Wow, it has been a while since I have updated this blog & SOOO SO many things (good, bad, & freaking awesome) have happened! I'll just start where I left off.....
We had just been to the ultrasound with the high risk doctor & he pretty much laughed at the idea of Wren having trisomy 13 because she looked so picture perfect but we still had the amnio done. So we waited & waited for 2 days which felt like 2 centuries. I called & called the doctor's office like, "heyyy... I'm ready for the results... Ya know just call me the split second you get them in, like before you even open the envelope." Too much? I didn't care... I was borderline psychotic at this point I NEEDED to know! Well a few hours passed after my last phone call to them so I had given up getting the results in that day... THEN MY PHONE RANG & I was shaking like a leaf trying to answer it. This was the moment I find out if I get to be a mommy to this baby that I am so head over heels in love with.... Or if I hold her for a few moments until she dies. As soon as I answered I wanted to hang up the phone because I was so afraid of hearing the worst sentence I could ever imagine hearing. Maybe the genetic counselor had experience in the past with that because as soon as I said hello she immediately said, "Hi this is Mary, the genetic counselor, and your baby is completely fine!" At the time, that was the best moment of my entire life. I did a happy dance for a few hours and cried and thanked God for this HUGE blessing of a daughter He chose me to have and obviously went out for a celebratory "I get to keep my baby" meal. I felt whole again.
I had the amnio done on a Monday, found out the results on a Wednesday, then Thursday I started feeling Wren move less and less... and lots of pain in my back. Wren isn't a fan of sleep. She isn't now, and she wasn't in my belly so mommy intuition told me something was wrong. Will went to work on Friday & I had been having sharp shooting pains every 5-7 minutes all night (why didn't I think it couldn't be contractions...? Not sure) but they weren't bad enough for him to stay home with me. Around 9am it hit me... Oh my gosh I might be in labor!? My contractions were getting stronger with less time in between them. I took a warm bath to see if that helped because this baby could NOT come yet! I still had so much left to do & she had so much developing to do! The contractions were only getting worse in the bath & I had to call Will because I just knew this baby was coming & we needed to get to the hospital. He came home & off we went. When I got there I was hooked up to monitors once again & they checked to see if I was dilated at all. I was 100% effaced and dilated to a 3 the first time they checked! They watched my contractions for a while, gave me a shot of Terbutaline, and sent me home. I thought that was a little strange but I wasn't going to question the doctor. When I was about to be discharged, they told me I shouldn't have more than 6 contractions in an hour and if I do, I should come back. One nurse told us that she thought we would have a baby the end of the night. Soooo why did I go home? Anyway, walking from the 2nd floor to the car I had 6 contractions but I told myself that the medicine just probably hadn't really kicked in yet. So we got home.... sat down for 20 minutes & by then I was having contractions 2-3 minutes apart. So there we went again.... we went back to the hospital and I was a 6. Then the nurse looked at my chart & said, "well 37 weeks isn't too early, you're full term at least!" I told her that I was only 34 weeks & they FUH-REAKED! Turns out, they had my due date wrong in the computer so that's why they were thinking it was no big deal! The shot they gave me was only supposed to delay labor for 48 hours anyway. Soooo they called the doctor & she said to deliver this baby. This baby was tired of my belly & wanted to make her appearance! Remember how I said in my last post that there was a less than 1% chance of going into labor because of the amniocentesis but I was still afraid because Wren takes those less than 1% chances and runs with them? Yeah well, she did it again. They rolled me into the delivery room & I met the doctor who would deliver her (my dr still thought she had T13 because she had been on call) and I LOVED her as much as I could possibly love someone while in labor. She gave me morphine. And all was good in the world again. Back labor is for the birds. She checked me & I was an 8 within 10 minutes so she went ahead & gave me my epidural and I so willingly accepted it. The nurse checked me soon after & I was a 10. She told me I could start pushing but it would take an hour & a half. I had my sweet girl 15 minutes later! It was so fun & I was sooo excited to meet her! They put her on my chest & she was dark blue which instantly scared me to death but I remember thinking that she has the biggest most beautiful eyes I will ever see. They took her off to the side and began working on getting her ready for the NICU. She was unresponsive at first but they finally got her to respond! She was wheeled out pretty fast & I remembered we didn't have a pic to show everyone yet.... So Will chased them down the hall & snapped a pic real fast haha! I was up walking immediately & getting cleaned up to go see my girl! I had to wait until they had her all hooked up but it didn't take too long!
