There is so much excitement when you find out you are pregnant and expecting a new life and family member to come into your home. For the next 9 months it consumes your every thought and action, more than anything else the anticipation and excitement is almost too much to bear. In the beginning you focus on eating healthy, exercising, get plenty of rest, never taking medications or putting anything in your body that would not benefit the growth of your baby. You search carefully to find an excellent medical team that will ensure all is going well to help you have a safe pregnancy and delivery. You do everything you are told with no thought to yourself but just for your baby that you can now feel growing inside of you. A relationship begins to grow with each passing week; you have so much love for this new life that is your constant companion. Everywhere you go you are together you are never alone often times you will talk to your unborn baby and he will be able to recognize your voice. He keeps you up at night and gets excited when your excited. Along the way there is an indescribable love you cannot explain but you would do anything for your baby even sacrifice yourself if you needed to. You are nervous, excited and hopeful that your baby will be born healthy and strong with 10 fingers and toes. And everything you have done for the past 40 weeks will all be worth it when you are able to hold this precious life that has come to be part of you.
The room is cleaned and set-up with new sheets, blankets, toys and soft music. The shelves are full of new clothes just washed there are stacks of diapers, baby wipes, q-tips everything in its place waiting for your new arrival. Your overnight bag is packed sitting by the door, the diaper bag with a new “coming home from the hospital outfit” and blankets ready the car seat is in place. Every detail has been seen to the joyous occasion you have waited for about 270 days is here. One last picture of your big tummy is taken for the memory books grandma is at the house to watch the other kids with excitement all of the arrangements have been made and we make out way to the hospital at 5:30am. Being the fourth child things were pretty much routine I know the drill and things should be fine. The last couple of weeks have been really hard I went into pre-term labor but was sent home the thoughts creep in your mind that something is wrong but you hurry and get rid of them and think it is just the jitters of having a new baby. Things seem to be going ok but then it changes and worries become reality for some, like us on this day things did not go ok. It became a complicated delivery but finally your baby is born and breathing so now everything should be all right or will it?
He is here a beautiful baby boy born May 9, 2002 weighing 9lbs 2 oz and 19 ½ inches long with lots of dark brown hair and an angelic face. Right from the start there were small problems we had no idea what they would turn into. But we didn’t care he was here I was holding my baby surely everything would be all right now. With the complications came other side affects he had an Erbs Palsy where he could not move his right arm. If he was not asleep he was crying we thought it was just colic and he would grow out of it. He also seemed to have a hard time learning how to suck. We can handle anything now he is here and safe and I know if I can just get him home in comfortable surroundings I can work through any problem.
He needed to be checked a lot from his pediatrician to see if these problems were getting better every other day he needed to be weighed, his jaundice was not leaving like the other kids, and if this was colic it was nothing like I have ever seen it seemed he could not stop crying even when nothing should have been wrong. After 2 weeks of doing all we could he was still not back to his birth weight and a lactation specialist was called in to try and help with his insufficient suck and colic issues. The thought came to us that we needed to do his baby blessing right now and so we put together a family party celebrating the new baby in our family at the last moment. The first week of June he was blessed being only 3 weeks old.
Three days later on Wednesday after he was crying about 14 hours a day and I had worn out the same section of carpet in our room from pacing back and forth holding him trying to comfort him. We took him back to the hospital where he was born. When the nurses at the hospital had no more answers, he still could not suck that well and was not gaining any weight his pediatrician said it was time we had done all we could and the decision was made that he needed to go to Primary Children’s Hospital and have a few test done for failure to thrive.
The love between mother and child grows incredibly strong when you spend every waking moment with your baby wanting so badly to ease his pain and help comfort him. Doing all you can and the situation not getting any better. I wanted so badly for him not to cry and was trying so hard to figure out what was wrong. I thanked my Heavenly Father many times that there were only 24 hours in one day and no more so the suffering could stop daily, only to start again the next day. It is incredible how much love there is when you deliver your baby and how much more love there is in only 3 weeks time, my feelings were so strong for him as if he were still connected to me.
The drive to the hospital was awful as I held him close crying wondering what was going to happen and so sorry I could not fix it and take this away from him. Finding your way around the first time is scary there are so many unknowns going through your mind. Parking your car and dreading every step as you get closer wanting to turn around and run to take him home where he would be safe but knowing he needed help no one should have to cry that much something needed to be corrected, maybe it was something simple so that he could relax and be comfortable. Once we were checked in and placed in our first room I sat and rocked him, as Joel flipped through the stations on the TV trying to clear our minds and pass some time- there is always waiting. I remember when the nurses came in with a needle to take blood and I said “no! what are you doing we are just here for a finger poke?” They explained kindly as possible something bigger than what we were thinking was wrong with our son we have to find out what, this is not a simple problem blood work needs to be started. I wanted so badly to hide Jake in the diaper bag and run away as I knew what was coming for Jake. Sobbing with him as he received his first blood draw and an IV was placed monitors attached and a CAT scan done. His first NJ (feeding tube) was placed in his nose and he gagged as he choked and sputtered to get it down to his stomach so he could have some nourishment to regain his strength. I don’t remember who cried more me or Jake but either way it was a harsh reality of what children have to go through. Having healthy children we had never experienced anything like this before and regardless of the size of the body it all works the same, it is routine to many people in the hospital but for us it was agonizing. My heart was ripped out of my chest each time something happened to my son, I held him tight as I watched my son’s body, squeezing his hand I whispered in his ear mommy’s here, I love you everything is going to be ok. Or was it?
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