Saturday, July 21, 2007

Olivia Is Home

n case you haven't heard...Olivia is home!

Britney Marie

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

We're Home And We Have Babies!

Emma Leigh and Olivia Jayne were born on July 4th. Emma was at 6:13pm and weighed 4lbs 14oz and Olivia was at 6:14pm and was 3lbs 12oz. Each was by c-section. There were complications, but not with the girls. They seemed to be doing better than I was the whole time!

After the girls were born, I had my tubes tied which went just fine. Unfortunately, my uterus would not contract so they gave me medication to do that. None of the medications worked for some reason. My OB said out of 4000 babies he has delivered, he has never had someone have this problem and the drugs not work. So, they ended up calling Shans hospital and prepping an ICU room for me because of the amount of blood I was losing. They told Shans about the situation and that they were going to tie a suture around my uterus to contract it, and Shans said that that would be what they would do as well, so sending me there wouldn't have done any good.

Fortunately, they got the bleeding under control, but I had to have three units of blood pumped back into me. I had no idea any of this was happening. I remember my husband being in there, then following the girls to the NICU and then I passed out and woke up in the recovery room with an IV in each arm. (There was only one IV in my arm when I went into the OR.) After I was coherent enough, they told me what happened. My doctor ended up spending the night at the hospital just in case there was an emergency and he needed to get to me fast. I love my doctor! I couldn't have asked for a better one!

After that, my blood pressure and heart rate skyrocketed. They had to put me on an IV of Mag for a day. My legs and feet were so swollen the whole time also. I swear they had to have been at least five times their normal size!

After that, they found that I am anemic. So, instead of being able to go home when they said I could, I had to stick around for another two days to get another IV put in (they had taken the other two out) and had to get iron pumped into me. I had that in addition to an iron pill to take.

A day later they finally said I could go home.

We have Emma here with us, but Liv is still at the NICU. She has a feeding tube because she just gets too tired to eat out of a bottle. She is eating enough though when she does get the bottle. So that's good. We went to visit her today and she was out of the incubator, in "big girl" clothes and was maintaining her temperature well. She had lost a few ounces, but is slowly gaining them back. She had gotten down to 3lbs 9oz, but is now 3lbs 11oz. They said she can go home at 4lbs. 5 ounces left!! I can't wait to get her home. I didn't do so well when I was discharged. It was the first day I had seen her with the feeding tube (she had it removed by the time I was able to see her the first time, and then she got tired a few days later.) and then I had to leave her there while taking her sister home. I just have to keep telling myself that there's nothing WRONG with her, she just needs to put on some fat.

Em is doing well here at home. She's eating well and is sleeping a lot. We have our first pediatrician appointment tomorrow.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Now What?

Here it is, a week since I was first admitted to the hospital, and I am still here. I found out yesterday that I am anemic. So they had to stick me with another IV and give me two days worth of iron. I am also currently taking an iron pill, a blood pressure pill, 800mg of motrin, percocet, and a few others that I can't remember what exactly it is that they do.

Olivia has jaundice. Well, she had it, and could still have it, we're not sure yet. They're supposed to do the test for it later on today and we'll find out whether or not she has to go back under the lamp to try to fix it. I can't remember if I mentioned it or not in the last post, but Olivia has been in the NICU for the past week. She has gone down from 3lbs 12oz to 3lbs 9oz. They had originally had been giving her oxygen (in the nose tubes, not the ventillator) but she got to come off of those the other day. She was also being fed through an IV when she didn't eat as much as they wanted her to (one oz) but she got to have the IV removed yesterday. Now they're saying they might have to put it back in.

Emma is here with us, she was in the NICU for a couple of days, but with her weight and ability to eat and maintain body temperature, she was released. I don't know if that was such a good idea. She was doing so well. Now it seems like every time someone comes to help us (my mom or Ricky's mom for example) we have trouble with her once they leave. Like today. My mom was here for the past two days. We haven't had hardly any trouble with Emma eating or spitting up. She even started eating more than she had previously...now that Mom is gone, she seems to spit up so much. And it's not at every feeding...it's after one and we put her down to sleep, we look over and she's just spit up all over the place for no reason. She has gone from 4lbs 14oz to 4lbs 7oz. One more oz and that will be her 10% lost and I don't know if they'll want to put her back in the NICU or not.

I am so worried about both our girls. Things are not going well here. I know that Ricky is really worried about all three of us. It seems like everyday we get some piece of bad medical news and one of us has to have some sort of treatment. I honestly don't know when we're going to get to go home. And even if we do get to go home sometime soon, I don't know if one or both our girls are coming with us. I don't like that one bit.

And to make matters worse, I've already started to get the "baby blues". Just waiting the proper two weeks before I can actually call it post-partum depression like I know it's going to be. Ugh.

I can only imagine what tomorrow has in store.

Britney Marie

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Fourth of July

Emma Leigh Gravatt was born at 6:13pm on July 4th. She weighed 4lbs 14oz. Olivia Jayne Gravatt was born at 6:14pm on July 4th. She weighed 3lbs 12oz.

There has been quite a lot of things going on. In fact, I literally almost died. And I don't mean that in the "OMG I almost DIED!" kind of way, I mean it in the funeral plans kind of way. Let me 'splain...no there is too much, let me sum up...

I had to have a c-section. While in there they also tied my tubes. After they were finished with all that and they started to close me up, my uterus wouldn't stop bleeding. They tried every medication they could to stop it, and nothing worked. They eventually put me to sleep through the IV medication, then called Shans hospital to find out what they should do. They also prepped an ICU room for me because they didn't know what the outcome would be. Shans hosptial told them they were doing everything that they would do and they might have to perform a hysterectomy on me. Luckily they found a way to stop it. They vacuumed out the blood and tied a stitch around my uterus to contract it like it was supposed to be doing on its own.

My doctor said that of the 4000 babies he has delivered, he has never encountered this problem before. He literally saved my life.

After that problem, the problem of me losing too much blood came up. So, I had to get a transfusion of three units of blood. By this point I now had an IV in my right arm and another one in my left hand.

Over the course of the next few days I have had my blood drawn too many times to count. The nurses have literally run out of veins to tap. I have bruises all up and down both arms.

I was finally told yesterday that I would be able to be moved from the second floor (labor and delivery) to the third floor (discharge). Before they could move me they decided to check my vitals one more time. This time my blood pressure had skyrocketed and so had my heart rate. I was no longer allowed to leave. I had to get another IV of medications and stay.

I was finally moved to the third floor this afternoon. There is a lot more to report in this event, but I don't have the time to write about it all now. You've been given the basics.

I am alive...but I almost wasn't. We have two beautiful baby girls who I'll post pictures about as soon as I can.

Britney Marie

Monday, July 2, 2007

Back At The Hospital

Ricky and I made another trip to the hospital about two hours ago. Even with the pills I was still having contractions. And I hadn't felt either baby move in about eight hours. So, we went into triage. I got another shot to stop the contractions. I'm getting good at taking shots. These shots give me a really bad case of the shakes so it's actually quite difficult to type this at the moment. Ricky doesn't like it when I get the shakes. He's been getting worried about me lately.

We have an appointment with my specialist today at two so we'll see what he says about everything.

Britney Marie