Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Birth Story

I have had a few people ask me for Knight's delivery story...so here it is. I was going to type it out myself, but Kory had type the details out to send to his family the day after Knight was born in an email. So to make things easier, I will just paste Kory's email to his family here.

Marianne had been having contractions on Thursday starting about Mid-day and just continued teaching till the end of her school day. At 4:00 I took her to a Pre-Scheduled Pedicure appointment to get her toenails done. She kept joking with the pedicure ladies that she was going to have a baby while they were working on her feet.... Well, she wasnt too far off. After her Pedicure, I went to check her out and pay for the service, and Marianne said she had to go to the bathroom. I waited for about 5 minutes for her to come out, and she walked out waddling, and said that her “water broke”. I thought she was kidding, but sure enough she was able to prove to me that it indeed had broken.

We were in South Jordan for the pedicure, so we rushed down to the hospital in American Fork. We checked in about 6:30 and everything was going smoothly. Throughout the night, she progressed nicely. She got an epidural at about 11:00 pm when she had dilated to about 4 cm. She continued to progress well until about 4:00 am when she had dilated to 8 cm. At this point, things started to slow down and she started to have a lot of pain despite increased doses of pain meds through the epidural. At 8:00 am when they checked her, she was still at 8 cm. After 4 hours of no progress the doctor came in and examined her and determined that the cervix was swollen, and blocking the pelvis, so that our only option would be to go into emergency C-Section..... This is when it started to get CRAZY!

The prepared Marianne for the surgery, and I got into my little outfit to go watch. They decided to just keep the Epidural in her and not do a spinal block, this turned out to be a BIG mistake. They cut her open and she wasn’t in too much pain, but as they started to get in there and try to get the baby out, she started to have ALOT of pain. At one point Marianne was basically screaming and yelled "I thought this wasn’t supposed to hurt"... She was is so much pain that she started to flail her arms around and reach down to her stomach. This was very traumatic and very emotional for us both. The doctors kept telling her to keep her hands away, so myself and the
Anesthesiologist grabbed her arms and held them by her head. After about a minute of extreme pain, they had given her a dose of something really strong and she was knocked out.
By this time they finally got the baby out. It was 8:36 am on Friday when he was born and he wasn't breathing or crying when he came out. He was very purple and limp. For about 3-4 minutes (but seemed like an eternity) they worked and worked on him. They finally got him to start breathing, but still only made a couple little peeps. After things calmed down with the baby, they let me hold him in the operating room for a few minutes. I couldn’t show him to Marianne though because she was knocked out pretty solidly...... We came to find out later, that the baby was wedged so far down that it was very difficult for them to get him out. Also, her uterus was contracting very strongly, and Dr. Lind was having a hard time getting his hand under the Baby's head to pop it out. Because of this pressure, her uterus experienced a vertical tear below the horizontal incision. This caused the surgery to go longer, and Marianne lost alot of blood. They sutured the
tear, but in the process they thought that they may have nicked one of Marianne’s Ureters.
After the C-Section, I left with the baby, and they helped Marianne in recovery. Basically the only reason that they put him in the Level Two nursery was because Marianne had a fever during labor and they are watching him for 48 hours to see if he has an infection because they think that may have been why Marianne had such a high fever during labor. Also in the nursery they determined he had a low oxygen level and low blood sugar.
Because Marianne was in so much pain, she wasn't able to go to the Nursery to see the baby for most of the day. He isn't supposed to leave the level two nursery for anything, so Marianne was pretty bummed out that she wasn’t able to see him for so long. At about 4:30 pm, I used my unbelievable persuasion skills and sold the nurse on the idea of taking the baby down the hall a short distance so that Marianne could see him. It was a joyous reunion for her and the babe.
Marianne had a rough first day of recovery for most of the day Friday, but has been doing well today. This morning they took us for a few hours to put some contrast in Marianne and determine if there was a "nick" in her Ureters. What we thought was going to be a short trip, turned out to be about 2.5 hours and Marianne was up and down a lot out of her wheel chair and pretty miserable the whole time. Those tests came back negative and there weren’t any additional problems. Because of all the contrast in her, they said that she couldn't nurse for 24 hours, so we have been feeding the little guy with formula.
The baby is doing well now, and has been off oxygen today and been eating well, so his blood sugar levels are good. Marianne isn't hooked up to any more machines and is walking around a little bit with the help of a wheel chair. She is expected to be in here until Tuesday morning and then we should hopefully be able to take the little guy home by then.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support. We love you all. We will keep you updated on any progress, but we are very grateful for modern medicine and good doctors who care.

Love,
Kory, Marianne, and baby