Gavin's Birth and a Brief Update

Friday, May 6: We started the day with a regular appointment. The resident who checked my progress also stripped my membranes. I was looking ready enough that she suggested that if we wanted to, we could go straight over to hospital and break my water. With my record of one speedy delivery in the past, she thought that would be all it would take to have Baby here pretty fast. We talked about it and decided to go ahead, rather than wait any longer and risk a too-fast-to-get-to-the-hospital delivery. (Not to mention that the doctor we wanted to deliver the baby ended her on-call duty that day and, after months of anticipating an early arrival, the idea of not having him here by Mother's Day/due date had made me cry more than once. Not great reasons to induce, but I just had no willpower to decide to stick it out any longer.)

Having anticipated this possibility, we grabbed our bag from the car and headed to Labor and Delivery. They started antibiotics (for step B) at 11:00. The goal was to not deliver Baby until after 3:00 so that the antibiotics would have time to work, so they didn't want to break my water until close to then. I was having contractions just from having membranes stripped, so we figured we would have ended up going back to the hospital if we had left anyway. They gave me pitocin to see if they could get the contractions going a little more, but by 3:00 I was still only dilated to 4 cm, which is where I was at at the clinic, so that was disappointing. Since we'd hit 3:00 they broke my water (after starting an epidural that only worked on one side). By 3:30 or so, we called them to come back and sure enough, I had gone from 4 to 10 cm in less than half an hour and it was time to push. It took what seemed like forever for everyone (team of doctors and NICU team) to get there, but eventually I was given the green light to push and at 3:55, Gavin was born.

He was breathing on his own from the start, so they let me hold him for a minute. Then the NICU team took him to the other side of the room to check him out. Soon, they gave him back to me for a couple of minutes before taking him to the NICU. Jeff and the doctor went back and forth between Gavin and me, giving me updates on how he was doing and showing me pictures.

They did his echocardiogram and a chest x-Ray. His heart is doing great and the mass didn't show up on the x-Ray, so we are going to leave it be for a while. In two or three months, Gavin will have a CT scan to get a good look at the CCAM/BPS and we'll figure out where to go from there.

We've spent our days going back and forth between my room and the NICU. On Sunday, I was discharged. Gavin is having trouble keeping his glucose level up, so hi is still in the NICU. When I was discharged, however, we got to move to a boarding room in the NICU and Gavin can stay with us in the room, so we get to have him close. We are supplementing breastfeeding With formula to keep his glucose up, which seems to be working, so we are hoping to go home today.

Thanks for all your prayers! We'll continue to update as we're able.