Labor, Delivery, and the First 24 Hours

On our way to the hospital!

I thought that we would backtrack a little so that you could all hear the story from the beginning.

If there's anything that we've learned about Claire, it's that she loves to surprise us! I went into labor almost exactly 24 hours before our scheduled induction.  We were admitted to Labor and Delivery Saturday evening and Claire was born Sunday, June 22nd at 12:44pm. She weighed 6lbs 8.8oz and was 19 1/4 inches long. We had another successful drug-free VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean).

Because of the hole in her heart and low heart rate, the NICU staff was present at her delivery and they took her to evaluate her in the warmer before I was able to hold her just to make sure that she was stable. She was stable and we were able to hold and enjoy her almost right away!!

The doctor told us within minutes after she was born of their suspicions for Down syndrome, Justin gave my hand a quick squeeze and in came Anna and Levi with some of our family. We spent precious moments introducing her to them and I told the kids that we'd all be home the next day as I kissed them goodbye. 

First bath

This brings me to the first [of many things] that we were about to learn about Down syndrome: People with Down Syndrome have an increased risk for other medical conditions including, but not limited to; heart, GI, respiratory, hearing, renal, vision, and thyroid. I had no idea all of the testing that would have to be done before we could safely take our sweet girl home.

They moved us to our postpartum room and we spent the first night enjoying holding our sweet girl. We had a few extra visits from specialists and a pediatrician to begin to evaluate her and to provide us with more information about Down syndrome. Everything seemed to be okay other than that the echocardiogram showed an additional hole in her heart (she has a total of 2) and a valve that hasn't closed.  

We were very concerned, however, that in her entire first 24 hours, even with a visit from the lactation consultant, we couldn't get her awake enough to eat and she kept spitting up green bile.  She slept propped up on her side during the night so that she wouldn't choke and we didn't sleep much at all because we were so worried.  The following morning she was spitting up very green bile in such great volumes (out of both her nose and mouth) and her stomach had become distended that they took her for an x-ray. The x-ray came back concerning so they quickly moved us to the NICU for further evaluation. While they were admitting her and getting her hooked up to the monitors, a surgeon [yes, a surgeon!!] came in to talk to us. She had already looked at Claire's x-rays and wanted to go with her to watch a contrast x-ray so that she could get a better idea of what was causing Claire's bowel obstruction. Almost as soon as they had brought Claire back to the room, the surgeon was back to talk to us, she was pretty confident that Claire has Hirschprung's disease. We began bowel irrigations and put a tube into Claire's mouth to suction out all of her stomach contents. Because she wasn't eating, Claire wasn't able to maintain her body temperature so she was also placed under a warmer and a PICC line was placed so that she could get nutrition.  We spent the next couple of days keeping her stable and as comfortable as possible and waiting for the biopsy results to come back so that we could proceed with her surgery and getting her better.    

First day in the NICU

We may not ever understand why our little angel had to undergo so much in her first days of life but I can say that we have been so amazed at how everything along the way in regard to her treatment has worked out perfectly in our favor, one of our nurses said that we should buy a lotto ticket because we keep hitting the "jackpot."  God is good... all the time!