Saturday, September 8th we went to the hospital around 8:30am to be induced. My OB and I decided not to wait past my due date since I had been experiencing severe back pain and since we are also so far away from our families and needed help with Conner, our 2 year old. The nurses started me on pitocin and my OB came in around noon to break my water. My contractions were registering on the monitor, but I was not really feeling them. I did lots of walking up and down the hall but that didn't seem to help much. They kept increasing my pitocin levels trying to kick start active labor. The nurse checked my progress around 4:30 but I had not dilated any more since the doctor had broken my water. This was discouraging since it had been over 4 hours. The nurse was concerned because the baby's heart rate kept dropping during contractions and she thought maybe he was messing with the umbilical cord. So I tried laying in a different position to try to help him move.
The nurse came back about 5 minutes later saying she still thought he was messing with the cord and couldn't get a good heart rate reading. At this point I began to feel some leaking and thought it was just more water. I told the nurse since she was sitting there and she checked and discovered it was blood. Immediately she called code blue and there were several nurses in the room within seconds. The head nurse called for an emergency c-section because they could not detect the babies heart rate. Cam grabbed my hand and said the Lord had us exactly where he wanted us and everything was going to be alright. And then I was rushed down the hall to the delivery room and Cam was left in the labor room with no idea what was happening. My ob was called, but thankfully there was a surgeon on the floor at that moment to begin the delivery. I did not have an epidural yet, so I was put under with general anesthesia. I was told the rest of this information because I don't remember any of it. I am also communicating it to my best understanding of the situation. I am not a doctor and may get some of the information incorrect, but this is what I understand to have happened. At 5:30pm our baby boy was delivered within 17 minutes from the time they discovered the blood. He was given CPR, a blood transfusion and was then intubated.
It was determined that I had what is called a "velamentous cord insertion".
Wikipedia explanation: Velamentous cord insertion is an abnormal condition during pregnancy. Normally, the umbilical cord inserts into the middle of the placenta as it develops. In velamentous cord insertion, the umbilical cord inserts into the fetal membranes (choriamniotic membranes), then travels within the membranes to the placenta (between the amnion and the chorion). The exposed vessels are not protected by Wharton's jelly and hence are vulnerable to rupture.
My contractions caused the cord to separate from the membranes, causing the bleeding, and the baby to loose oxygen & blood. Since he had suffered such a severe shock, it was determined that he needed to be in a level 4 NICU. The hospital I was at only had a level 2 NICU, so he was transferred by ambulance, to the Lucile Packard Level 4 NICU at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto. This is about 15 minutes from the hospital where he was delivered. The doctors decided to put him on a "cooling blanket" or hypothermia treatment, that might
prevent or minimize the long-term consequences of brain injury due to loss of oxygen at the time of birth. This involved placing him onto a cooling blanket and quickly reduced his body temperature to about 88 degrees farenheight for 5 days. So he began the cooling process around 8:40pm on Saturday, September 8th. He was basically going to be in a medically induced coma for the next 5 days.
I was woken up just as the emergency team was discussing the cooling therapy with Cam, but remember very little about the remaining events of that evening. All I knew was that I did not get to see my baby before he was transferred. Cam stayed with me for a while in recovery and then went to the NICU to be with the baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment