Ok, we’ve had a preemie setback. He’s still in an open bed, but moved back into the main room b/c there is a 1:1 nurse ratio. He needs closer watch on his monitors b/c he had a “desat” episode. He has had bradacardia while eating (his heart rate drops b/c he forgets to breath while eating, takes a bit for preemies to coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing. He has always self recovered and I never know he is doing it b/c he doesn’t stop sucking..but those monitors tell on him!) but the doctors weren’t concerned b/c he self recovered and it was only during feeding, not while asleep. But the desat is his oxygen level dropping b/c of not breathing while eating. Don’t really see the importance b/c again, he self recovers and it is only during feeding. When a preemie has one of these episodes, they are kept for an additional 5 days to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now this is getting a little ridiculous to me. We are beginning to feel that the fact that he is insured is playing into his prolonged stay. We are going on 3 wks now and there has never been anything really “wrong” with him besides his immaturity. He is alert much more the past few days and I spend around 6 hours up there just holding him while he eats and sleeps and looks around. It is really getting harder and harder to leave him b/c I can see his little personality unfolding and I bottom line he needs to be home. He also has to pass a car seat test (sit in it for 1hr without his heart or oxygen level dropping), pass a hearing test, and get circumcised before he comes home. I brought up the car seat yesterday so that they could get that test over with. I’ve seen others fail it and I don’t want that to be a hold up on his discharge. I also pushed the dr to order the circumcision, which normally doesn’t happen until the day of discharge, but again-I don’t want any hold ups. He passed the hearing test this morning, so one down. And whoever the nurse is tonight will do the car seat test; she just doesn’t know it yet.

Baby B is out of the isolate! Finally. This is a big step to going home. It means that he is regulating his temperature all by himself and feeding well. He is on a 3 hour schedule and knows it. He wakes up like clockwork about 30 minutes before feeding time. He’s been doing this ever since he went off the nose tube on the 21^st. He is also gaining about 2 oz a day now. He only got down to 4.6 lbs while in here, which is great for a preemie. I should mention that ever since he was born he gets this serious look on his face and wrinkles up his forehead. He gives us this “I’m smarter than you already” look.

Baby B breastfed for the first time tonight! He latched on right away. He did great, and of course I cried. Oh, and he also got the IV out of his head yesterday and off of the UV lights today. Such progress!! But can’t get our hopes up b/c he is still a preemie and they usually have set backs with their progress. My baby is perfect though, so maybe that won’t happen. But the nurses are monitoring him for bradacardia and apnea, which he hasn’t had yet, but apparently that comes with feeding sometimes. He still hasn’t cried yet. He just makes the little grunts that make him sound like a little goat. Very cute

I lost my composure this morning. When we went into visit him this morning, his IV was moved from his hand into his head. They had warned us from the beginning that this may happen b/c some babies are too active and pull them out, but I wasn’t expecting that. And he was under the lights for jaundice. He only has a level of 13 and it’s supposed to be fewer than 11. He will probably only be under them for a couple of days, but I want that IV out of his head now! I cried for him, more than usual this morning. I went home from the hospital yesterday, and one can only imagine how strange it is to go home without your baby. I still feel like this is just a nightmare and not happening to my sweet boy. I just sit in his nursery and cry.

Anyway, on a brighter note-I still had a baby shower today. My sister in law, Bryce’s aunt, and his mom’s friend Debbie were wonderful hostesses. I got everything else I needed for Bryce Tyler. He is very lucky to have such wonderful people that care about him, and they don’t even know how special he really is yet.

We got to do the kangaroo care today! I have never experienced such happiness. To feel him breathing and know that he is hearing my heartbeat as he did in the womb is so comforting. I am sure now that I will cry every time I hold him. I feel like I am finally getting to bond with him. He sleeps all day and night while he is growing in the isolate. So it makes me feel a little better that I am not “missing” anything, but I am really emotional over the bonding time that I feel we both need and are missing. He is an extraordinary baby. I wish he didn’t have to go through this. It isn’t fair to him.

I got to hold Bryce Tyler  for the first time today!! Oh how amazing. I hope I don’t cry every time I hold him, but I have a feeling I will.  He looks like both of us I think. Just beautiful and perfect. He makes these cute little grunt noises, but doesn’t cry. He is in an isolate with an IV for fat and IV for vitamins and nutrients, both in his left hand.  He will take my breast milk through a nose tube until the dr lets him try a bottle and then breast.  Pumping is a new experience that I won’t get into. But so far my obsession with the well being of my little prince is keeping my mind off of the pain of the c-section, which is very intense. I won’t take the pain meds b/c I don’t won’t them in my breast milk. I may have not been able to follow my birth plan, but I’m still not drugging my baby. The nurses say he will probably like it, but not doing it. And speaking of birth plan-the whole point of natural delivery was to do what is best for my baby, so when the c-section was in his best interest, that became the birth plan with no hesitation. I digress. We only get to take baby Watson out of the isolate twice a day for about an hour. He has to keep warm and not use up any energy so that he doesn’t lose too much weight. All babies lose weight in the first week, but more so with preemies. Weird saying that. I have a preemie. Anyway, I am sharing the time with Bryce, surprisingly! I get him in the morning and he gets him at night. The NICU practices kangaroo care, so in a few days when we take him out we get to put him on our chest, skin to skin. It promotes his growth. The neonatologist says that he will probably be in here until somewhere b/t 35 & 36 wks. He just needs to grow and mature. Poor baby should be just relaxing and growing inside me, but instead is forced to learn how to breath and eat and maintain his temperature, etc. I won’t get into the guilt either.

