Welcome to the World...

At 4:00 am I woke up and needed to use the bathroom. As I sat up in bed I felt a gush of fluid. It felt a lot like when my water broke with Kadan. I waddled to the bathroom and saw immense amounts of blood soaking my underwear, filling the toilet, and all over my rug. My first thought (to last til we reached the hospital) was, "I've lost the baby, he's gone..."

I ran back to our bedroom grabbed my phone and went back to the bathroom (I was still bleeding a lot). I called Blaine first, told him to get home (he was working a night shift). Called Karri (a friend) next to come over to be with the boys. Called my mom next to tell her what happened. She told me to hang up and call an ambulance, which did make sense but in the chaos it actually didn't enter my mind til she told me to. The total of those three phone calls was about 1 minute 20 seconds. I called 911 and by some miracle remembered my address to tell the lady. Blaine arrived home first, the paramedics were right behind him, and Karri made it over as they were getting me into the ambulance.

I don't remember a lot of that drive over except praying over and over and over and over that everything would be okay. At that point I was still fairly certain the baby was past the point of being able to survive. I didn't know what was happening, but I was pretty sure massive amounts of blood were not a good sign. The blood loss made me pretty out of it though, so I have only vague memories of the ride to the hospital.

We got up to a room and the nurses were amazing and the resident doctor who came in was also amazing (thank HEAVENS it was not the doctor who checked me the day before when we went in to the hospital... see family blog for this story). They hooked me up to monitors and we found that the baby's heartbeat was doing surprisingly well. I was shocked! I absolutely didn't expect to hear a heartbeat! From an external exam they couldn't tell where the blood was coming from. They did an ultrasound and still could not see a cause. By this time the on call OB/GYN doctor had arrived. He worked in the same office as my own OB/GYN but was not the actual doctor I had been seeing throughout my pregnancy. The second he walked in and started talking to us I felt SO much better! This man was amazing. Although I was still scared out of my mind, he made me feel so much better and I knew I was in very good hands.

At this point my bleeding had slowed way down. The doctor suspected it was the placenta detaching. Where the baby was showing to be stable and the bleeding had pretty much stopped the doctor talked to us about our options. So long as my bleeding didn't continue, we had the option of waiting. I would stay in the hospital very closely watched and they could give the baby a shot to mature his lungs and so long as I didn't bleed anymore and the baby was doing okay and the contractions I was having (steadily getting worse) stopped, it could be the best chance at getting the baby a little more prepared for life outside the womb. Even an extra couple days would have lessened his chances for many long term problems. However, the doctor stressed that it was a risk to wait. Our best chance at life (for me and the baby) was to do the c-section immediately, while the baby's heartbeat was strong and stable. If we waited, and the placenta tore more and I bled more or the contractions and/or bleeding put the baby in too much stress and we had to rush into the c-section, it would be much more risky for us (life-wise). It was possibly the hardest decision I've had to make. The doctors/nurses left for a few minutes for us to talk about it, we decided to go ahead with the c-section and not wait. Although in the end it didn't matter because when the doctor came back in and checked me I had bled more, which no longer gave us the option of waiting. They got Blaine in some surgery clothes and got me prepped for surgery and away we went to get the baby out.

The surgery went well, when they opened me up they found that it was in fact the placenta detaching from the uterine wall. My amniotic fluid was mixed with quite a lot of blood, some of it not so fresh and they figure I had been bleeding for a few days (which explained the pain I had been having the last few days). The doctors/nurses were amazed that the baby weighed 4 lbs 6 oz. His Apgar score was also an 8 or 9 (which was really good).

After spending some time in the recovery room they wheeled me into the NICU to see the baby and I was shocked that he looked so much like a full term newborn baby, just mini. He even had a little fat on him. I guess I expected him to look a bit more 'less developed'. From the beginning he was breathing much better than expected. Doctors said because he had been a little stressed the last few days (because of all the blood and the state of the placenta) his survival mode kicked in and his lungs actually started to mature faster during those few days.

We named him Cameron F Harris. (Blaine's middle initial is L and his mother's maiden name was Lottman, so the F is for my maiden name, Foy, and also for Blaine's grandfather Fay. Also, having it be just an initial makes it like Blaine's name and my dad's name, they both only have a middle initial.)

We heard the word "amazing" many times throughout the last few days. Cameron seems to be quite the tough little trouper, doing everything as good as or better than he should be (quite the little overachiever... we'll have to make sure he doesn't get too cocky in front of the other NICU babies). : )

Before I had my 20 week ultrasound we asked Kadan what he thought the baby was going to be. He responded, "I think it's gonna be a girl... No! wait!... I hope... it's gonna be... a DRAGON!!!" He was pretty disappointed when the ultrasound showed the baby to be a little human boy, not a dragon. But the nickname stuck (especially after Uncle Justin told Kadan to feel my belly and that you could feel the 'wings'!). So now we have our new baby boy... Cameron the Amazing Dragon.