At Long Last, My Blog

Hi there. When word got out that my mommy was going to have another baby (which would turn out to be me), everyone wanted to know if I would get my own blog or not. Well, here's your answer. It has taken me awhile to get online, but I think I've had a pretty good reason for the delay.

My entry into the world was a little eventful. I stopped breathing as soon as the doctor cut my cord and had to be rescussitated. Mommy and daddy tell me that I was various shades of purple and blue, rather than the vibrant pink I am in this photo, which was taken after the neonatologist gave me "a jumpstart." My APGAR scores were a little on the low side, a two to be precise, but thankfully they gave me a retest and I scored an eight five minutes after I was born. I don't think mommy or daddy ever demonstrated such dramatic improvement on any test they were ever allowed to retake.

After weighing me, the doctors whisked me off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where I was placed under an oxygen hood. Daddy (and the highly trained staff of neonatologists) kept a watchful eye on me and reported back to mommy that I was looking great and doing well. Word on the street was that I could be released from the NICU in a few days. It wasn't soon enough for mommy who hadn't seen me since I was in the operating room with her.

I came off of the oxygen hood around 11:30 the night that I was born; and mommy was actually able to come see me. Better still, at 1 AM, the NICU called and said that mommy could come and nurse me! I latched on like a champ and acted like I had been nursing for years, which was a real relief to mommy, who was worried because I had to wait so long to nurse. By now, I was "on room air" and the doctors said my breathing was "normal." The next step was to wean me off of the IV while maintaining all of my vital stats. The doctor said she expected that I would be able to go home with mommy when she is discharged, which was be a welcome bit of news.

Thankfully, mommy and I were on the same floor of the hospital, but it was a bit of a haul for her to get to the NICU. I was eating every 2.5-3 hours and it took mommy about 20 minutes to get out of the bed and down to my room, so she was only able to get about an hour's rest before she had to start the whole process over again. As if that weren't bad enough, I was livid that mommy's milk did not come in straight away and had quite a few temper tantrums in the NICU until it finally did.

I was discharged from the NICU late Saturday morning, which was a tremendous blessing. I joined mommy in her room and was waiting there to surprise daddy when he got to the hospital. To say that I was much happier once I was able to room in with mommy would be a mild understatement. The fact that mommy's milk came in probably had something to do with that as well. Like Thatcher, I developed jaundice and had to be put under the bililight, which was not nearly as eventful as it was with Thatcher. Because mommy had been placed on the floor with the NICU—rather than the regular L&D floor where there is an infant security system—I was not allowed to leave her room. Thus, the phototherapy for my jaundice had to take place in mommy's room as well. Sure, our room was bright, but at least we were together.

Another perk is that Nana and Papa were able to see me a lot more than they were able to see Thatcher when he was born because he was always in the nursery under the bililight! We even cheated a bit and took some pictures of Nana holding me before she had to go back to Kentucky.

By Sunday evening, I was beginning to feel that we were—at long last—experiencing the “normal” birthing experience. After daddy and Thatcher left the hospital late that afternoon, mommy and Gran settled in for some long-awaited card playing. They were in the middle of a fierce game of Spider when my neonatologist came in to check on me and cavalierly mentioned that she thought she heard a funny noise in my chest and wanted to do a chest x-ray. At this point, mommy asked her to explain exactly what had happened to me when I was born. Why wasn’t I breathing, why did I only have an APGAR score of two, etc. All mommy and daddy had ever been told was that I had a small amount of air in my chest cavity. The doctor then explained that I had a tear in her lung (WHAT?!!?!?!). When I was born, I took only one breath; this failed to clear my airway, I turned blue, stopped breathing, etc. and they had to “bag” me in order to get me breathing on my own. Forcing the air into my lungs, however, had burst/ruptured one of my air sacks causing my lung to tear. Mommy was stunned, in complete shock, and utterly speechless. I might add that it was at this point that she had a nervous breakdown. Within 15 minutes of the neonatologist leaving our room, the radiologist was there performing the chest x-ray on me. It was terrible for mommy and Gran to watch; and the shock of transitioning from preparing to go home the next day to discovering my lung was torn was more than mommy could take. Thankfully, the results from the chest x-ray were back in less than two hours. The neonatologist walked in the room and wanted to know why mommy was crying and if something was wrong. HELLO!?!?! The doctor said my x-rays were clear, the tear was completely healed, and that the funny sound she heard just two hours ago was probably just a little spit up that had gone down the wrong way.

Monday morning, we met with another neonatologist who explained things in greater detail for us. Yes, I had experienced a tear upon being born—perhaps due to the stress from the difficult delivery—but the tear was minuscule and had (virtually) healed itself by the time I reached the NICU, which is why I was only on oxygen for 12 hours and in the NICU for only two days. Every subsequent x-ray I had in the NICU (which mommy and daddy never knew about) indicated that the tear (which mommy and daddy never knew existed) was completely healed. The doctor told them they were taking home a perfectly normal, healthy baby. Hooray!

Here I am right before we were discharged and ready to go home. My outfit was waaaay too big as you can see. I might add that this was the last peaceful moment we would experience for quite some time.

We had approximately 36 hours of calm before calamity set in. Wednesday morning, mommy and Thatcher were in the playroom playing with trains when mommy caught a whiff of something terrible. She asked Gran if she smelled it, too, so Gran opened the back door to see if it was coming from outside. Almost simultaneously, the odor permeated the entire house. It smelled like a gas leak and a chemical fire. It was awful. Gran went to wake up daddy while mommy looked up the fire department's phone number to see what, if anything, we should do. The fire department said we needed to evacuate the house immediately, so we all piled into mommy's brand new SUV and carefully pulled out of the ice-covered driveway into the cul-de-sac. Good thing, too, because the fumes in the house had been so strong that they were making us all dizzy. Oddly enough, we seemed to keep smelling them in the car. Moments later, not one, not two, not three, but FIVE fire trucks came roaring down our street with lights and sirens blaring. Thatcher thought it was AWESOME!!! So much excitement - and it wasn't even 7 AM yet! It was a little scary, too, though. The fireman got out of the truck and almost immediately declared that we did not have a gas leak, but we (read W) had been sprayed by a skunk! No wonder we kept smelling the gas in the car since W was in there with us.

We spent the rest of the week trying to recover from our visit from Pepe le Pieu. Mommy and Gran did at least 50 loads of laundry; while daddy gave the boys a billion baths and scoured the carpet, furniture, and everything W came in contact with. Still, the smell lingered. It lingered on daddy when he went to Pet Smart to get some skunk-be-gone and all of the dogs barked at him. It lingered on Gran when she went to the grocery store and people kept saying they smelled something bad. It lingered on daddy and Thatcher three days later when they went to a birthday party and people kept whispering about how they smelled something awful. Mommy thinks that maybe God sent us the skunk so we would be able to forget how scary Hadley's arrival into the world was. She made the mistake of saying she didn't think she'd ever be able to sleep again after I was born; cleaning up after Pepe changed all that. We all slept like babies - soundly until it was time for me to eat!

After that, things settled down a bit. We had a steady stream of grandparents and godparents for the first six weeks of my life and now we are getting into a more "normal" routine with a lot less drama (and more time for blogging). I tell mommy and daddy that they got nothing less than what they deserve for giving me the nickname "Danja" before I was even born. Their standard reply is that they will nickname their next child something like "Peace," "Tranquility," or mommy's personal favorite, "Jesus."