Hello Loved Ones,
It took a bit longer than we expected, but as of today, June 1st, our new family of 3 is finally together at home. We apologize for not sharing many details of the last 2 weeks, but we have been intensely focused on the health of our family, and we thank you all for your dear support and understanding. While we are eager to share our experience and gorgeous baby Liam with each of you, for now we'd like to share our story here.
At 28 weeks pregnant, Jessica had a near fainting spell during a walk in the neighborhood, and after visiting with a perinatologist, she was immediately sent to the triage ward at Alta Bates (our birth hospital) in Berkeley where she was monitored for high blood pressure, and admitted for observation. We spent a pretty sleepless night in Labor & Delivery, being woken every hour for BP monitoring; the following night we were moved to the very comfortable, and much quieter, Ante Partum wing, where we spent another evening on some new BP medicine and monitoring. Jessica responded well to the medication and we were finally released back home the following day. She was diagnosed with Pregnancy Induced Hypertension (PIH), which turns out is quite common, but is a predecessor of Prue-Ecclampsia, which can be quite dangerous for the mother. The next 2 months were a bit of a blur of doctor's appointments, including twice weekly Non-Stress Tests (NST) to listen to baby's heartbeat and responsiveness, regular ultrasounds to measure growth, and regular appointments with both our OB/GYN and Perinatoligist. While everything was looking good, given the PIH diagnosis and risk of Pre-Ecclampsia, our doctors recommended that we attempt delivery via induction as early as 34 weeks (term is 38-40 weeks); a steroid shot was received to encourage baby's lung development.
It was otherwise a relatively easy pregnancy; good energy, no severe morning sickness or anything. In fact, while our OB/GYN was hoping we made it to 34 weeks before induction, we in fact cruised right past 34 weeks on to 36 weeks (our original 'best case"), and even further on. By the time we got to 37 weeks, it was time to start planning for our hospital stay and finally meet our little guy. Saturday, May 19th was the day! We had gone through our training classes and toured (and already spent two nights in) the hospital, read tons of stuff, watched videos and tv shows, and basically felt as prepared as a couple could be. Understanding that induction can take time, we felt mentally prepared for some intensity, and then a healthy, natural (pain med aided) delivery.
That first night was pretty easy; we got a nice big room with a jacuzzi tub, which of course we never set foot in. We got comfortable, Jess was started on Cytotec to help the cervix begin to relax ("ripen"), and I slept on the couch in the room. The next day, with Jessica's sister Abigail being with us and supporting Jessica, we began the Pitocin (a synthetic form of Oxytocin, the body's natural hormone) to encourage contractions. After that full Sunday of contractions, by the end of the day, we had only made it to 1cm of dilation (we're looking for 10cm to be "completely dilated"). Monday brought more of this; heavier contractions, brought by higher dosages of Pitocin, but after only getting to about 2cm., we then move onto something else called a Cook's (cervical ripening) Balloon, which is a manual means of opening the cervix. This is not at all pleasant, and after Monday it hadn't really done much good. We opted to break the bag of waters (manually break the amniotic sac), and move on to a second, and more heavily filled, Cook's Balloon, along with yet higher Pitocin dosages. After a very long and painful night, during which active labor became far too intense to continue coping with naturally, we made the call for the epidural, which made ALL the difference. Finally, Tuesday morning, 5/22, after removing the 2nd Cook's Balloon we found we were completely dilated and it's time to start pushing. Like, we know you've not really slept in 2 days, and you just woke up, but yeah, push. OKAY here we go.
Abigail is still with us, and is a mother of 3 herself, and it turns out not only a great birthing coach, but an absolutely precious emotional asset for both Jessica and me. Let me also just say that I've personally never witnessed this kind of intense strength and determination in anyone; I have such a profound respect for what a woman goes through in labor and delivery, I can't possibly describe it. Jessica, after 2 1/2 days of nearly no sleep, enduring intense pain and contractions and IVs and pokes and prods and measurements and TWO dang Cook's Balloons, she finds strength like I've never seen and pushes. and pushes. AND PUSHES. So intensely that capillaries in her cheeks begin to break. So hard that her eyes become bloodshot and begin to bruise and swell. And SHE is driving it. She wants so badly for our boy to be delivered vaginally, that despite it all, she's the one calling the oncoming contractions and order to push, NOT the nurse. And yet, the body has its limits. Nearly 3 hours of this level of effort, it is clear that baby is stuck. Baby has had 2 different heart rate monitor electrodes screwed lightly into his head, and indications are that he's in some distress. All of this effort and exhaustive pushing has yielded precious little in terms of the baby's advancement through the birth canal. Apparently he is wedged against the pelvic bone, not able to proceed any further. We called in the surgeon to move forward with Caesarian Section birth.
