to see Keira for a second time. Every time you go into the NICU you scrub your hands and arms up to the elbows.  So we do that, and then Garrett wheels me through all the way around to the back corner where Keira is. It's this visit in which I become acutely aware of how much we have to be thankful for. Because the NICU is full of babies who are not healthy. And our baby IS healthy. In her little corner there is another little girl who'd been there for 6 months, born at 1 pound, 11 ounces, with all manner of complications. While we are in the NICU she will have another surgery, her third if I recall correctly. Our hearts ache for her parents. We spend quite a bit of time with Keira that evening, holding her and being amazed at this little person who's ours. The nurses assure us that she's quite noisy for a preemie. I don't really believe them--it's pretty unnerving to have a baby that doesn't cry. We actually tease our chatterbox Keira about how silent she was when she was born quite a bit now. :-)

The next morning is more of me getting back to normal. My swelling has diminished just a bit. They finally take me off the catheter, and I have to re-learn to pee. Apparently this is quite normal, but it's maddening. It takes FOREVER--smelling peppermint essential oils and of all things, blowing bubbles through a straw before I can finally pee. So, so, so weird. For almost four years after Keira was born there were times when I really had to focus to pee. I've talked to other people who've had that same thing happen to them too, so I know I'm not alone. The doctor visits and tells me that I should limit my sodium intake for a while, and then they promptly bring me my first meal, which consists of jello and a packet of sodium-enriched broth with hot water. Ha! I ask the nurse if I should really be eating that broth with all the sodium (and MSG!!) in it, and she's appalled, apparently no one had ever questioned that little procedure before. Hospital Fail. I am starving, but also so sick of hospital food at this point. Gravies, and nasty canned peas, and carb heavy meals. Yuck.

After all that I feel great. Like, spectacular. I WALK down to the NICU and hang out with my baby. It feels SO GOOD to move like my normal self. The chaplain comes in and plays her harp for a while--a lot of classic hymns. It's SO incredibly beautiful and restful, like a balm to the soul--I could listen to that forever. Then she moves her harp over next to the three babies in our area, and plays a few more hymns and ends with the theme song from The Godfather, Speak Softly Love, by Nino Rota. It's one of my favorite songs, and I fall in love with it even more on the harp. (This is the version with the lyrics, and this is a version without.) To this day I think of that NICU every time I hear that song. The mother of the little baby boy next to us comes in and sorts through breast milk, boxes and boxes and boxes of pumped breast milk. I get to feed Keira and change her diaper and I hold her as much as they'll let me, she just snuggles down and snoozes against me. It's a known fact that the rocking chairs in the NICU are horrifyingly uncomfortable, so they bring me pillows and we settle in and snuggle or I just watch her sleep.  I swear she sleeps better in my arms against my chest, she seems more restless and wiggles a lot more in her bed, but the nurses do not agree with me at all.  So I fight to hold her as much as they'll let me, and sit by her when they make me put her back. She's at about every other feeding with a bottle. Since it takes so much energy for her to suck, she gets alternating feedings through her nose tube and through a bottle nipple that's easy for her to suck on.  She has to learn to eat, (the nurses say she's doing great at it for her age) and she won't be able to go home until she can eat properly through a bottle.

She also has to be able to breath constantly. Her heartbeat and oxygen levels and breathing are monitored constantly, and we watch again and again as she stops breathing. Absolutely terrifying. The nurses explain that her neck is weak still, so any time her head gets moved her breathing isn't strong enough to keep her airways open. So, they wedge a rolled up burp cloth at the back of her neck to keep her airways open, and every once in a while if she shifts or moves it stops working, the alarms go off, and they casually come over and adjust her head/burp cloth combination so she can breath again. Terrifying.

