One Month

It's been one month since we had to say goodbye to a piece of our heart. I don't know why certain milestones carry such weight, but for some reason, hitting that one month marker feels so momentous. Maybe it's just part of being human. Our entire lives revolve around time, every day. We use time as a ruler for emotion, we tell those who are hurting or grieving "Time heals" or "Give it time". The thing with time though its that there's never enough of it, especially when it comes to time spent with someone we love. I truly, with my entire heart, believed Mason would be okay. I saw our lives with him. I pictured him this Christmas, my family of four in front of a Christmas tree, smiling and laughing because our miracle baby was home for the holidays. I saw us next summer celebrating his first birthday, reflecting on the roller coaster ride that it was to get him here. I felt it in the depth of my soul that we would have more time. Then suddenly, we didn't. Time ran out on us. It began with waking up to an early morning phone call. "How soon do you and your husband think you can get here? Drive safely, but you need to hurry." Driving to the hospital, knowing that the clock is ticking. Feeling the need to walk faster, move quicker, yet wanting everything to just stop because once we get there, once we're in that NICU, it's real and reality is making it hard to breathe. Walking through the double doors and down the hall to the NICU still feels like a dream. I knew from the phone call from the doctor that this was the day we had prayed would never come. From the moment my water broke, I had been given the option to let my baby live or die. I always knew that was not my decision to make, nor was it one that I felt I could ever actually make. You read or hear stories about people having to take their loved one off of life support and you think "Oh my gosh, that would be so hard" and let me tell you, it is, but it also isn't. I never thought I would be able to say that. We walked into Mason's room and saw him for the first time that morning and he looked so different. He was a light shade of purple, his face was swollen, and you could see all his little veins through his skin. My baby was sick. Before this, when we had been told he was sick, it felt so distant because he looked so healthy. He was growing, he was gaining weight, he looked perfect. But today, the sickness had crept to the surface and we could see it. We were taken out of the room to talk to the doctors. I don't even remember everything they said to us. It was like an out of body experience. I could hear another baby crying and thinking "I am never going to hear my baby cry." We were presented with two options: we could hold and love on Mason and let him pass peacefully in our arms and remove him from the ventilator, or we could wait for him to essentially go into cardiac arrest. We saw his chest x-ray from that morning, with both lungs almost fully collapsed. He had no urine output since the night before. My baby was suffering. You think it'll be a hard choice when you're asked whether you want to end life support, but the thought of your baby suffering is enough to make that decision an easy one. From that moment on, time was all we could hold onto. Our families got to come in and say their Earthly goodbyes. Mason's big sister got to sing to him and hold him. And for the second time in my life, I held my baby as a doctor with a stethoscope told me "He's gone." You hear those words and you can feel your entire world shift to the before and the after. Like I mentioned before, we like to tell people that "time heals all wounds". I can tell you right now, there are some wounds that time does not, nor can it, heal. Some wounds simply become easier to manage with the passage of time. I think every day, I wish I had one more day, one more hour, just one more minute. One month has passed and we're just one month closer to being together again.

