Philomena Anne

I promised I would write all about Philomena and her birth. I have been preoccupied with living here in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for the past two and a half weeks to be able to put two thoughts together to write a blog entry!

After I had gone down to Antenatal Testing on the 10th and they decided my uterus looked way too thin, they scheduled my section for later that day. It was very surreal sitting in my hospital bed and feeling little Philomena inside me kicking around and knowing that in a few hours she would be in the world.

Apparently, so the medical records say, she was delivered pretty quickly after I was put under general anesthesia. She was immediately taken to the NICU for observation and given oxygen and eventually graduating to CPAP. She was 5 pounds and 5 ounces and 17 inches. They put her in a crib but she started losing weight so they moved her to an isolette to keep her warm. They told me she was burning too many calories trying to keep her body temperature up.

My husband did all the feeds and kept her company while I recouped. He did a fantastic job and she fed well at first. Then as the week progressed she seemed to get more and more tired with her feeds. She has an NG tube (a tube that is inserted in her nostril and goes directly into her belly) and her scheduled called for every other feed to go in her tube. She stayed stuck there until yesterday, believe it or not, when she finally advanced to six full bottle feeds.

Our adventure here in the NICU has been a roller coaster ride. It's difficult to hear doctors and nurses all tell you to just be patient and "watch her grow" and "she'll catch on in her own time." In the meantime there are five other children at home who have been without their mother for two months and a husband who has been trying to keep his job and run the house for the same length of time. The stress is tremendous - I don't think I can even articulate how tremendous the stress of it all really is.

Philomena is so pretty and very healthy she just has a difficult time staying awake to eat. I consider myself lucky, though, when I talk to other moms in here (who, by the way, have been my complete sanity!) who have been here for months! Some moms here have babies born at 24 weeks gestation and are looking at two more months or more here. There are some sick babies so I feel blessed that Mena is healthy with the exception of her feeding.

I expect our Good Lord is trying to teach patience and what it means to absolutely wait on Him in His time and I hope we did pass His test or at the very least came close to passing it. Thankfully, we have been blessed with good friends and family who have helped us out; the Mantoans who have four children of their own yet week after week took on all five of ours so that my husband could go into the office once a week. My sister in law and brother in law who also have five children and took all of our kids once a week so Kevin could go into work. Their charity blows my mind. Where would I be without my hospital visits from my sister who can make me laugh at any given moment and especially when I need it the most or my brother who would come over to the house at night after a long day at work and watch and bathe all the kids at the witching hour so Kevin could come up to the hospital to visit me? We were tremendously blessed with so many good people from church who gave us meals and would come over and clean the house or check the kid's schoolwork. There were just days I would sit here in the hospital in awe of the help we were getting, sometimes from people we didn't even know! There were good people in our homeschooling support group who dropped off meals as well. Though we think God has tested our limits, He also poured out His mercy and blessings at the same time to get us through.

I hope to be able to write more blog entries from my home computer and not the hospital computer. It will be a weird feeling to be home all the time, but one I can't wait to experience.

Birth Day

The Birth...

Last week started like any other week. I was looking forward to Thursday the 12th - the day Philomena was scheduled to be born. When Tuesday rolled around I went down to the ATU department for my weekly ultrasound. They did the ultrasound and I waited (as usual) until the Perinatologist came into the room to consult. She put the file down on the tray and said, "Well the baby looks good, but looks like we will be delivering you today." I am not sure what I felt at the time; shock, anxiety and some other transient feelings I can't articulate at the moment. I made all the calls and got everyone scrambling.

The next few hours I went through all the preoperative things that you go through before major surgery. They put in two IV's (as if one is not bad enough!) and the dreaded catheter. Dreaded - this is the correct word to describe catheterization! Please peel off every layer of my skin with a dull potatoe peeler, but get that catheter far from me! I got blood work drawn and then went downstairs to interventional radiology to have the balloon catheters placed. This procedure was horrible. I laid on a flat hard table and they strapped my arms down and draped me for incision. I was told ahead of time that they might lightly sedate me. I wish now they had. Incisions were made in the groin area into two arteries. The catheters traveled into the opening of the uterus. This took approximately 45 minutes and all the while I was contracting, mostly due to stress and the pain that was enveloping my entire back from lying flat with an eight month pregnant belly.

From Interventional Radiology I went to the OR waiting or holding area. I was asked yet again if I wanted my tubes tied to which my automatic response was, "no." Again I had to lay flat and really it was agonizing on my back. I stayed in holding for about 40 minutes until the OR was ready and the teams were in place. They wheeled me into the OR and there must have been 15 people in there. One of the residents was saying she has never witnessed so many people in one room. My arms were strapped down again, but I made sure my rosary was tightly wound around my left hand. I had a lot of heads peer down into my face and say different things and then I don't remember anything else.

