Baby Boy Lane Update

Happy Halloween!!

Baby Boy Lane’s arrival started with jalapenos….as it rightfully should have! Around 5:15pm last night I ordered a jalapeno pizza. Ordering pizza once a week had become an exciting event because that meant 4 meals that weren’t from the cafeteria! After I placed the order my nurse, Holly, came in and I jokingly asked her if the jalapenos would cause me to go into preterm labor. She laughed and said that was just an old wives tale and proceeded to give me a hard time about going into labor on her shift. About 10 minutes after she left, I felt my 1st contraction. I’ve been having contractions pretty much since I got here, but on the magnesium they were very mild and didn’t "hurt". This one hurt! 30 minutes later I admitted to Holly that I "thought" I was having contractions, but as a fat, pregnant chick, I wondered if I was simply imagining the worst. Gotta love the idea of a false alarm that turns out to be GAS! At 6:45 they checked me and I was 6-7 cm dilated and definitely in active labor. This is when I had a little freakout session and started begging everyone I saw for drugs. Within minutes, just about every nurse and nursing assistant on the 5th and 6th floors of Abbott knew the story of my 1st delivery last year and knew that drugs were HIGH PRIORITY. Call me a wimp…tell me how women did this for centuries without any pain medication at all…my response is pretty much the same: I DON’T CARE. I’m not here to be a hero…I’m here to take full advantage of medical advancements! I WANT DRUGS! GIVE ME DRUGS!! Everyone acted much quicker this time and the anesthesiologist had the epidural in by 7:45. This is when the truth about epidurals fully came to light. I had always been given the impression that epidurals would completely take the pain away…..that they basically numbed you and often times, outside of some pressure, you didn’t feel a thing. Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of "Baby Story"? What I now know is that when you are 8-9 cm dilated and contractions are coming fast and furious, an epidural might take the edge off of some of them, but doubling over in pain is still a possibility. I definitely still felt every contraction and breathing through them was the only way I could prevent myself from banging my head against a wall. I think this is what women mean when they say the epidural didn’t work…or that they got it too late…sorry, girls, what you were feeling was a heck of a lot better than what you would have felt had you not had an epidural at all! This delivery went much smoother than the last and I at least feel like I remember a little of what happened. I was wheeled to the OR (all premature babies are delivered in the OR vs. a normal labor and delivery room) at 8:20, they broke my water at 8:40, I pushed through one contraction and Baby Boy Lane arrived at 8:43. The question everyone keeps asking is…"Did Drew make it on time?!?!"…and the answer is…..YES, HE DID! He arrived just as they were getting ready to take me to the OR after securing Lili with a babysitter and making the 45 minute drive from our house to Abbott. It was a huge relief to see him walk through that door! I had a sinking feeling he was not going to make it…but he did! Immediately after delivering the NICU team spent a little over an hour working on Baby Boy. They ran a lot of tests, put an IV in through his belly button and due to some difficulty breathing, he did have to be intubated. The intubation is basically what secured him a spot in the Minneapolis Children’s Hospital NICU versus Abbott’s level 2 Special Care Nursery.

How is Baby Boy doing today? He is great!! He was taken off of the ventilator around 3pm this afternoon and I was able to hold him for the first time! He’s a strong little guy and although he looks teeny-tiny to me, the NICU nurses say he’s a "big boy". 4lbs 6oz at 31.5 weeks gestation is "huge". Since he is doing so well, they think he might even be transferred from the NICU back to Abbott’s Special Care Nursery over the weekend. We are pretty excited about this because Lili was in the Special Care Nursery last year and we are more comfortable and familiar with things over there. At this point the doctors believe that he will probably need to stay in the hospital for at least 4-6 weeks. The main reason for this is to ensure that he won’t have any respiratory issues when we go home and also because he won’t actually start to be fed with a bottle for another 3-4 weeks. In the end though, this is all good news considering the circumstances and we know he is going to do just fine!

As for myself, I’m feeling great and so relieved to be IV free and walking around! The plan is for me to be released tomorrow (Saturday), which is very exciting! I can’t wait to see my Lili!!!!! We’re a little unsure as to our plans for going back to work, taking time off now vs. later, etc….but as we know more, you will too!

Thanks for everyone’s support and concern regarding everything that has happened this past month! We are very lucky to have such good friends and family!

Take care and we will send pictures soon!!