SURPRISE! We got a boy!

I'm sure most everyone is aware by now, but David Shane was born August 1st at 6:14pm. He weighed 6lb 7oz and was 20 inches long. After a few hours of observation, it was obvious the little guy was in trouble. He wound up with a chest tube, lines in his umbilical cord and lots of monitors. After a day, he still wasn't better, so he was flown to Scott & White in Temple where he could be watched better. He recovered well and was released on Tuesday August 12.

I had a really good experience with my immediate c-section care. The spinal worked REALLY well and I can't remember ever feeling as good as I did after this section. Brad and I sat and laughed so hard in the recovery room about our little BOY who was supposed to be a girl!

Shortly after they moved me back to L&D (I was on magnesium for my blood pressure so had to be monitored closer), I was feeling great and just wanted to rest, so I sent Brad home to get himself a good night's sleep. Right around 1am on Saturday morning, things spiraled out of control for me. My blood pressure went from around 190/100 to 70/30 in less than 5 minutes. There was a code called and about 20 people swarmed into my room. I have no idea how close I was to actually dying, but I'm sure I was pretty darn close with all those people acting like they did. I rebounded after several bags of fluid (thanks to an additional IV) and stabilized for a few hours. THEN, it happened AGAIN! Throughout the entire ordeal, I never lost consciousness. It's even more scary when you see how concerned the doctors and nurses are! I was once again stabilized.

The doctors (because at that point there were at least 3 involved in my care) decided I was having some post-surgical bleeding and debated sending me back to surgery. I can't tell you how scared I was of that! Thankfully, after four, YES FOUR, units of blood and about 13 bags of saline, they decided I was stable enough to just be watched for signs of more bleeding. After several hours, and lots of blood draws, they decided I was still bleeding, but not enough to send to surgery. PRAISE GOD! I did get two more units of blood though, for a total of SIX units!

Overall, I spent from Friday afternoon until Wednesday morning in the hospital recovering from my section. I was discharged Wednesday and headed to Temple to see my little guy. I had only seen him for a few minutes during all my time at St. Joe because I was not stable enough to go to him and he was too sick to come to me.

We are all home now, and have been since Tuesday evening. I can't tell you how blessed I am to still be here to be a mother to my children and to watch them grow and learn. I'm so lucky that David and I were not any sicker than we were. It could have been SOOO much worse. Spending a week in the NICU makes you well aware of what can happen with sick babies!

I'll be back to post pictures later. I've got THREE kids to get ready for a visit to the doctor. Only one is going with us, but the other two have to be dressed to go to the neighbor's!