I woke up in a fog and I can't say even now where I was when I woke up. I remember trying to gather my thoughts and having a very difficult time with that. I did ask whoever was peering over me at the time how the baby was. "Good! She's doing good!" I felt relieved and then thought to ask if I had a uterus or not. My OB doctor came over at that time and told me yes, I did still have my uterus. I am not sure whether I was relieved or a bit stressed about that one.

I don't think I can really recall much of that evening except they gave me this button that delievered a heavy duty narcotic. I know that evening I had difficulty with shallow breathing and oxygen saturation.

I stayed in bed for the next two days. My husband surprised me by having one of the NICU nurses wheel Philomena down to me and I got to hold her in my hospital bed. What an angel she is. She just has this perfect angelic sweet little face. I cried.

I never did feel like I was getting better and by Thursday the 12th I just felt like I wouldn't make it. Truly, that's how awful I felt. I suppose that's because my hemoglobin levels dropped dramatically and it was decided that I receive two bags of blood in a transfusion. By that evening I felt much, much better and by Friday I was able to walk to the NICU for the first time and see my baby.

Today is exactly one week post-surgery. I feel better each day. I have been dealing with extremely swollen legs and feet and I feel like the swelling has gone down today a bit because I am walking more like a 70-year-old than a 90-year-old. I still have staples that have to be removed, but my belly even feels better today.

I cannot tell you how many people I had praying for me and Philomena, but the Lord God was definitely watching over us and seeing us through.

I will write more about Philomena in the next blog a little later on.

9 Days

A Healthy Fear

"They" say there is a healthy fear and an unhealthy fear. An unhealthy fear of anything leads to great anxiety and a paralysis of the emotions. Fear in and of itself is not a bad thing for God created us with the emotion of fear to protect us as well. This is why when something frightens us or we find ourselves in a sudden and unexpected time of panic or danger our bodies let off adrenaline which gives us that extra boost to be able to gain control of what has happened. It's healthy to be afraid of snakes, for example, for some are poisonous and meant to deliver a deadly bite. A healthy fear helps us manage our impulses as well.

Unhealthy fear, on the other hand, occurs when we allow our irrational self to gain the upper hand. Yes, I know I am waning philosophical tonight, but I have been reflecting on what I will be going through; what my family will be going through, my doctor and friends on the day of the surgery. Everyone of us will experience at the least a bit of anxiety and at the most tremendous fear. I thank St. Philomena and St. Anne for all of their prayers and granting me peace in that I feel like I have friends in heaven who are advocating on my behalf. Some nights I like to remind St. Philomena that I did promise her namesake to my unborn child without my husband's approval no less. I am confident she will look with kindness and increase her pleadings to Our Lord for my safety and for little Mena's safety as well. I don't have an unhealthy fear of next Thursday; anxiety perhaps, but I don't let my mind wander too far off into the "what-ifs" zone. This is not a good place to be. Fear and faith, at this point needs to be properly balanced, otherwise a prescription for Ativan might be in my near future.

NOW...

My OB confirmed this evening that the baby will be born on the 12th - next Thursday. I have been here a month on the 9th. It seemed like an eternity that first week and now I am nearing the end in just a week from now. Philomena will be 35 weeks, but I am confident that she will be born strong. I picture my child with dark hair and blue eyes and perhaps a bit shy. Whenever I go down to ultrasound and they try to get a face shot she moves her arms in front of her face as if to hide. I went down today for what is called a biophysical profile. They just scan the baby to make sure she is growing properly and has good fluid levels. All went well. She looked terrific and happy.

I, on the other hand, will be quite thankful when my trips downstairs to antenatal testing are over! Each Tuesday and Friday I get a knock on my door from "transportation" to wheel me down. Lately, transportation has brought the ever flattering "double wide" wheelchair. I am beginning to get a complex. I know I carry a belly the size of a small basketball out front, but maybe I am bigger than I think. Maybe the back of the wheelchair has a sign much like those trucks that go really slow in the right lane of a highway carrying a double wide modular home. You know, the ones with their hazard lights blinking and a rather large sign that reads, "WIDE LOAD." Thankfully, my fears are dispelled when one of the ultrasound technicians who saw me sitting in the hallway, as is routine now, asked why I was put in such a wide chair. She said I looked like Alice in Wonderland sitting in such an over sized chair. At first I chuckled as she pointed to my hair and told me that was who I reminded her of. I am not sure whether to be flattered, insulted or angry. I guess I do have a similar modest wardrobe as Alice, and my hair is blond, but I can think of many other people I would much rather have been compared to so I will digress.

THEN...

After finding out our baby was a girl, for me personally, I began to have a special connection with her, praying for her by name and picturing what she might look like. My monthly trips to the OB became every other week and my OB starting having a bit more serious talks with me. She informed me sometime around September - just as field hockey season was off and running, that a time would come in this pregnancy when bed rest would be essential. I really just tucked that information away in the dustier parts of my brain and enjoyed the last few months of being active, much to my husband's chagrin and my well meaning friends who always thought I did too much. I am glad now, though, being confined to this hospital bed when I look back over the very active summer and fall seasons and the rest that God has willed for me at this point in time.