Kade Aaron arrived Wednesday, October 15th, at 7:14 a.m. On Tuesday, I noticed I hadn't been feeling him move, but it didn't worry me too much. Babies get bigger and sleep a lot towards the end. But by the evening, I started wondering. At bedtime I tried to stay awake long enough to relieve my worries and get jabbed by a foot. But again, nothing. I woke at 3:30 a.m. to help DJ and decided I wasn't going back to sleep until the little guy moved. By 4:15, I was truly needing some reassurance so Kent said to call the midwife. She told us to come in and just have him monitored.
We arrived at the hospital at 5 a.m. and they put us in a hospital room with a fetal monitor. I told Kent I wasn't about to actually get in the bed because this was just a quick check! When we heard the heartbeat, we were immediately relieved and thought everything was probably okay. The nurse didn't seem too alarmed. However, when I had a practice contraction, we heard the heart rate drop considerably low. Seconds later, the nurses came in with oxygen and then I knew something might be wrong. The midwife arrived and sat down, telling us that our baby needed to be born immediately. The heart rate over the last hour and a half showed that he was in distress. His heart wasn't functioning the way a healthy baby's normally would be. The surgeon agreed and I was immediately wheeled into surgery. When I asked if I could be awake, they said there wasn't time. I had to have an emergency c-section and I was put completely under. Kade was born exactly nine minutes after I arrived in the surgery room.
We were told right away that the cord had been wrapped around his neck twice and that it was fairly tight. But later, we learned that the main reason he was having problems was because his hemo-globin(I don't know how to spell that yet) was very low, at a 3. A healthy newborn has a count usually around 12. They believe that there was maternal/fetal bleeding and that caused the low count.
They took Kade to Children's Hospital in St. Paul almost immediately. He is now in the NICU and has improved dramatically. He just needed to be born. He's had blood transfusions and platelets. He was on 80% oxygen and now he's breathing on his own. As of Sunday, 5 days old, his main milestone we want to reach is to have him feeding on his own. Right now he's on a feeding tube and has just started taking a bottle. I've also been able to try nursing him.
We are so thankful to God for little Kade's safe arrival. The midwife and doctor told us if we'd waited one more day, the outcome would have been very different. So for now, we're making lots of trips to Children's and hope to bring home a hungry little boy very soon! Thank you for your prayers and calls!
This was on Saturday, October 11th. 35 weeks pregnant...four days before Kade's birth. Little did we know!
This picture was taken within an hour or two of his birth...just before being transferred to Children's.
The little guy weighed 5 lbs. 11 oz. Not too bad!
We got to see him for a couple minutes just before they transferred him, but we couldn't hold him.
Kent brought DJ and Levi to the hospital for a visit the next day. DJ enjoyed playing with the bed controls!
His crib.
No more wires or tubes!!
Love him!
DJ LOVED pushing me in the wheelchair. He was so grown-up and acted like he needed to take care of me. It's his daddy's great example!