I get dressed in scrubs so I can be with her during the procedure, while Jess is wheeled away. I sit wih my parents in a completely nervous state, knowing I had a baby minutes away, and the love of my life on an operating table, and then I'm called in. Now, I've seen the tv shows and watched as women delivered via C-Section, but experiencing it in the room, with your wife going through the operation, was not something I'll forget. Jessica was thankfully pretty heavily sedated with a cocktail of epidural and morphine and who knows what else when I saw her, spreadeagled on the table, a thin wall of paper between Jessica and I sitting with her, and the surgeons and nurses going to work. A very nice Anesthesiologist was talking us both through things and playing some pretty great music on his iPod, a pleasant distraction. Every so often, I'd look up and see reflective flashes of the detail of the surgeons' work on their face shields. They noticed Jess' Winnie the Pooh tattoo, and managed to give Pooh a perfect C-Section incision along with Jessica's. The procedure went as I'd expect, and relatively quickly, but to see Jessica's full body moving in reaction to the surgeons pushing and pulling to unstick baby's head from how far he had traveled in the pelvis was something that was until that moment the scariest thing I had ever experienced. But, things soon became much scarier, as we were briefly introduced to our newborn boy, who happened to not be breathing and was turning blue in front of our eyes; Jessica's intuition immediately picked it up and brought it the attention of the nurses who immediately whisked him away to get him breathing again. Staying with Jessica and attempting reassurance, we finally heard baby cry just before I was asked to escort the nurses, and baby, to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) upstairs. I had to leave Jessica in the care of her surgeons to finish their work while I followed Liam out of the OR. Today was our 38 weeks; Liam is officially a "term" baby, and like both his mother and father, a Gemini. He is also a dragon like his mom.
The NICU at Alta Bates is quite nice; cute in fact. Liam was brought into a room with a preemie baby that was so small that I think her leg was about the size of one of my fingers. Comparatively, Liam looked like a giant, but his size was deceptive in that he was actually quite sick. As he appeared stabilized and most of the nurses stepped aside, I finally got to say hello to my son. While I held his tiny little hand, his breathing again became labored, and he began having, what I later learned to be, a seizure. After getting stabalized again, I was able to spend a few tearful moments with him making sure from the Neonatologist that he was stable, I was able to head downstairs again and find Jessica in recovery.
Typically after Caesarian, a woman is in recovery for a couple hours before being transferred to post partum. Also typically, PIH (hypertension) and Pre-Ecclampsia is "cured" by delivering your baby. Neither of these turned out to be the case for Jessica. Instead, her blood pressure began to peak toward unsafe levels. Her BP medication was increased and she was unfortunately not responding as expected. 11 hours later, the doctor prescribed Magnesium Sulfate to help prevent seizure for her in reaction to her spiking BP, and we were admitted to ICU. Meanwhile, we were notified that Liam had some seizure activity, and while the NICU at Alta Bates was great, they did not have the type of ready access to monitoring tools such as EEG and MRI, which he now needed. He was being transferred to the NICU at Oakland Children's Hospital (OCH). Wednesday morning, we received a blessed, albeit very brief, visit from our son, in a little hermetically sealed chamber, escorted by several doctors, nurses, and EMTs, on his way to OCH. Jessica was able to reach in through a small door and touch him for the first time before they had to again take him away. She had now spent a total of about 60 seconds with him.
Magnesium Sulfate makes you feel like you have a terrible case of the flu, only with something akin to lava flowing through your body. Jessica was super nauseous and vomiting, and had to have sweat out at least pints of fluid through the night, but she had no seizures, and her BP had finally come down to a number that let us leave ICU and get to post partum. During the day, Liam had an EEG and an MRI, both of which showed things that the Neurologist was heavily concerned with. As soon as Jess was settled in her new room (her 7th room over this whole experience), I went to the NICU waiting room hoping for some sight of Liam and results of the MRI. I waited several hours before I saw a team wheel him by and into the NICU, where I had to sign in, scrub in, and finally get to see him. He looked small, and frail; a little yellowish, puffy, and had a terrible abbrasion on his scalp where apparently the trauma of all that labor had pulled away some of the skin on the top of his head. Our poor little guy was fighting hard, but wasn't in great shape.
