Jul 22 2008
Andrew Michael
Dear Andrew,
6 years ago today was a very eventful day for our family. I haven’t really told you a whole lot about your birth before because it was so scary. You know that you lived in the hospital for a really long time. Do you want to know why?
2 days before you were born, I went shopping at Sam’s with Grandma. While we were there I started feeling icky and told Grandma we needed to head home so I could lay down. You weren’t due to be born for just over 7 more weeks, so I thought I was just overheated. It was July in Louisiana, after all. I went home, drank a lot of water, and went to bed. The next day, I still felt icky. Daddy was out mowing the lawn since it was Saturday and I went out and told him I didn’t feel good. He said to call the doctor. My regular doctor was not on call that weekend but his wife was. She told me to go to the hospital to get checked. At the hospital, the nurse hooked me up to some monitors to see if I was having contractions. I was but the doctor came in and said they were sporadic and I wasn’t dilated, so she told me to go home, put my feet up, and drink lots of water. I spent that night in the bath tub and drinking lots of water, trying to get the sporadic contractions to stop. I went to church the next morning but had to leave early because I was feeling so bad. Grandpa and Dad gave me a blessing after church. By dinnertime I was feeling a bit better so we went over to Grandma and Grandpa’s for dinner, like we did every Sunday when we lived in Louisiana. Taylor left with Aunt Aidan and Uncle Jeremy to go to Hattiesburg to see Jeremy’s grandparents. During dinner, I kept having to get up from the table every so often and walk around during a contraction. We decided I should go back to the hospital, even though the contractions weren’t regular. When we got to the hospital, the nurse said, “You’re in labor.” I said, “Then hurry and stop it and give me some steriods!” Steriods would help mature your lungs. The nurse told me, “It’s way too late. You’re 8 centimeters dilated!” The doctor hurried and got to the hospital. I was pretty mad at her for sending me home the day before. I decided not to have an epidural or any pain medicine because I didn’t want anything to get into your system when I already knew you were going to be so sick. The room was full of doctors and nurses since you were premature.
You were born at 2:29am on Monday, July 22, 2002. You weighed 5 pounds, 1 ounce and your length was 18 1/2 inches. That was really good for a 7 weeks early preemie! I only got to see you briefly before the doctors and nurses whisked you off to the NICU. After a few hours, a nurse brought me a wheelchair and let me come to see you. You were absolutely beautiful! You were very bruised since you didn’t have a lot of fat to protect you, but you had a ton of gorgeous light brown hair and beautiful deep blue eyes. I spent 3 days in the hospital and was at your side in the NICU as often as they would allow me to be.
After I was discharged from the hospital, I spent as much time at the NICU as I could. I tried to be there for all your feedings, which were every 3 hours, and then I would stay with you for a while. Then I would have to go home so Taylor would have some of my attention, as well. Grammie and Poppa Ottley came your 2nd week in the NICU to take care of Taylor for us. While they were there, we got special permission to take you into a small room of the NICU so that Daddy, Poppa Ottley, and Grandpa McGrath could give you a blessing. It was a very special experience. It was so hard for me to be away from you. I cried myself to sleep every night that you were in the NICU.
You didn’t have the ability to swallow at first so you were fed through a gavage tube inserted in your nose. You hated that tube and would pull it out as often as you could manage! The nurses taped it down so you couldn’t pull it out, but you were allergic to the tape and it gave you a rash. You also had a knack for pulling out your IV’s. The nurses had to keep moving them all over your body, even shaving your head into a mohawk to put them in your head. But those IV’s kept coming out. So the neonatalogist (a special doctor for NICU babies) put a PICC line in you so that you could receive your TPN (total parental nutrition- something to fatten you up!) and your antibiotics through it. Guess what? You pulled that out, too. She put in another one and yep, you pulled it out, too. You did NOT like all the tubes and wires!
Your neonatalogist told us that you were Coomb’s positive. That meant that your blood and my blood were incompatible. Your hematocrit (blood) levels were so low that you had to have 2 blood transfusions. My family and so many people in our ward and at the courthouse were Dad worked went to have their blood tested so that they could donate blood for you. They were all incompatible but they still donated blood in your name. Do you know whose blood was compatible? Daddy’s! Your first transfusion was with Daddy’s blood. Your second one had to come from some kind stranger as it was too early for Dad to be able to donate blood again. That’s why it is so important for people to donate blood. After a while, you got strong enough to drink from a bottle, but not strong enough to nurse. So I continued to pump milk for you and you would drink it from a bottle. You could only drink 1/3 of an ounce at a time and sometimes not even that much. One day when Dad and I were at church, we got a call on my cell phone that we needed to hurry to the NICU. When we got there, your stomach was the size of a small watermelon. The doctor had no idea what was wrong. They stopped your feedings and suctioned out your tummy. They ran all kinds of tests. After a few days, your belly went back to normal and they started feeding you again. They told us if all went well we could take you home in a few days. We got everything ready for you to come home. Then guess what? Your belly got huge again. This time, the doctor decided to send you to Children’s Hospital in New Orleans as she said you needed surgery. She thought you must have a blockage in your intestines and would need part of your intestines removed. We were so scared. An ambulance took you across the big lake to the new NICU. Luckily Daddy worked nearby and met us there at the hospital. Every day for a week, Aunt Brianne and Grandma took turns taking care of Taylor while I stayed up at the hospital with you. The surgeons at the hospital did all kinds of tests, ultrasounds, and x-rays on you and couldn’t find anything wrong! It was truly a miracle! They told us we could take you home on Friday. We were so excited! It had been 6 very long, hard weeks of NICU life. You had to come home with an oxygen monitor as you had apnea. Sometimes you would just stop breathing and the monitor would go off and we would have to thump your back to get you to breath again. You had that monitor until you were almost 5 months old.
You had a rough first few years of life. You had to spend 4 days in the hospital in Colorado when we went there for your 2nd Christmas because you had a nasty case of RSV. A month later your broke your arm your first Sunday in nursery. And then a week after that you had to have surgery. Or how about the time you jumped off Cameron’s bed and somehow managed to get a huge, gaping, round gash in between your eyes all the way down to the bone? You certainly scared me with that one! But you were such a trooper and continued to make us laugh and smile. You’ve had so many difficulties in your life. You have to deal every day with having Asperger’s and being somewhat different from other kids. But you have such a unique outlook on life and tell us all the time, “I’m ok. I can deal with it.”
Andrew, I love you with all my heart. I am so happy that you were sent here to our family. I am so thankful that I am your mommy. Thank you for being my Andrew.
Love,
Mommy
