Kristin's Update For 11/22 and 11/23

Saturday evening I stopped thinking that we would make it into December and wondered how many more days we had left. I was having another rough night and could not stop contracting. We were still trying to stop labor at this point so the doctors were trying everything they knew how to do but nothing was working. They even started talking about putting me back on the Magneseum Sulfate drip. I can't pretend and say that I was all for it because I knew I needed to do it. I will say that I was terrified but after I had some time to go over it in my head for a little while, I decided that it was the only option we hadn't tried yet. If I refused the Mag drip and he was born early with complications I knew that I would not be able to live with myself. I would always wonder 'What if....'

After a long night with little rest due to frequent and uncomfortable contractions, Sunday morning rolled around and I was expecting to go back on the Mag drip. Around 9 or 10 in the morning Dr. Wallace came in to assess my condition and I was bracing myself to hear that she wanted me back on the i.v. Instead she told me that they were just not able to stop my contractions and that we were going to have to go ahead and proceed with labor. My heart sunk and I just started sobbing. At least up until that point I knew that Austin was safe. Once he was delivered, I could no longer protect him from what he would need to face in order to survive.
Once Dr. Wallace decided to proceed with my labor she approved an epidural for me. THANK GOD!!!! Around 11 am I was given an epidural and was very quickly comfortable. 10 minutes after the epidural kicked in my contractions registered on the monitor that they were doubling in intensity and coming 2-4 minutes apart. And I was able to relax through it all!! I actually was able to take a pretty long nap which was really nice since I didn't sleep much the night before due to being so uncomfortable. At some point I began to notice quite a bit of pressure where Austin was getting postioned and that became almost as painful as my earlier contractions. It became a constant painful pressure that intensified with each contraction and was unable to relax at all between contractions. I told my nurse that part of the struggle was the pain and part of it was also the fact that I was trying so hard to resist the urge to push against the pressure. So I was given a second type of medication which allowed me to relax enough again to take another nap! They were able to give me another dose but warned me they needed to be careful because eventually it would lose its effectiveness and they would have to take me off of both that and the epidural and let my body process it out before they could reissue the epidural. Well that didn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me so I decided that once the second dose wore off that I would just suck it up and deal with it until Austin arrived! It was a gamble because while they were not doing anything to prevent my labor, they did not want to do anything to speed it up because the more time Austin had inside was the best for him. Sometime during the evening I was fully dilated and we were just waiting on my water to break because they were not going to do it and speed up Austin's arrival.

A little after midnight the second medication began to wear off and the pressure was becoming quite painful again and I told my nurse what I was feeling, including the urge to push against the pressure and asked when I might be able to have another dose. She brought Dr. Wallace in and after a quick assessment she told me that we were going to go ahead with the delivery. It seemed like as soon as she said 'delivery' that my room filled with about 6 or 7 more nurses and everyone was busy getting something ready. 10 minutes later Austin arrived and was placed inside an isolette and had 5 nurses working on stabalizing his tiny body.
Even though God gave me a lot to deal with this past week I feel like he showed my small son an enormous amount of love and mercy and let his lungs function better than we expected. The neonatal nurses were supplying him with a certain level of oxygen but then lowered it because his lungs were functioning well enough to handle more than they expected him to. He has continued to do well in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Even in the first 24 hours they have started weening him off of his breathing tube by gradually lowering his ventilator support in an effort to adapt his lungs to supporting more of his oxygen intake. He also has been placed underneath a bily light to make sure he does not become jaundiced. Because he is under direct light he has to wear special tiny sunglasses to protect his eyes. The isolette is kept warm and humid in order to protect his super sensitive skin from becoming dried out. Because his skin is so sensitive at this early age he can only tolerate wearing a diaper and we are not allowed to stroke his skin. Ryan and I are able to touch his hands but rubbing them even lightly would irritate his skin. There are so many sad things about his situation but Austin is able to give us hope that his tiny body is going to be ok. Every time we have spoken with his nurses they always comment on how active he is. He is so precious to watch! He almost always has a foot, an arm, or his fingers moving. I am so proud of my little tiny boy, he is fighting so hard to breathe on his own. Austin has many challgenges ahead of him but we are hopeful that he is strong enough to be able to handle them.