Mason's Story

To say the past few months have been eventful would be an understatement.  I have been blessed with 3 pregnancies, have never had to "try" to conceive. Fertility has not been a problem I've experienced, however, staying pregnant is another story. Most are aware of the first baby I carried, who came into this world at 19 weeks 3 days. Too premature to save, we held him and loved him and waited for his little heart to stop beating. There's a special kind of pain holding your living baby and knowing that there is absolutely nothing you can do to save them. You're waiting for your world as you know it to come to a crashing end. Fast forward to the birth of a special girl, who lights up everyone's world, and then a surprise positive pregnant test almost 4 years after that. I always wanted a lot of kids. Six was always the number I had in mind. So even though I knew we wanted to expand our family, we were not trying to have another baby when we found out we were expecting. After our first doctor's appointment, we weren't sure the pregnancy was viable. Where there should have been a flickering heart, there was an empty sack. We were so worried that we were going to have another loss, and even though it was the first trimester, the thought of losing another baby was just so hard. It was such a relief to go back to the doctor and find out that we had just conceived later than originally suspected. After losing Hunter, and then all the steps we took to get our Lizzie here safely, we knew the plan for this baby would include a cerclage placement, progesterone injections, many doctor's appointments and extra monitoring. At almost 15 weeks, I had a cervical cerclage placed and found out afterward that the placement was very difficult. I barely had enough cervix to even stitch. I tried to not let that worry me, but I honestly felt uneasy from there on out. A few weeks after placement, I started getting even more worried. I was experiencing some discomfort. Not really in pain, not really able to fully describe what was going on. But I felt like something was off. After talking to my doctor, I ended up in L&D just to make sure my stitch was holding and doing its job, and everything looked great, though we couldn't explain the discomfort I was feeling. I felt some relief after that visit, but decided I needed to take it easy. Two days later, I was laying in bed and felt a small pop. I lept out of bed and ran into the bathroom and knew my water had broken. That was such a surreal moment. I didn't feel panicked, I just existed. I could not wrap my head around the fact that this was happening. I mean, what are the odds that I'm pregnant with a baby boy, I'm 19+2, my first baby boy was born at 19+3...I just could not believe what was happening. I was familiar with the term PPROM (pre-term pre-labor rupture of membranes), but I had no idea what rupturing so early meant. After a ride to the hospital that seemed like a blur, it was quickly confirmed that indeed it was my water that had gone and soon we had a doctor talking to us about our options and possible outcomes. Nothing was positive. There was really no hope given. All I knew was that I wasn't going to induce labor and deliver yet another living baby that I would have to wait and watch die. I felt like it was not my decision to make, to end the pregnancy was to end this baby's life. After making the decision to continue with the pregnancy, every meeting with a doctor meant another discussion about how unlikely survival was for the baby and how I was even putting my own life in danger, "You can end this any time you want". It wasn't until I was a few days shy of 24 weeks that we heard anything positive at all, and that was just because we would be allowed to enter the hospital and be monitored full time. We toughed it out for 5 weeks at home on bed rest, shed many tears, prayed, and some how we made it with no infection, no labor, and still no fluid for baby to viability. The first few days at the hospital involved steroids to help baby's lung development, magnesium to help baby's brain, daily NST's, twice daily injections of blood thinners, blood draws, ultrasounds, and staying in bed. We made it to day 4 at the hospital when I woke up to some bleeding. Since I had PPROM'd 5 weeks earlier, I had a few instances of bleeding and they all ended up being nothing. I mentioned it to my nurse and off I went to my NST. After a while, it was evident that baby was not doing that well. When you have an NST, its important to see some variation in baby's heartbeat. A baseline heartbeat is established, so lets say 150 beats per minute. You want to see that heart rate go up about 10 BPM within a few minutes time. We weren't getting much acceleration in heart rate, only decelerations, which meant his heart rate kept going down. It wasn't super frequent, but enough that it warranted some attention from the doctor. It was decided we'd do an ultrasound to check on baby, but first his mama needed a bathroom break. It was all down hill from there. I had started bleeding much heavier. After that, I was sent down to L&D for monitoring. I was hooked up to some more magnesium, and I knew that was not a good sign, as I'd already had mag the week before and knew I wouldn't get it again until it was suspected that I would deliver. Baby's heart rate kept dropping and after a few hours I was feeling some sharp, stabbing pain. It didn't feel like a contraction, but it kept coming and going. I asked for a pelvic check because of my cerclage, to make sure the stitch was still holding. One of the residents did the exam and didn't say much, just said she was going to get another doctor's opinion. In comes another doctor and an ultrasound. He starts scanning my abdomen and I just knew that something was going on. Sure enough, he could see on the ultrasound that the umbilical cord had slipped below baby. He did another pelvic exam and confirmed our fears: my cervix was opening through the stitch, allowing the umbilical cord to prolapse. This was something I had read about with PPROM and knew was a risk, but honestly, I felt immune to it because I knew I had the stitch. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I had done everything to keep my baby safe inside, even with no water. We had gone without infection, we had a healthy beating heart, even after a partial placental abruption, baby was growing and moving and reacting to the voices of his dad and sister...how could this be happening? When the cord prolapses, that's it. You have to deliver. With a prolapsed cord, there's pressure being applied to the cord that can compress blood flow to the baby. We were basically then given the option to deliver via csection right then, and have a more controlled, safe environment for delivery, or we could try and put it off for maybe a day, take the very rare chance that the cord would retract, risk baby's health, and end up with an emergency csection, which is riskier for both mom and baby. We were also then told to decide whether we would want baby resuscitated, because based on him not having any fluid for 5 weeks, and his gestational age of 24+4, it was not likely that he would be doing well. Once again, we were asked to essentially decide if our baby would live or not. All I knew was that we had to try. We had to give this boy a chance. I was taken into the operating room, with those awful bright lights and surrounded by a team of doctors and nurses. The anesthesiologist couldn't place my spinal. I laid on that table, half naked, curled in the fetal position on my side and just sobbed. I have never felt more scared and alone. I didn't want to be there, this wasn't how or when I was supposed to have this baby. My doctor held my hand in that operating room. I could see in his eyes how much he hated that this was happening. Another injection to numb my back that didn't work, another unknown poke from the anesthesiologist and that awful click click sound and sensation of trying to place that spinal. I cried out in pain so many times, it was like being tortured. Taylor couldn't be in there with me now that I was going to be put under. I was so scared I was going to wake up from that surgery and have my husband tell me that another of our sweet babies had gone back to their heavenly home. The last thing I remember is tears streaming down my cheeks as I went under and just overwhelming fear. Our little guy was born at 11:33 pm, almost 12 hours exactly after that failed NST. Waking up I still felt so much fear. Then I saw Taylor. He was smiling and instantly, that fear and dread was gone. Our boy was not only alive, he was doing WELL. He was 2 lbs 3 oz, almost a full pound bigger than your average 24 weeker. He was feisty, and tried to fight off being intubated. There was an energy in that room that just spoke to the fact that things had turned out in a way these medical professionals had not expected, and they were savoring it as much as we were. I was told that the nurse that handed our tiny micro preemie to the NICU team even cried. It was overwhelming for all involved, and reminded me how amazing these doctors and nurses are. That's the kind of care that I and my sweet baby have received this entire time. I am SO glad that I didn't listen to the advice to end the pregnancy 5 weeks ago. I'm so glad that I gave my baby a chance. And now he's showing us all that all the medical knowledge, all the statistics, all the what ifs mean nothing because there is a bigger picture and power at work in our lives. Now, we are no where out of the woods. Baby is 2 days old and doing well, but we have months ahead of us. We have risks. There are going to be hard decisions and scary situations. There is no guarantee that we will have him tomorrow even. Life can change on a dime and I pray that we get to bring this baby home in a few months. But if I'm going to learn anything from the experiences I have been asked to have, it's that I'm not in control and I have to trust that what ever happens, it will all be okay. We're doing everything we can to take care of this precious gift, and the rest, we give to God. I cannot express how much we appreciate the love and support that we have been given. The prayers and positive energy sent our way is what has helped us get to this point and we are so thankful for how blessed we have been during one of the hardest times our little family has gone through. Now, onto the NICU part of our journey!