I have to head back to my room in the afternoon. I walk back, and I am completely WIPED. OUT.  I barely make it. The nurses had changed rooms or something, somehow I ended up with a different one, and she's a scary big older lady who lectures me in this no-nonsense tone about doing too much, too fast. She tells me that I've completely overdone it, and I might have to go back on Magnesium Sulfate again. My feet have gotten more swollen since the morning. I immediately commence begging and pleading to not go back on that stuff, as if she can do anything about it, and she softens up quite a bit when she sees that she's scared the tar out of me, and I meekly settle down for a nap with my feet propped up on about 5 pillows. I'm pretty sure that was her original purpose, and it worked. 

That evening she sits me down and introduces me to the breast pump. And, since Keira started out on a bottle that was easy-flow, try though I might, I could never get her to breastfeed. I pumped exclusively for 5.5 months, with breast milk that lasted her for 6.5 months.  I wish I could have done it longer. It felt so good to take that first bit of breast milk down to her. The nurse had fed her a bottle while I was napping, so she refused to let me bottle feed my milk to her. Instead I watched while they injected it into her feeding tube through her nose. 

That evening I also start losing liquid, finally. Throughout the next several hours I spend a great deal of time losing liquid. :-) It was mind boggling, actually. And, between being wheeled down to see Keira and getting back on a normal diet and walking down to see Keira and NOT overdoing it, I am finally not only feeling like myself, but starting to look like it too. Wednesday afternoon my feet finally look normal, and I'm SO excited. I think I showed them to every single person who walked through the door--Look at my feet, they look so pretty!!! That sounds so stupid now, but it was so thrilling to have normal, skinny feet again. After being up 36 pounds total, and then not eating for what felt like forever, I walked out of the hospital with less than 10 pounds of pregnancy weight to lose. That's one way to do it, I suppose. Not recommended.

I go home the Thursday after giving birth. Garrett is instructed to watch me like a hawk for Post Partum Depression, and given lists of symptoms to watch for, and so on and so forth. Apparently I am in the highest risk category for that at this point in our journey. Keira stays in the hospital. Garrett takes a load to the car and goes to bring it to the door and the orderly comes in to wheel me down. I have a breast pump, flowers, balloons, but no baby. The orderly is a older man who suspiciously asks me where my baby is, like I'm a crazy person who's already managed to lose her newborn. Thankfully I'd somehow already thought that might happen and prepared myself for it, so I was able to explain that she was in the NICU without bursting into tears, although a few might have sort-of tried to work their way out. He feels absolutely horrible, and apologizes approximately 30 times between the room and the car. 

Walking into your home without your child is the oddest thing. She's never been there before outside the womb, but somehow it feels horribly wrong and empty and strangely silent. Already something was missing, even though we'd never had a child before. 

I'm still forbidden from driving, although that directive seems ridiculous, so my mother-in-law and my mom work out a schedule to take me to the hospital every day.  

Keira is doing really well. I learn to give her a bath by her one battle-ax nurse, who seems to feel that the parents of her patients are more trouble than they're worth. She's not a very nice lady (to me), and I hate leaving Keira with her. She gets mad at me because Keira's hand escapes my grasp and grabs her feeding tube out of her nose during her first little temper tantrum I ever saw during her bath. When you have a baby that doesn't cry, a temper tantrum is an OH. SO. WELCOME. sight.

She has a few setbacks here and there as far as feeding is concerned, but every day she is improving. She gets moved down to the less-intense-care-needed NICU, and they do it without telling us, so I walk in to her usual spot to find a different baby, and mine nowhere around. Panic city. The new area is a great one though, with windows and less babies, so we have more room to breath.  I'm with her in the day time, and her Daddy comes each night and visits her after he gets off work at 3am to do that feeding. All the nurses I see are amazed at how well she's doing, and every single one of them says it's because her daddy comes and visits her so much. Apparently that is rare, and it can make a difference of days or even weeks in how early a preemie goes home, and how healthy they are. She is almost exclusively bottle fed at this point, and her breathing monitor isn't going off very often any more either. That's freaked Garrett and me out enough that we're still very paranoid about it, but the nurses assure us that she's doing really great with weight gain, eating, maintaining her body heat, and breathing.

