Arrival.

This was written a couple of days after the arrival of our baby boy. It's been seven weeks, and no, he's still not home.

On Sunday morning, I had a little cramping below my breasts, but in the area that counts as the top of my belly. It seemed minor, so I ate breakfast, fiddled around, and put away laundry.

The pain wasn't getting better, so I took some Tums, thinking maybe I had actual heartburn (I never did during pregnancy). This did not help, either. I ate a sandwich, and drank some water, and laid down, thinking maybe I was having Braxton Hicks contractions.

After an hour or so, I didn't feel better. I figured I'd better just ask M (TK's Daddy, my husband, a Registered Nurse). I woke M up at 4pm. At this point, I hurt pretty badly, and it was getting hard to breathe. I've felt far far worse pain, but I was nervous. M then told me to call the doc's office, and he'd get in the shower just in case. I called the doc's office, and they said I should go to Labor and Delivery (L&D) at the hospital to get checked out.

While we drove to L&D, M started "timing" my pains at roughly a minute apart, so I was convinced I was having contractions, and they'd stop them and TK might be early or troublesome, but any labor could be stopped.

After two hours or so of monitoring, we were told:
1- TK looked great, his heartbeat was great, he was moving all over, but that
2 - my labs did not come back well. My blood platelets were low, and my blood pressure was pretty high (which was a first - I'd never in my life had high blood pressure).

The nurse said we were probably going to deliver him withint 24-48 hours and they would give me something for pain. My brain must've been off at that point. I cried a little, but I didn't *believe* they were going to deliver the baby yet. At least not for 48 hours! My pregnancy was perfect: surely this would go at least as close to how it should as possible. After all, the doctor had told me only a few weeks before that was "very low risk" based on two extensive and expensive ultrasounds.

Less than eight hours after I arrived at the hospital, they wheeled me into the room to deliver. M was not allowed in, because my blood platelets were so low I couldn't even be conscious myself for the c-section. Actually, when I was in there and conscious, they put some oxygen on me, and reassured me they were going to put me to sleep and I was so SCARED that they were going to cut me while I was awake. I was so scared about that, but now I wish I had been. After, I had had a surgery, they took the baby, but since neither M nor I were "there", it didn't seem real to me at all. I was pregnant one minute, the next I was not.

M got to go see him pretty quickly afterward. He was amazing from the beginning - for the first time, he started trying to breathe on his own when he heard M's voice (he knows his daddy!) and started kicking and moving like he's been doing to me since 20 weeks. It was several hours before I got to see him - apparently my blood work labs accidentally got cancelled, but my nurse really fought for me and got that fixed. I thought I was going to go see him at 10, but I misunderstood - it was "after my 10am labs", which didn't come in until well after 2pm. I was getting mad by then, because they took my baby from me, and I couldn't even go see him!

I did, finally, get to see him. He held my finger. His hair is so dark! He's moving around so much, and making me proud. They keep calling him a "feisty one". The day after he was delivered, he was off the ventilator. A week later, he's still off the vent, and just has a nasal canula. My amazing little boy has some jaundice, but aside from being wee little, he's perfectly healthy.

He will be in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for some time - most likely at least 8 weeks. In the mean time, we're with him every day in the hospital, as much as possible.