I met with the Neonatologist, and then with the Neurogologist, both of whom were sober in their information. The EEG showed that Liam had been having seizures, the MRI showed that his brain was underdeveloped from what they'd expect, that he had some brain hemorrhaging throughout, and that he had a stroke sometime in utero. The diagnosis was obviously pretty grim, with indications that Liam would definitely have some type of neurological challenges in his life, including possibly not being even to breathe unassisted, or eat without a tube. The range of possibilities was anything from something like mild learning disability, to something like cerebral palsy, but, thank God, he was going to survive it. I was told he would be in NICU at least 2 to 3 weeks, and then who knows...there's really no way to tell this early on.
Jessica eventually got off of the Magnesium, which was like an almost instantaneous improvement in her strength. The incision from the surgery was healing nicely, swelling was beginning to go down, the sweats were subsiding as the progesterone was leaving her body, and she was finally, after several days, eating actual food and even getting up to use the bathroom after the catheter being removed. In fact, she was doing so good that the doctors suggest that maybe tomorrow (Friday) if she continues improving, we might get a pass to visit Liam at OCH! It turns out though, that she did so good overnight, that they actually let us go home instead. So, Friday early afternoon, after a couple of wheelchairs, and some painful scrubbing up (Jess is still in a lot of pain and on Percocet), we wheeled momma in to visit Liam in the NICU and finally, for the first time since carrying him for 38 weeks, and nearly 76 hours after birthing him, Jessica was able to hold little Liam in her arms.
We met with a team of 3 doctor's and a social worker to learn more details about Liam's diagnosis. Essentially we had already learned all of the details; about the brain bleeding, about the seizures, about the stroke, about his breathing difficulty (apnia), about his head wound...Not much new, but it's hard to describe the feeling of hearing this news in a formalized setting. They had stabilized him; he was on a lot of medication - a LOT of IVs dripping into his little frame, but he was not seizing. There's also not much that either of us could do but to be there for him, and to love him as hard as we damn well could. And so that's what we did.
We visit twice a day, usually for about 4 hours or more each time. Each time we would provide him loving energy and positive touch, and would sing to him. "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley came to my mind when he was under a day old..."Don't worry, about a thing...'cause every little thing, is gonna be alright"...We have sung this to him every day since. We hold him close to each of us and pour as much light as we can over him. Our energy has been fed by the overwhelming joy and love and prayer of literally countless people. Our loved ones close and far away, our family and friends, and their family and their friends, and church groups and prayer circles of every conceivable faith and literally all over the country have been sending us three strength that I hardly knew we needed. But we sure did need it, and it has worked, what I consider to be, miracles.
We received lots of little victories over the last 2 weeks. Jess began to become more and more successful at pumping her precious, and made perfectly for Liam, milk. With each visit we could see small incremental improvements in him. I got to watch the nurses remove his breathing apparatus one day. We got to watch him take a bottle of mom's milk, and feed him ourselves. We got to see him come of off each medication, one at a time, one day at a time. We watched the skin on his head begin to slowly close over his wound and heal itself. With a lot of practice Liam began nursing at Jessica's breast. And today, I was honored to remove the last 4 monitors from his skin, as we dressed him in a tiny tuxedo onesie, placed him in his car seat, and finally drove him home.
Liam is an English/Scottish/Irish name meaning Strong Willed Warrior. He has already superseded his name, and we couldn't be more proud of our little man, or of the strength he has supplied our family.
PS - Many of you have asked how you could help us out. For the next short while, as we continue to focus on our health, we are going to take a well earned, deep breath and just be together. In a couple weeks however, especially as I need to go back to work, we sure could use your love and support in the form of visiting us and bringing a dinner we can enjoy together. Keep an eye out for an email in the coming weeks with a website where you can book an evening that works best. Until then, please continue keeping our little warrior in your hearts and prayers, and we'll see you soon.
All our love and gratitude,
- Scott, Jessica, and Liam Galloway
