A birth and a funeral...

I can easily say that the last weekend was the hardest of my life. Jemma was having such a hard time and it was so evident on the monitors. On Saturday night one of the residents came in and told us that not only the decels were concerning but now little Jemma was having a flat line heart rate. She said that if it continued we would be delivering. What this means is that when a baby is in the womb their heart rate jumps around their baseline creating a variability.  For example Jemma's baseline was 155 and would go down to 149 then back up. Then it would go up to 160 and back down to 155. This is good and what the doctors want to see when they are monitoring baby. What Jemma was doing was just staying at 155. This is a sign of distress. Dr. M-H was on call and she still thought it was safer to keep baby in then to bring her out. She said that if Jemma stayed at one rate for an hour we would deliver. It was a very stressful situation. I am having very mixed emotions. Do we speak up and start asking them to get this baby out. Is this a decisions we could live with if something happened to her because of prematurity  Do we listen to the doctors and pray nothing happens to her while we are trying to protect her. We are at such a cross road and don't know what to do. It seems like any decision we make can have serious consequences. I tell Jade we have to get to Monday because Dr. M will be here and we will be able to rest comfortable with his thoughts. He is the Dr. that we really began to trust the most. He seems to be overly cautious and on the same page as us on everything.

Early Monday morning Jemma started having decels and then going to a flat rate when she recovered. However they don't consider this a good recovery. The doctors and nurses come in roll Jade fro side to side put O2 on her. They help little Jemma to recover but man when is this madness going to stop. At 6 am we are awoken by a familiar voice Dr. M is in the house. I open my eyes and tell him "Thank God you are here, what are we going to do?" He said we are having her today. Tears swelled up in my eyes I was so relieved. At this point I knew she was better out here with us then struggling in there. Relief flooded me.

Me, Jade & Jora

Jade

Jade was prepped for surgery and at 12:54 our miracle took her first breath. She was pink and making little sounds. She had a an outstanding APGAR scores of 8 at 1 minute and 9 at 5 minutes. Wow she is fierce. She weighed in at 1 lb 12 oz and was 13 inches long. She was 27 weeks and 3 days gestational age. When Dr.M came out to update me on how everything went he told me it was a good thing we delivered her. the original bedside ultrasound was the accurate one. Jemma had not grown and she had NO amniotic fluid. He told me the baby was doing excellent and had gone to the NICU. Jade was alert and oriented and cracking jokes. We both laughed at this my girl has her daddy's sense of humor which is a good thing. 

 I got to meet Jemma Jean when she was an hour old I was not prepared for how small she was. I started bawling. I was so scared. My daughter Jora had been born at 30+4 weeks and weighed 3 lbs 2 oz BUT IT WAS BIG COMPARED TO THIS. I looked at her and love filled my heart but I was so emotional I had to escape the NICU.

The first day Jemma was with us she did amazing and then that night the perfect world seemed to come to an end. Jade got called at 4:30 am to come to the NICU STAT. She runs down there and encounters her baby in full code blue. Her heart had stopped and she wasn't breathing. The team was trying to save her. They had to intubate her to help her breathe. The got her stabilized. Now Jade is scared out of her mind. Afraid to leave the baby. But can you blame her?

The incident was not Jemma's fault her UVC had not placed properly in her heart and it caused her pericardium to fill with blood. Now the medical team wasn't at fault either. These things happen cause these little babies are so small. Things look right but aren't always.  She did have a blood transfusion but was extubated that same morning. So she pulled through excellently. Boy is she fierce!

In all the joy of bringing Jemma, We also had the pain of saying good bye to our precious Jewel. "Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens" -Psalm 68:19. With out the grace of God we would have crumbled under the burden of this journey. Thank you Jesus for helping us through this.

The tears still flow our hearts are heavy and we wish.....

27 weeks and not sure we will make it much further...

Yesterday we made it to 27 week. Let me tell you  it hasn't been easy. Little Jemma sure seems to be struggling in there. For the past five days she has had a lot of decels. We have been extremely worried but the doctors keep telling us that decels that last under a minute are not significant enough to bring her out. At this gestational age she would struggle more on the outside. It just seems that because there is only one surviving that the doctors are on uncharted territory. In Fact they probably are since these little miracle babies are so uncommon. Something someone said on face book yesterday really has stuck in my head. Hopefully they deliver her before this little miracle baby runs out of miracles. And let me tell you that is how we feel.