They're starting to talk about her coming home if we can get her weight up over 4 pounds--they won't send her home smaller than 4 pounds. I shop for preemie clothes. Even preemie clothes are too big for her, so the pickings are pretty slim, but we find a few things.

We buy disinfectant and hand sanitizer by the gallon. We are instructed not to take her anywhere in public or near people for as long as possible, preferably all winter long. I wish now that we'd followed that rule more strictly, although we did our best and I feel like God really protected her through that first winter.  No one in our home got sick even once that winter.

We have to find a car seat that will fit down to her size.  Since she's going to be only four pounds it's quite hard to find one. Garrett searches high and low, and finally finds one that will work. We bring it in for her car seat test. She gets put in her car seat exactly as we would do it taking her home or to doctor appointments, and hooked back up to all her monitors. They keep her like that and watch her for an hour, and she passes the test.

Tuesday morning, two weeks and two days after she's born we bring her home. Nobody who looks at her chart can believe she's coming home so early, or doing so well. Several nurses agree that she's the earliest they've ever seen a baby born at 32 weeks go home. Every single one of the nurses says very matter-of-factly, "Oh, that's why." when they look over her charts and see that her daddy came and held her and fed her every single middle of the night feeding. We know too that a lot of prayer went into her health in those weeks, and that's the main reason why.

And so, we bring her home at 4 pounds, 1 ounce.  She gets the introduction to the family--I'm pretty sure every single person in our family in the immediate vicinity comes over to hold her that night. Our beautiful girl, who's crying more and more, and letting us know what she thinks. Garrett has two weeks off, and we snuggle down to feed her as much as possible, and sleep as much as possible and get to know our baby.

Her bottles are so small they measure in CC's, not ounces. We fill them up, and heat them in mugs of hot water. We celebrate every single CC of breast milk we get into her. Our daily routine includes a notebook to track feedings to make sure she's getting enough to eat throughout the day. I still have that notebook with dates and CC's listed out.

We are so paranoid about her breathing, the both of us wake from dead sleep a couple times a night at a run to her bedroom to check and make sure she's still breathing.  After a while we can't handle it anymore, we are SO exhausted, and my mom finds a little bed that snuggles between the parent's pillows, and we all sleep better with her nestled between us.

And she grows and grows and grows. And now you'd never know that she was a preemie to begin with!

It's hard to know how to end a (really long) story about someone's beginning. Going through that time was a one foot in front of the other sort of thing, from one minute to the next. A lot of helpless prayers were spoken by us. I think we grew exponentially in that time. But, those are only things you see in retrospect, because in the heat of the moment you're just hanging on, and getting through. As we look back on it, we can't help but feel amazed by how much God worked for us. Some of the ways that He worked were immediately obvious and praised over, but others are little blessings and answers to unspoken prayers that peek up through the overall picture when you look at it in retrospect. So many things were maybe little things that become huge in the moment when they all pile up together, like strength for each day and medical help we felt we could really trust when we most needed them. The fact that I was on maternity leave for 2 extra months was a stressful addition at first, but it worked out to be something that just had to happen the way it did. And, money was pretty tight, but every need was met. I get good goosebumps every time I think about the financial side of this-- When we got a bill in the mail--the one showing the total amount paid by insurance, and our portion. And, my insurance was awesome, so the amount we owed was not that big, considering the overall picture. But, it would have hurt to pay it while I was on maternity leave. And, I want to say it was the same day, but it might have been within a few days, we received a gift check in the mail from an assembly that was the exact same amount of money that the bill was.  That was the only bill we got, and the only check. My God shall supply all your need... It's a lovely comfort to have a God who cares about every detail of our lives, and I'm thankful for how this experience showed us that, from physical needs, to emotional, financial, all across the spectrum, our needs were met. We were carried, in every possible way.

Stay tuned for Brianna's story. It's not nearly as long... but it's very dramatic. :-)