Once I saw her I did not leave her side. I had to stay for 3 days and my nurses thought it was so funny that I was never in my room. They had to come to the NICU to take my vitals & draw my blood. It finally caught up to me and I slept for 3 hours on the third day... but I woke up and realized I had missed a feeding & cried... and cried... and cried... Are you getting an idea of how hormonal I have been yet? ;) Everyday was pretty much the same... until day 4. She wasn't eating quite as well & she couldn't go home until she did. She was supposed to eat in 30 minutes or less and it was taking her 45-60 minutes to eat. Not okay for my anxiety but I was reassured by the nurses &doctors that it was just a premie thing. She was put on broad spectrum antibiotics as soon as she was born just because that's standard for premies & the 20th was her last day of them so we were free to go home the 21st! She had her hearing test and her car seat test and passed them like a champ!
On the morning of the 21st, things took a really sudden turn. Around 2am the morning of the 21st she had to be tubed because she would not take any of her feedings & they found that her entire last feeding was still on top of her belly- which is obviously a huge red flag. They did tests & X-rays & all sorts of things and then the doctor met with us and explained that she was almost positive Wren had NEC so she said if Wren didn't improve soon then she would go to OU Children's. We let Wren rest & went home for lunch. We got a phone call while we were home that she was being airlifted to Children's immediately because she took a turn for the worse &amto head that way in 30 minutes. We got to Children's and waited for the helicopter to get there for what seemed like forever. We went to an empty room next door to hers and waited. The nurses from the helicopter came in first and explained that they had lost Wren but brought her back & she was on 4 blood pressure medicines as high as they could go. She tried to calm us down & give us reassurance but because it was so dangerous, she said Wren is a fighter if she makes it through the night because she was very VERY septic. The doctor came in after her and pretty much said the same thing, at that point it was a minute to minute thing. I can't remember exactly what happened the following days, it is honestly such a blur. The second or third...maybe even the fourth day we were there we found out it was a severe strand of E. Coli and that caused lots of infection and sepsis. For the first week she was there we had meetings with her doctor a few times a day & he always said that was the crucial & most critical week, if she gets past that then she should be on her way to healthy. It was by far the scariest week of my life & after that first week was up I felt like a different person! All of her pressers were coming down & her vitals were remaining just as good! She had X-rays every other day to check the air in her belly (there was a good bit at first) and that finally went away which was huge because that meant no surgery and at first it was almost definite that she would have to have some sort of surgery.
Every single day she would make improvement & the doctors were just amazed by her. No one expected her to do so well considering how bad she had been but that's my Wren, full of surprises :) She was in the NICU for almost 7 weeks. She's been home since May 29- the day before her due date & everyday here with her has been so great. She is so sweet & so beautiful and I can't even imagine my life without her. It has been a VERY wild ride but I think her teenage years will be a breeze after this! I probably missed a lot of details but these are the highlights of Wren's journey in the NICU. Thank you all for praying for her &a keeping us in your thoughts constantly. I saw God heal her and I know everyone's prayers helped... the doctors were so amazing & knew exactly what to do for her... And I also felt the prayers said for me. I felt a sense of peace & I knew deep down that she was going to be okay no matter how scary it was at the time. She's my hero & she made it sooo easy to be strong for her because she kept fighting so hard to stay here with me.
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