Very important: Bryce brought up some organic cotton onesies, blankets and burp cloths for our little prince. No used hospital attire and rough washcloths for my baby! The nurses said we could, but he can’t wear preemie b/c they want loose clothes for the monitors on his chest and he is too long for them anyway.

I had another ultrasound this morning, which I’m supposed to have everyday that I’m here…but it looks like that won’t be any longer! Baby Watson is no longer swimming around in there, he has only 1.5 cm of fluid left in there. The ultrasound results were relayed to my OB while she was in a surgery and the nurse informed me at about 1:30 that my “Dr. would be delivering the baby today”, to which my response was “this baby??” as I point to my deflated belly.  She says yes and that the dr. would be in after her surgery. Now Bryce and my mother in law are in the room to hear this announcement as well, so I had witnesses to assure me that I just heard that I am having a 33 week old baby today. I cried, and Bryce cried in the bathroom, and then I sucked it up and convinced myself that I had time to use my superior negotiation skills on my OB. She showed up about 2:30 and I lost the battle…honestly I didn’t even make an attempt. She told us that there were 4 risk factors and she could eliminate 1 or 2, but not all 4 so she thought it best to take the baby while she knew we had a healthy baby. She says this while pointing to the monitor of his perfect heartbeat. (have I mentioned how much I hate the term ‘take the baby’?!) Basically I couldn’t keep him in there much longer than another day so why take the chance of him lying on his cord and then we have an emergency situation with 7 minutes to get him out before brain damage, etc.  I promised myself from the very very beginning of this pregnancy that I would not ever have a “what if” situation with my little miracle growing inside me. A wise friend told me of some good advice she had gotten while pregnant last year: always listen to your intuition and don’t let anyone convince you that you’re wrong. This was the time to not only listen to my intuition, but also my dr. who I had full trust in. So without protest we agreed to get this show on the road and I asked a few questions about how the C-Section would go down. I was absolutely terrified of the epidural and just the whole idea of the surgery, mainly b/c I had done almost no research on the procedure. I hate being un-informed! That always leads to fear. I know everything there is to know about vaginal delivery and ironically our last hypno therapy appointment was Saturday. I did use the relaxation breath technique to help me during the epidural, and it did work.  Anyway at 3pm I was taken for the epidural and by 3:13 Bryce Tyler Watson II was born. And yes, they literally ‘take the baby’-all of a sudden I’m not pregnant and kind of mourning that.   I cried as soon as I heard him cry, I knew right then that his lungs were fine. I then yelled at Bryce to not worry about me and go to him and never leave him alone. He went to watch him get cleaned up and weighed and then brought him over to me all wrapped up. He wasn’t crying. He just looked so tiny. And of course I immediately thought about how much I hated him in that hospital blanket! Bryce took him down to the NICU and I was taken to the recovery room until I was able to move my legs, which was almost 2 hrs later. Then I was able to see him, while I was still on the stretcher. He is beautiful and as I already knew, breathing on his own. It was hard to see all the IV’s in him, but at least there was nothing down his little throat. He really is doing great for a 33 wk old baby. I cannot put into words the way I feel about being a mother today. It is full circle, b/c I am in the same shock that I had when I found out I was blessed with being pregnant.

Oh yeah-he is 4.11 lbs & 17 ¾ in. The OB said he would have been well over 8 lbs if I could have carried him to term. Wow.

 (33 wks)  So, my water apparently broke this morning. I awoke at 2:50 am with the strange sensation. I got up to go to the restroom with high hopes that I was just suffering from a little bladder incontinence, a side effect of pregnancy that I had read about, but my intuition knew better. I still got back into bed and began to pray again that this was not my water breaking or rupture of membranes as it is called. But of course the “leaking” continued so I woke up Bryce. We arrived at the hospital at 3:30 am where I proceeded to tell the nurse that I may have just peed myself, but wanted to be sure. She was actually one of the nurses from my pre-term labor scare stay and she remembered us. Still in a slight state of denial, I did not bring my hospital bag, which was already packed…along with his diaper bag for some reason. She quickly determined that in fact it was my amniotic fluid leaking. I was then hooked up to an antibiotic IV to prevent infection in the uterus and Magnesium to prevent contractions. She called my OB who had her administer a steroid shot to speed up his lung development and ordered an ultrasound stat. That revealed that I had 6cm of water around our sweet baby, and the OB likes to see at least 5cm. So we are good to go for now. She told us that if my water and stays the same and contractions stay subsided, I would be in there for 35 wks, in the bed…for all hours of every day b/c of my “premature rupture of membranes”.  She is comfortable with Baby Watson being born after that.  To clarify why the absence of fluid is so alarming, it is b/c the primary purpose of it is to prevent infection in the uterus and therefore the baby, and to help avoid cord compression, which is obviously the main concern.