I just realized we never shared how we got here. I'm Ashly, Kaseys mom. We found out we were expecting the first week in January. I had a relatively normal pregnancy to start with. I had a little bleeding that I was medicated for early on,followed with a few days bed rest. The doctor said it seemed like the placenta was trying to detach but we caught it early on. After that everything sailed right
along. BC of the early bleeding (called attempted miscarriage) I got an ultrasound nearly every visit.. And yes, I was pumped about that! "Baby" always looked great, bpm strong, wiggling around.. When it came to the big ultrasound, the one that would say pink or blue, we got some happy and mixed feeling news. First of all, much to everyone's surprise and dad's happiness, it was a BOY! We were so happy :) the next news was that our sweet little boy was measuring about 2 weeks behind. There was debate about miscalculated due date, genetically small, etc. But the overall verdict was no big deal another ultrasound in 4 weeks to check progress. Our next check up with the ultrasound was a complete nightmare. We went in, saw our sweet boy on screen and after a few minutes she stopped the ultrasound and had us sit outside the door. We were then ushered into the doctors actual room and my heart sank. You don't go to the cushy doctors chair unless it's bad news, right? He broke the news to us that our son was now measuring 3-4 weeks behind and that his fluid was dangerously low. Basically in the month gap since we were last there he hadn't grown any and had actually lost a few ounces. He said we needed to go straight to the hospital and that we would most likely be transferred to little rock to be seen by a high risk dr. Feeling a little numb, I called my mother to get my oldest son and to st Mary's we went. Once checked in there, I was swabbed to see if my water had broke and it had not. I was then hooked up to the monitor and had a vitals checked. Minus my blood pressure being a little high everything checked out. Once they told us they called for an ambulance to transport to uams, Richard went home to collect a few things in case we stayed a few nights.. Little did we know.. Once the ambulance finally made it to me I was almost a basket case. However, we made it to little rock without any mishaps. (Do you know how bumpy an ambulance is!? Especially when you're hooked up to an iv drip with a full bladder!) I was immediately received and put in a room upon my arrival. Hooked up to all the monitors, vitals again, the works. When I had been poked and prodded to their satisfaction and results were in the verdict was that kasey was suffering from IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction) and reverse umbilical blood flow. It was immediately concluded that I would not be leaving the hospital until this baby was born and at this time i was 24 weeks 6 days. Every 3-4 hours a nurse would come in and take my vitals and listen to his heart. Once a day I was hooked up to the NST (non stress test) for an hour, along with daily dopplers and ultrasounds. I managed to make it one full week before the doctors decided they did not like what they were seeing with his results. Tuesday, June 10th, at 11 something at night they sat me down, with Richard on speaker phone, and gave us an extremely difficult decision to make. We could either choose to let kasey stay inutero.. The risk being he could pass away without any warnings no matter how often they checked him. Or we could deliver that night.. The risk being him being too small to intubate along with a million other medical problems of a micro preemie. After a very difficult conversation it was decided that we just couldn't risk leaving him in and him not surviving. So it looked like we were having a baby that night! They explained that a baby this small was actually harder to get out than a full term baby and that they would have to cut me (dreaded c section) a different way. ( horizontal on the outside, vertically on the inside, and a bigger inside cut) I won't go into detail about the surgery, let's just say it was completely awful and the spinal block and morphine were even worse. BUT he was here. Our sweet little miracle baby born at 5:12 am June 11, 2014. He weighed 470 grams (right under 1 lb 1 oz) and was 11 1/4 inches long and he was perfect ...we even heard him cry!. With some slight difficulty, they were able to intubate him and it took about an hour of being in the PACU before they wheeled him in. We were in awe of how tiny he was. The next two days were a blur to me as I was coming off some intense medication that knocked me on my butt. He had a rough start but it's gotten us to where we are now. 9 weeks old and moving mountains by the day. We are very blessed he is where he is now but we still have a long, long road ahead. His coming home goal is thanksgiving (fingers crossed) both ourselves and kasey need all the prayers you can send up as we continue on our journey HOME from the nicu :)
