Jacob's Story

I figure this blog is pointless if I don't tell you the story of how we ended up here, so here it goes! WARNING: THIS IS LONG AND GRAPHIC

I was ecstatic in October of 2007 to discover that I was 4 weeks pregnant! It was my first cycle of Clomid (due to a mild case of PCOS) and I was sure it would take a few cycles to work. My due date was determined to be July 7th, 2008 and since most women deliver their first child late I was preparing for a long Summer of being huge and pregnant. My pregnancy was pretty uneventful for the first few months, but I was mildly concerned about the fact that I had
previously had a LEEP procedure back in 2001 and mentioned this in passing to my doctor (this type of procedure can lead to an incompetent cervix). She wasn't concerned in the least bit so I let that take a back seat and tried to enjoy my pregnancy.

At the end of February, I accidentally fell out of bed (a long, makes-me-sound-stupid story!) and experienced some bleeding. I called into work and Ian drove me to the ER. I am not going to sugarcoat it. I was bleeding A LOT and was convinced that I had lost the baby. I even threw up in the car twice on the way to the hospital (which is only 10 minutes from our house) from the nerves. I was admitted to L&D for monitoring and so the doctor on call, who just happened to be my doctor, could examine me. She did an internal and my cervix was still closed, but something didn't "feel right". She decided the bleeding was most likely a ruptured blood vessel since my cervix was still closed and that everything else appeared fine. We had already scheduled a Level II ultrasound for the following week due to a VSD they had found on my ultrasound at 19w so the doctor added a few orders for the u/s tech and off we went. A week later, I had my Level II u/s and was shocked to find out that my cervix was 2.5 cm. The u/s tech explained that the doctors like them to be 3 cm or longer. They said not to worry, they were going to call my doctor and ask if she wanted me to go straight to the hospital for monitoring (?!?!?!). After waiting for what seemed like an eternity for my doctor to answer the page, she decided to have me go right to L&D to be hooked up to the fetal monitor to see if I was contracting. After an uneventful 2 hours in L&D, I was sent home with orders for another ultrasound in 10 days to follow up and was put on modified bed rest. I had access to work from home so that was the plan and we just waited.

On March 13th, 2008 I called into work since I was feeling under the weather and decided to spend the day at home relaxing with my feet up. After an hour or two, I felt something that didn't "feel right". After a visit to the bathroom, I realized I had lost my mucous plug. In a panic, I called my doctor and spoke with a nurse as I tried to explain to her through sobs what I had just discovered. She explained that women lose mucous plugs all the time and they can regenerate so not to worry too much and she would let the doctor know and have her call me back. I already had another follow-up ultrasound scheduled for that Monday the 17th so my doctor called and said to hold on until then unless I was having any pain (contractions, water leakage, etc.).

On Sunday, the 16th of March, Ian and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary! It was hard to believe that we had already been married a year and that in 4 short months (or so we thought) we would be parents!

On Monday the 17th, we arrived at the hospital for our second Level II ultrasound. By now, my nerves had calmed a bit since I hadn't had any bleeding, contractions or water leakage at all since I fell out of bed almost 3 weeks prior. I was pretty sure they were going to tell me everything was perfect and that I could return to work. When the ultrasound tech left the room without saying anything my heart started to race with all the possibilities. She returned and told me she had paged my doctor and we were waiting for her to call back. The problem was my cervix was now measuring only 1.8 cm!! They were not able to let me go anywhere until they received orders from my doctor. Since they had paged her at 5 PM and her office closes then they had a hard time tracking her down and it was almost 6:15 by the time they got back to us. My doctor gave me two choices: head down to my hospital back home for monitoring and a possible transfer to a Boston hospital (my hospital only delivers beyond 34 weeks since they don't have a NICU) or continue driving North to Boston and go right to Tufts (which is the hospital affiliated with my hospital that has a Level III NICU). After discussing our options, Ian and I decided to head into Boston. If anything happened we would want to be in the best place possible for the baby. At this point, I was only 23w1d pregnant. They wouldn't even try to save the baby until I made it to 24 weeks so I was anxious and hoping they could do something to turn the situation around. At this point, I still thought everything was going to be fine. I don't know if I was in denial or what, but I was sure there was going to be some quick fix and they would send me home. Little did I know....

I was admitted to Triage in L&D at Tufts Medical Center and told by the doctor on call that "just in case" they were going to administer steroid shots to help mature the baby's lungs. I would receive 2 doses of Celestone over a 48 hour period. The first shot was administered and since it was 11:15 by the time I got it they decided to keep me overnight and plan on keeping me until I was Celestone complete on Wednesday night which means I was there until at least Thursday morning. I just happened to be on vacation that week for work since Ian and I had previously planned on going to Vermont for a couple of days to celebrate our anniversary. Luckily we hadn't planned anything and I just had the week off to vacation in a hospital bed.