I stayed the night at the hospital Thursday night with Jade cause Jemma had been having so many decels Jade was really worried. She had as many as 5 in an hour, nothing that lasted more than a minute but Jade had been brought to tears with worry

Little Jemma had a tough night. Lots of decels grouped together then periods were she did well. Around 5:30 am Jemma looked not so good on the monitor Dr. M came in and said we need to move you down to L & D in case we have to take action. When we got down there they did a bed side ultra sound it showed 3 cm of amniotic fluid and that Jemma only weighed 1 lb 11 oz( which is the same that she had weighed 2 weeks ago). Dr. M was very concerned and ordered a formal ultrasound. He said if these numbers were accurate we would be delivering today. He was pretty sure they were and told us to be prepared. So we waited all morning for the results. By mid afternoon we finally got them baby had grown 150 grams and had 7 cm of fluid. It looked like things are going okay and I guess we will be leaving little Jemma in to grow a little more.

26 weeks and growing...

Little Jemma is doing fabulous. She is still in the belly growing big and strong. Her heart beat thumps away as she is monitored 24 hours a day. We have made it to 26 weeks and we are so excited. She would do well if they needed to deliver her today but she would do better if we can make it to 28 weeks. So we are watching the calendar and praying that she continues to do this good. Most of the time you are told take things one day at a time but in this case we are taking it two weeks at a time :) Every day in the womb makes a difference but we have set these goals. Get to 28 weeks then 30 weeks then 32 weeks and now since this is only one baby Jade and her doctors have decided to push it to 34 weeks.

Speaking of doctors Jade had another huge scare this week. She has a perinatalogist team of 3 as I have discussed previously. We love two of them and feel very confident in the choices they have made in regards to Jade's care plan. They have been very open with us about possible outcomes and worries. We totally trust the two Dr. M & Dr. M-H but Dr. H is another story. She is the one that left us feeling bewildered and confused after we met her and all she could talk about was something being wrong with Baby B but not sharing why. We asked and asked to only be told cause she is not growing right which might cause her demise. When we found out the next week that the doppler study had shown abnormal readings in the flow to the baby we were so upset that Dr. H hadn't told us. We felt like we should have been told. We also know that if we had seen one of the other two doctors they would have been straight up with us.

We haven't seen the third doctor since that appointment which we thought was for the best. We had gotten over our anger but still don't trust her. Then on Tuesday morning Jade is woken up at 8 am by an OB telling her she has been having contractions while she slept and they want to check for dilation. The doc does the check and says good there has been no progress. He then proceeds to tell Jade that Dr. H is doing the rounds today and has decided that Jade is safe to be sent home to continue on as a normal singleton pregnancy. He said Dr. H will be in momentarily. Jade flips out.

She has been told by both her other doctors that there are still risks and that they still have pretty much the same plan as when both babies were growing.  When Dr. H came in Jade was crying and saying why are you doing this I have already lost one . Why are you willing to risk my other one but the other Peri's are not? She told Dr. H I am not going home because you tell me to I will wait until one of my other doctors are on. Dr. H tells her I am sorry that I am on a different page than my two partners but that is how I feel. Dr. H leaves the room.

I am trying to calm Jade down on the phone. I am an hour away and had worked a twelve hour shift that night. My brain isn't working I don't know what to say or what to do. I tell her Jade have Dr. H removed from your team, ask to have her banned from your care, get a manager in there and explain your concerns. This is ridiculous Jade has been through enough. She doesn't need some doctor from left field trying to change things up. With-in the hour it has been handled Dr. M was called Jade is not going home the plan is still the same. Dr. H is not allowed near Jade or her medical record.

Wow glad we made it through that one. Jade is now calm and comfortable again secure in the knowledge that she has two wonderful doctors that she trust managing her care.

And as to the nurses taking care of Jade, they have all been amazing. She truly has been blessed. She has gotten so close to some of them that she actually cried when they have to be off for a couple days. Mandy and Jade have gotten super close. TY Mandy for taking such good care of our girls :)

Jade and Mandy keeping a watchful eye on little Miss Jemma!