Oh Baby, Baby!

If we were having coffee this morning, it would be indoors as I’m in Seattle and it’s raining and a bit on the cool side. I would be yawning and obviously tired but I would also be very happy to share my news with you. I know I teased a bit about it yesterday so I will tell you now that the week has been horrendously stressful. We almost lost my daughter-in-law. She and the baby were both in distress but she is home now and we are going back and forth to the hospital to see the baby who is still in the NICU.

His due date was the 18th. He had threatened to come at 27 weeks but he stayed in mommy until his due date. At that point mom was still not having good quality contractions but she had developed a fever and other symptoms so she went in to the hospital where they determined that she had a pretty bad infection and was leaking amniotic fluid. The doctor decided to induce immediately. That was midnight Wednesday morning. By 8 am she had progressed to 8 cm dilation but then everything stopped. She and the baby began to show signs of cardiac distress so at 4 pm they decided it was time for a C section. Then we didn’t hear anything for hours and hours (actually about 5 hours but it seemed like an eternity). When my son called, he said that although both baby and mom were safe, things didn’t go well in the C section. Mama had severe bleeding. She lost 40% of her blood. There were also problems with her uterus which would not contract as it should. First they thought they were going to have to do a hysterectomy then things got even worse with bleeding and they thought they were going to lose her. Miracles happen. They were able to stabilize her but they immediately transferred her to another hospital for high risk post op monitoring. The baby, in the meantime, was having problems breathing because he swallowed a bunch of “gunk” during labor. He also has an infection from all of that. So baby stayed behind when mama was transferred. It was only my son here to go back and forth from one hospital to the other and deal with decisions and logistics. They had not wanted anyone up here until they got home from the hospital so none of the grandparents were here when everything happened. I drove up right away (I’m about 4 hours away). So I’m here. Mama was released Friday morning and went straight to the hospital to meet baby who was born Wednesday night. Baby will remain in the NICU until Wednesday as they are doing a full course of IV antibiotics for the infection. He is off of oxygen so now he can have visitors.

So here’s Matias meeting his Nana…

Matias Gael, 8 lbs., 2 oz and 20.5 inches, meeting Nana

So it has been a high stress week. I meant to blog about other things but my mind has not been settled enough to do so during this time. Now that mama is out of danger and I have seen the baby, I can relax a bit. I will be up here for another day or two then go home and come back again in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I won’t get to see him out of the hospital and without wires and tubes (that’s the IV for antibiotics in his head in the picture) during this trip but I will when I come back in a couple of weeks.

There was too much excitement and stress to do much of anything this week, blogging, reading, or anything else. I did do a lot of streaming of movies because it kept my mind occupied so I wouldn’t think of all the ways things could go wrong. Tell me about your week. Are you reading anything? Do you have a movie to recommend? What is up with you?

#WeekendCoffeeShare is a weekly blog hop hosted by Diana at Part Time Monster. Come over and check it out. Maybe you’ll join us?