I spent a very uneventful week at Tufts watching The Ellen Show and horrible daytime TV waiting for Ian to drop by each day after work. Since everything seemed fine and my cervix had even measured at 3.0 cm at my ultrasound Thursday morning (bed rest really works!!!!) Ian was going home at night and I was left alone with my ultrasound pictures of our little boy to keep me company. I had just found out that day what we were having since we were planning on having it be a surprise. When they said I could possibly deliver early, and girls have better chances than a boy, I decided I wanted to know what I was up against and had the tech tell me. When I told Ian that I knew what we were having he went back and forth for 30 minutes on whether or not he wanted to know. Eventually, he wanted me to tell him and we spent that night dreaming about all of the possiblities for our little guy and throwing around names (the final two were Joshua Caleb or Micah James).

On Saturday night, the 22nd, Ian came to the hospital and was planning on spending the night with me for the first time all week. The doctors had informed us that I would be discharged Sunday morning at 10 AM and on modified bed rest until further notice. I had called my boss and planned on continuing to work from home until my doctor released me from bed rest. We fell asleep around 10:30 and I woke up around 2:00 AM on Sunday with the worst.cramp.ever. It kind of felt like gas pains, but since I had never experienced a contraction or labor before I didn't know what labor contractions felt like. When it didn't happen again, I decided it must have been nothing and went back to sleep. At 3:30 AM, I woke up again with the same pain and decided that if it happened one more time I needed to call the nurse. I still didn't think anything was wrong since the two contractions were about 90 minutes apart and I knew they had to be closer than that for it to be actual labor. When I had another one at 4 AM I decided it was time to call someone. The last one was extremely painful and I had to concentrate to get through it. I woke Ian up and told him not to panic, but I was having some cramps and I was calling the nurse. By the time she hooked me up to the monitors it was 4:20 AM. Within 20 minutes, I had 2 contractions and she had called the doctor and nurse from L&D to let them know they needed to check me and possibly wheel me down since I had been rooming in the Mother & Infant Unit for the week. Around 5 AM, there was a team of nurses and doctors set up in my room to do an internal. They told me if I was more than a fingertip dilated (which is what I was when I was admitted and had no idea) I would be going downstairs, but if nothing had changed they were just going to keep an eye on me. When the doctor stood up and without expression said, "we're taking you downstairs" I had no idea what was going on. Little did I know that I was 5 cm dilated and my bag of water was poking through!!! I was wheeled downstairs and at the same time they got me on the table the contractions started coming fast and furious. They were so bad I couldn't even talk during them. They were coming so fast and were on top of each other and I had no rest in between. While the nurses hooked me up to IV's and got me prepped for surgery "just in case" they began pumping magnesium sulfate into me to try and stop the labor. Being my naive self, I still assumed that this was something they could stop. I was unaware of how far along I actually was and assumed this would all be over in a matter of hours. All of a sudden, I started to feel like my body was extremely hot and on fire (side effect of the lovely mag) and asked the nurse if it makes you nauseous. She said yes, but we don't like to tell people that because sometimes you can make yourself sick if you know it is a possibility. That is when I vomited in the bed pan she handed me. At this point, I looked at Ian and said, "We're going to have a baby today" and he says he knew right then, when he saw the fear in my eyes, that I knew what I was talking about. A few minutes later, I felt this huge pop and gush of warm fluid. I started screaming at the top of my lungs that I thought my water had broken and they all rushed to the end of the bed and realized we were game on. As they all started running circles around my bed, and Ian looked on horrified clutching my purse to his chest, I started asking the nurses why the water hadn't stopped yet. She asked what I meant and I said I felt something running down my leg. This is when the nurse started yelling orders. It turns out since Jacob was so small I had suffered cord prolapse which means that his umbilical cord had come out before him. Supposedly, when this happens the cord vibrates which is what I was feeling against my leg and thought it was water gushing. When this happens, it cuts off the oxygen supply to the baby and gives the doctor and nurses only a few minutes to get him out. As one nurse literally shoved her fist up inside me with the cord (the only way to try and keep some oxygen flowing) I was wheeled, with that nurse riding on the end of my bed, into the OR. The doors shut behind me as Ian was left in the hallway. They took off my glasses, put a mask over my face and that is the last thing I remember.

When I came to, I was violently shaking from the general anesthesia and didn't know where I was. When I looked up and saw Ian, he wasn't crying, he was still holding my purse and then it all came flooding back to me. All I said was, "Is he okay?". Ian said, "He's pink and breathing." That was all we knew. Ian told me the nurse came out and updated him periodically about what was going on, when they had him out, when they had trouble getting him intubated and when the tube was finally in and he was stable enough to transfer to the NICU. Ian said they wheeled him by and he couldn't believe how tiny he was. He said he was all bundled up, but that his head was the size of a clementine and he was VERY little. Ian also said that he didn't look like a Joshua or a Micah and that instead he looked like a Jacob.

Jacob Andrew was born at 5:53 AM on 3/23/08. He weighed 1 lb 7 oz and was 11.5 inches long. He spent 4 long months in the NICU before coming home with us on July 17, 2008 weighing 7 lb 9 oz and just 10 days after his original due date. If you would like to read more about Jacob's journey in the NICU, please feel free to surf through his Caring Bridge website which we used to update everyone on his condition for the first several months of his life: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jacobstewart