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.....