Caleb!

Caleb Thomas Rowe

December 3, 2009 10:20 p.m.

7 pounds, 7 ounces, 20.5 inches long

Caleb is here! Of course we are behind on our sleep and busier than ever, but now I am madly, desperately, helplessly in love with my new baby boy. Here's his story:

Thursday

By Thursday I was five days past my "due date", so we knew that truly any day we would have a new baby. I woke up around 4:00 Thursday morning to use the bathroom.... this, of course, had been a nightly routine for the last six weeks or so. When I went back to bed I felt some cramping in my back and lower abdomen and thought, "Hmm, this is different- maybe today will be the day". I did manage to doze off and on until it was time to get up, around 7:30 or so.

I got up and made breakfast for everyone. Ryan does "PT" (mandatory exercise) on Thursday mornings so he gets to come home (or just work out at home), shower, and eat breakfast with us before he heads off to work. I felt kind of edgy and weird. Ryan headed off to work and had not been gone for five minutes when my water broke! All over that ugly kitchen tile I've been wanting to get rid of, ha ha! So I called him and told him he should probably tie up loose ends at work and head home. By now I really needed a shower; Ethan wanted to watch a "Magic School Bus" video and I have never in my life so enthusiastically agreed to let them watch a movie!

The next step was to make all the necessary calls: first to my friend Meredith who had offered to take care of Ethan and Andrew, and let her know that we would be needing her help in a little bit. Then a call to my doctor's office, and finally labor and delivery. At the last minute (as in when I dialed the phone) I decided I'd really rather go to the traditional labor and delivery unit, instead of the family birthing center. The devil you know, I guess (we still had a very natural birth... but I'm more familiar with the regular delivery beds, etc.).

I kind of dragged my feet getting to the hospital to give contractions time to get started while I got the kitchen straightened up, run a load or two of laundry, and generally address the messes I didn't want Ryan to have to come home to after the baby was born. And they did start! By 10:30 or so they were pretty strong and regular. By noon we had the boys dropped off, and headed to the hospital.

The rest of labor was pretty textbook, though it took much longer than I thought it would for being my third child. We spent a lot of time roaming the hallways and people-watching, lying down and resting for awhile, then walking again, etc., etc. The nurse would come in and put a monitor on for about fifteen minutes every hour or two, which was fine because by that time I'd be ready to rest for awhile anyway. So labor progressed into the evening and then I reached the point where I was really, really uncomfortable.

I don't really know what time I started pushing- it seems like I saw 8:30-something on my watch- but I felt like I was not making any progress whatsoever. I tried probably every imaginable position and just felt like I could not get the boy to budge! I would have used the "traditional" position but noticed I could not stand to have any weight on my lower back. Well, around 10:00 my OB suggested that I just [suck it up and] try it for a few pushes, and Caleb finally got moving. He was born-posterior (face up)- at 10:20. No wonder it took so much work! I have heard that posterior births are much more difficult and painful; I would have to say that's a gross understatement!

Well, after all that,things got hairy! Caleb was out, and... not a cry was heard! The doctor put him on my chest, and immediately clamped and cut the cord and handed Caleb to the nurses. I started getting really confused... I KNEW this was not Dr. H.'s way of doing things. The next thing Ryan and I knew, Caleb was in the infant warmer and a team from NICU was working on him, suctioning out his lungs and trying to get him to cry. He had a pulse and was breathing, but his breathing was very labored and he kept grunting with the effort; he could not fully fill his lungs.

The medical team finally took him over to the nursery to clean up Caleb and find out what was wrong, and Ryan went with them. A chest x-ray showed that he had a pneumothorax, or basically a collapsed lung. After a while they brought him back to me so I could hold him for a few minutes before he went over to NICU. Fortunately, the same hospital has a NICU so we were separated only by lots of hallways, doors, and a lobby. Then I headed over to recovery and Ryan went home... you can't really sleep well in a hospital and there was no point in both of us being exhausted.

A brief hello

Friday

Caleb's treatment turned out to be fairly non-invasive. He spent about 12 hours under an oxygen bubble to give the damaged air sacs time to heal. Ryan came back to the hospital Friday morning and we went over to visit Caleb. He looked huge in the bassinet because it was designed for a preemie! While we were there, the respiratory therapist took off the bubble to see how he'd do on his own. His respiration had to stay below 60 breaths per minute. We began rubbing his back, he relaxed, and the breathing stayed at a normal level and never went up again!

The next step was for him to be able to eat; he could not do this earlier because breathing was so difficult for him. After another 12 hours or so he had proved he really did not need anymore oxygen, so around 11:00 Friday night I finally got a chance to nurse him. The first round went O.K., and then I let the staff give him a bottle through the rest of the night.

Free (from the bubble) at last! That's not a feeding tube in his mouth; he had a ton of mucus in his stomach that they had to suction out a few times.

Saturday

I decided to stay in the hospital as close to 48 hours as I could, for obvious reasons. So Saturday I spent more time over at NICU than in my own room; I think the recovery floor nurses gave up on trying to track me down and didn't worry about it too much, since I really didn't have to be there. Caleb seemed to have developed an affinity for a bottle and formula during the night, so I pumped a little bit here and there but was really just as happy to run over every three hours and give him a bottle. He also had to finish a few rounds of antibiotics through an IV. So that was pretty much Saturday.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, Ryan took Ethan and Andrew to "Breakfast with Santa" at the base club, and they all had a really good time. By Saturday afternoon Ryan's parents arrived to help with the boys, so Ryan came down to the hospital in the evening to pick me up, visit Caleb again, and then the two of us headed home.

Sunday

I headed back to the hospital first thing Sunday morning to feed Caleb again, and was able to bring Ryan's parents with me. Caleb's IV had been disconnected the night before, and at this time they took out the port, too. It was so nice to see his little hand without a needle in it! The nurses also let me know that he would be discharged after morning rounds, so I could come back around his 2:00 feeding and take him home! So most of Sunday's stay was really a matter of clerical affairs.

A hug from Mama Nelle

Ready to GO HOME!

And then we were out of there- ready to be under one roof at last! Caleb got a warm welcome from his brothers.

And the nursing? Well, when it was time to feed him at home, I grabbed a bottle and headed upstairs. I sat down for a minute and contemplated a long night ahead of preparing bottles. I decided to give nursing the old college try one last time... and Caleb latched on and nursed for 25 straight minutes as if he'd been doing it all his short life! He's' been doing it ever since.

One week old!

Our Christmas photo

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!