The Rest of the Story

Yesterday was a bit hectic, so this post will attempt to chronicle all our baby Joel happenings and bring everyone up to date.
– A few people have asked so I’ll put this here: The name Joel is a Hebrew baby name. The meaning of the name Joel is: Jehovah is God and it also means strong – willed. He gets that part from both sides. We kept coming back to names that started with ‘J’ and even had quite a few that started with ‘Jo’. We liked the meaning of this one, plus Joel was an Old Testament prophet and also one of David’s Mighty Men.
Alan is Nate’s middle name.
– Pictures are being posted in his album on the site. The ones from yesterday are here.

I had been having contractions for about 2 weeks. They would go for a couple hours and then just stop. Knowing about the umbilical cord now, maybe my body could tell it was placing too much stress on him? Anyway, at the time it was driving me crazy. I also had some great ladies who were my go tos for my kiddos when we needed to go in. So almost every day after my due date, we’d have a new plan for where/who/why. . . hehe. Glenn and Pat (PawPaw and Gram) arrived on Sunday, so all that planning went unused, but definitely helped me know the kids would be taken care of.
We were scheduled for 8pm induction so when my contractions started around 3am, I figured they wouldn’t continue. But they stayed at 10 min until around 6 then started getting harder. After a few of those, I woke Nate up so that he could grab some breakfast and make sure we had everything we wanted to take with us. He didn’t seem convinced that I needed to go to the hosp, but was a good hubby and humored me. 😉 We arrived around 7:30 and when they triaged me, I was at a 6. Yay! They got me settled into my labor and delivery room, I got my epidural around 9, and my water broke shortly after. Not sure if it was the epidural or membranes, but my contractions ramped up to 3 min and made a nice little wave on the chart and I was at 10 cm by 10:45.
We started pushing and noticing baby’s heartrate dropping every time. It was stressing me out a little. My OB was there by that time, head was down and ready. So after the heartrate game a few times, and then one time my contractions stopped completely (I think it was due to worry), she decided to pull him out and he was born at 11:27. I think I might have only pushed about 5 times. I’m glad she did it, but since she was focused on him, I tore, so have about 15 stitches. Plus he was big anyway. 9 lbs 6.6 oz and 20 3/4 inches. I’m pretty sure my OB was surprised by his size. She kept telling me at appointments he was measuring 7 ish pounds because we discussed his size when we talked about waiting to induce. They said he had a really long cord, it was wrapped around his neck twice, thus causing the heartrate problem. I think it was really big too, his little belly button nub is very round.
His APGAR scores were 8 and 9, which meant he looked good and sounded healthy at birth. But he had a lot of fluid in his nose and mouth so he was very gurgly (new word) and his breathing was shallow. They tried to give him to me for skin to skin but he wasn’t breathing very well and I got concerned how purple he was so they put him back under the heat lamp and called in the NICU nurses to try to suction him some more. There were 3 nurses working on me and 3 or 4 working on baby and Nate trying to get some pictures. It was quite a busy room. 🙂
He seemed to do ok on the heater bed so they took him to the newborn nursery so the nurse in there could monitor him for awhile. They thought maybe he just needed a little time to recover and transition. However, after a couple hours in there, they moved him to NICU since he was still having difficulty. He was breathing very shallowly and quickly. They took xrays and blood labs and started him on antibiotics just in case. At first they had him just on saturated air, but moved up to more push O2 in for a little while. By the evening, we had the xrays back and there was still quite a bit of fluid in his lungs. The dr said this is common in C-section babies and in quick deliveries like mine because something in the labor process triggers the baby to start absorbing those fluids and he just didn’t have a lot of time there to clear out his lungs properly. Nate visited him a few times in the nursery and the NICU and Glenn and Pat were able to go see him as well, but the kids are not allowed in there so we did a little Skype session for them.
Meanwhile, I had gotten really itchy and they thought it was from the epidural wearing off so I got a dose of Benadryl. My nurse tried to get me up for the potty after I could feel my legs again and I almost fainted. But we made it and got all cleaned up and ate lunch. They moved me to my recovery room. We hadn’t named him yet so when Nate got back from visiting in the NICU, we decided then was the time because I wanted to post the update and get y’all praying. Joel Alan was the final vote. My pain hasn’t been too bad yet. I’ve been able to pump some colostrum which I call baby gold (this is not easy, think squeezing honey through a sponge) so he’ll have yummies to eat when they take him off the IV. The nurse says he’s ready to eat and he likes to suck on his fingers or a paci. When his nose attachments comes off, I’ll be able to nurse him in the NICU.

Current forecast: I have to stay at least one more night. They finally told us Joel will stay in NICU at least another 24 hrs for observation, but they have started to wean the oxygen and he is doing well. We should have bloodwork back to see if there are any other issues he might be dealing with. He was very alert with eyes open when Pat went to see him and he was really happy all swaddled up and warm when I went to visit him around 4am.