Day 4 in the Hospital

Hello! It is finally Julia again. I am well enough to be able to get on the computer for the first time since Friday. It has been a roller coaster or a few days. I am going to give everyone the run down on what happened and then update you on precious baby Perron and me. I hope to get some pictures up soon too!

Okay, where to start. So after I posted on Friday night they re-drew my labs on Saturday at 5am. Unfortunately I was deteriorating rapidly and they had to get the baby out ASAP, no longer for his health, but for mine. I had been running blood pressures in the high 140s to 150s over 100+s all day and night. Also, Perron had had some decelerations throughout the night but for the most part had done really well. (as a side note, when they delivered him his cord was wrapped around his neck twice, so that might have been causing the decelerations). It was really scary and it all happened so fast. From the time that they said the labs were unfavorable to the time I was delivering him was maybe only 30 minutes. My parents barely got there in time to kiss me as they were whisking us off to the operating room.

Perron was born at 7:42 on Saturday morning and he came into this world screaming and crying, which was such a relieving sound to hear. I was able to see him for just a second and then they whisked (along with Stephen off to the NICU). They finished sewing me up and then sent me in for recovery and what would possibly be the worst 24 hours of my life. Becaue of my pre-eclampsia they had to put me on a magnesium drip in order to keep me from having seizures. I was naive enough to think that pre-eclampsia goes away as soon as you have the baby...but I was WRONG! Because your system is still in shock and still has all of that blood volume in it, it takes a while to regulate. I was so sick on Saturday and Sunday that I thought I was dying. Literally I asked my nurse in the middle of the night on Saturday night if I was in danger of dying because my blood pressure was so high and I was so sick. I was seeing double, having trouble with my breathing impulse, nauseuous, etc. The worst part of all of this is that I was not allowed out of my bed for 24 hours so I didn't get to see Perron for the whole first day. They finally got me up around noon yesterday and I was still feeling really bad. I did get to go down to the NICU and hold him for a minute but the I felt so sick I as afraid that I was going to throw up on him. Luckily by 4pm I was feeling a ton better and was able to go see him twice after that.

He is absolutely perfect and he is already such a fighter. Stephen calls him the star of the NICU. He contiunes to only need room oxygen, which is remarkable for his gestational age, weight, sex, and race. They say white male preemies do the worst with breathing. He also was able to start feeds on an NG tube yesterday, which is also awesome. When I called the NICU this morning and talked to his nurse they said that they were probably going to up his feeds today because he was acting hungry!!! He must be just like his daddy! He is under the photo light therapy to keep his billirubin down but his bloodwork came in today and showed it trending down, so hopefully he will be off of that soon. I hate it because he has to have his little eyes covered with a patch and you can't see him. He is still on a radiant warmer, but we are hoping he will get to move to an incubator within the next week. The neonatologist talked to us yesterday and said that they think he will probably be in there about two weeks. I am going to post some pictures so enjoy...and please ignore how horrible I look!