Home...In Part

We are home. At least two-thirds of our little family, anyway. We knew from the beginning that we were going to have to leave little Addison at the hospital and that she would live there for 4-8 weeks, but it tore us apart to actually do it. And so we went back and spent two straight hours with her tonight, rocking and holding and feeding her, and generally just sitting and watching her.
As we finally headed home, the events of the last few days actually settled in, and I realized how truly blessed our family is. Turn back the clock to Tuesday night and we were enjoying the evening with Jillian's sister Amanda and her kids. Wednesday morning I went to work and Jillian went to the hospital for another non-stress test. This was the first NST I hadn't gone to with her, in part because I had gone home early from work the day before not feeling well, and in part it was because these test had become routine, and Jillian's labs and blood pressure were at their lowest when we went to the hospital for the tests.
As soon as Jillian got there and got her first BP, she called me. I remember the call clearly. "Steve, maybe you should come over this morning." That's all she needed to say. I headed out, with the full intention of returning to work- at most just being there with her would lower her BP so she could go home. I even left my Goldfish crackers sitting open on my desk (anyone that knows my obsession with these crackers knows that if I have any intention of going anywhere for any length of time, the crackers get put away).
I got to the hospital where I found Jillian and saw that she had had 4 high BP measurements. And they never dropped. For the next 2 and a half hours we waited and talked, and then the nurse came back. Jillian's platelets had dropped again. And then Dr. Hall came in, did an ultrasound and told us that there was no way around it, we were having the baby that day. We were shocked. We knew she would be early- if you've read our blogs you knew too- but for some reason this caught us off guard.
And so the next few hours were spent waiting for our emergency c-section. In those few hours though, we were comforted by calls to and from family and friends, and visits from Amanda, as well as Jillian's colleagues. We were also visited by every member of the delivery team from the surgeons and anesthesiologist to the pediatricians and nurses that would be taking care of Jillian and the baby. I know Jillian was pretty scared, but she composed herself very well.
When the time for the surgery came they took Jillian to prep her and then came and brought me to the operating room. As soon as I got there, they began the procedure, and Jillian and I talked just to keep our minds off what was going on on the other side of the sheet.
Jillian heard the cry first. It was soft but firm. A proclamation to the world that Addison had arrived (of course it would take us another entire day to decide on the name). Dr. Hall showed her to us for a very, VERY brief moment before passing her through an adjoining window to the NICU and their team of specialists. Everything went smooth and perfect.
The trouble with a 32 week baby is that her lungs hadn't fully developed, so even though she cried for the briefest of moments, she didn't have the strength to continue to breathe on her own. The NICU doctors knew this and knew how to handle it. In a matter of moments she had help expanding her lungs (help that she only needed for less than 24 hours) and was ready to take on the world. Today, just three days later, she is breathing on her own, eating real food (and keeping most of it down), and except for forgetting to breathe once in a while (a setback that is fully expected at her age and easily cured by 'a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of coffee in the evening' as her neo-natologist says) she is managing at a pace that will make her fiercely independent in just a few short weeks.


It turns out that the doctors knew this. They knew all of this, because they knew that the baby was and would be perfectly healthy. What we didn't realize until two days later when a terrific nurse laid it out for us, is that the life at risk that day was Jillian's. We had been given the rundown about toxemia or preaclampsia at our first NST, and were reassured over and over again that Jillian didn't have it. It turns out that she had a much more severe condition that goes by an acronym I was honestly too afraid of to remember. It's a condition so severe that nurses came and checked her vitals hourly for two straight days, and nurses who have "mag-patients" (a name attributed to the medication she was given after the surgery) can only be responsible for two patients at a time. The nurses kept a vigilant eye for signs of arrest or stroke or a dozen other horrifying things. Some of the nurses seemed confused by the doctor's orders to gradually reduce her mag levels (instead of ending treatment after the traditional second day), and until Dr. Hall explained the situation to them (a situation not fully explained to us until today) they questioned his treatment, and called it "very unusual practice." And it took four days for Jillian to be sent home with instruction to TAKE IT EASY. Even tough her vitals are back within acceptable range, confusion, congestion, lights, and loud noises could still put her over. Dr. Hall requested a 10 day follow up instead of the standard 6 week follow-up.
I'm sure some of you have experienced similar things in your lives, so you know what I mean when I say that I am eternally grateful for the competent professionals that took care of Jillian and Addison. 40 years ago, who knows what kind of family I would be coming home to tonight. But we are all happy and healthy, though the road to recovery will take a few weeks to travel.
And so, tonight as we pulled into the driveway, I put the car in park and we breathed. The moment was peaceful, but tangible. we looked at each other, and I knew everything had changed, but that it would be alright. And even though the logical part of brain can still not comprehend the reality of these last few weeks, when we are not sitting beside Addison's isolet I find myself missing my little girl and trying to grasp the lives ahead of us.

Tomorrow I will return to updates about the nursery and the dinosaur birthday party, but nothing about any of it will ever be the same, because from now on it will all be tinted in a different shade created by a different life event. And until we bring Addison home, it is hard to imagine the reality of this new course of life we are on.