Pages

Saturday, February 4, 2012

What made me blog (its a long first blog)

Towards the middle of April 2011 I suspected that I was pregnant with our second child. You see my husband and I were already blessed with a beautiful daughter on April 29, 2007. When I took a home pregnancy test and it was postive we were both thrilled, excited and scared at the same time. A week later my doctor confirmed the news and we started to tell family and friends little by little. As I started to get bigger and bigger family started to guess what I was having. Everyone was SURE I was having a boy, I guess I even started to believe I was having a boy, I mean this pregnancy was totally different from when I was pregnant with my daughter Nathalia. The hubby and I even picked out a boy name Emiliano, and didnt even think about a girl name until you guessed it we went to our ultra sound and were told that we were having a GIRL, I was super happy the hubby was too he just couldnt believe we were having another girl. Nathalia was actually the one to pick her sisters name. She named her Emmaliese. I had a very normal and healthy pregnancy no low iron, no anemia, no diabetes nothing not even the high blood pressure I had while pregnant with Nathalia.
Taken on my birthday, 11/1/11 34weeks4days



 I had my last prenatal appointment on Dec. 7, 2012 and had already been dialated at 3cm for a week, my doctor decided to do a sweep to hopefully push me into labor. Well it worked because that evening I went for a walk at Target and an hour later was having mild contractions every 5minutes. So at 10:35pm I was admitted to the labor and delivery floor. I would love to say that I had complications during my labor and that thats why I lost my baby girl. But that is not the case my labor was very routine, at 3:30am I was given the epidural and at 4am my water was broken. By 7:20am i was fully dialated and ready to push. My baby girl was born at 7:32am wieghing 7lbs 8oz and measuring 20inches. She did cry and I was able hold her. She didnt want to take my breast so we assumed she just didnt want to eat. My nurse took her from me and said ' I want her to cry some more' I was like oh okay. She did cry some more and then was taken to the nursery along with my husband. I was taken to my room at around 8:30am and by 11 I still hadnt seen my baby. By 12pm I called the nurse and asked why I hadnt seen my little girl....alittle after 1pm a pediatrician came into my room and said that my little girl was having some trouble breathing but that it was normal, that sometimes baby just needed alittle more time to learn how to breath. That I would have my little girl in my room by that night.

Well that night turned into 3 days and later into a month....you see my daughter never left the NICU, in the next following 3 days she got worse she ended up having to use a CPAP to help her get oxygen and on Dec, 12 2011 while at home resting and waiting for my husband to finish eating so that we could go and see her I got a call from her doctors. I just remember them saying that my little girl who had all her 10 fingers and 10 toes needed to be transferred to a Childrens Hospital(Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital) beacuse she needed more help then they could give her there. We rushed to the hospital and as soon as we entered the room I couldnt even see her bed beacsue of all the doctors and nurses that were around her. The abulance that was going to take her was already for her they just needed us to sign some paperwork. I dont really remember much about those few minutes that seemed like hours to me. I just remeber seeing my little girl laying there breathing but not really breathing because the ventilator was doing that for her(she had been intubated in those few hours that I was at home waiting for my husband) I didnt really listen to what the doctors said, all i know is that she needed to be put on an ECMO machine i didnt know what that was until I saw her on it.I cried seeing how they transfered her from her bed to the incubator that would take her to the abulance and to the Childrens hospital. They asked us if we wanted her babptized and thats when it hit me and I broke down. There was a big possibility that my daughter wouldnt even make it to the hospital.

It took us 20minutes to get to the hospital and when we got there they were ready for her to have surgery, that would place her on the ECMO machine. They explained what the machine would do for her but all I heard was this is her last and only chance to live. We signed the papers right away and were told that the surgery would take about an hour(thats what my mom tells me I dont remember, it felt like it took forever and at the same timeit felt like it was over very quickly) I have no words to explain how I felt seeing my precious baby girl on that machine, seeing her blood being pumped out of her body, re-oxygenated and put back into her tiny little body.
Emmaliese on ECMO, thats her daddy next to her.
         

Emmaliese on ECMo, she was on this for a week.
 After a long week my fighter, her daddy's porelain doll was finaly able to come of this machine. She still couldnt breath on her own and was on a conventinal ventilator. The doctors still were not able to find out what as wrong with her, Her heart and other organs were fine, well all but her lungs. A few days after she was off ECMO they thought she had viral pnemonia beacuse her lungs were so white on the x-rays. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into 3 weeks and thats when the doctors told us that they suspected she had Surfactant Dificency. Now here come the frustrating part they never said exactly what that was, so i researched it and found the worst news any parent wants to hear. Surfactant Dificency in full term babies is very rare and has no treatment or cure(I later found more research that some babies are diagnosed later in lufe and some are lucky to survive). My baby unfortunatly had everything stacked up against her, she had the pnemonia, she then got an E.Coli virus. Emmaliese would have her good days(when she was given her surfactant dose, taht would last her about 3 days, she would need less oxygen but was still on the ventilator. About a week before Christmas they had some blood work sent out to test for Surfactant Dificency, they told us that it would take anywhere from 3 to 4 weeks for us to get the results back. Well as you might now know we got those resluts back sooner, but they didnt really make a difference in her outcome. She was starting to need more and more Surfactant. A premature baby will get about 1-3 doses on Emmaliese's last day she recieved her 16th dose of surfactant. Her lungs were so worn out from not being able to make her own surfactant and from being on ventlators her whole life, she developed Chronic Lung Disease. My healthy baby girl was getting worse and worse, (i forgot to mention she was on a morphine drip and sedation drip 24/7), her lungs just couldnt take anymore. We had to make the decision to take her off the ventilators and become an angel.She gained her angel wings on January 15, 2012. That was the hardest decision that we have ever had to make. And that is what has brought me here...I am now a member of a big club that no one whats to be in....I have a baby who now has angel wings. I still have more to tell about her month long struggle,her fighting spirit and how she touched so many lives, but that will be for another post.
My angel on a good day...awake and smiling.

One of my many favorite pictures of her.


5 comments:

  1. Thanks for visiting my blog. I just read Emmaliese's story, and I wanted to reach out to you and give you a virtual hug. :-) Your baby is absolutely beautiful. I *love* her name. My heart aches for you and I'm so sorry you have to know the pain of losing your beautiful baby. Just know that there are a lot of us out there who know what you're going through. xo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment, its a great help knowing that I am not alone, and for visiting my blog. any other blogs you would recommend?

      Delete
  2. Mily, I just posted a list of other babyloss blogs on my blog today. They're listed on the right-hand side under "others who grieve" and they may be helpful to you.

    If you are on Facebook, there are some groups there as well. I belong to one called Grief Journeys that I find very helpful and a good way to connect with other mamas. They're faith-based (Christian), and I don't know if that's what you're looking for/need right now, but you might want to check them out too. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Forgot to add: I added your blog to the list! I hope you don't mind. :-)

    ReplyDelete