Life's unexpected surprises

So I had hoped to have a great number of posts done on a few of my favorite things and random things that I thought about on my 13 hr trek down to TN for Christmas alone.  I'll still get around to them, but I have to reflect a bit on the craziness of the past few days.  For those of you that don't know, or haven't seen my facebook status update on the right column, my daughter was born today at 10:01 AM 8 weeks premature.  Before I tell you how great she is doing and how adorable she is, let me tell you a bit about our journey to this place.

Holly woke up with kidney pains at midnight on Saturday.  These have been fairly normal throughout her pregnancy as she has to use the bathroom quite a bit with a living thing growing inside of her.  Around 2 AM I finally snapped out of my sleeping funk and we called Holly's OB who suggested that we come to the hospital.  So we loaded up the car and drove to the hospital while Holly's pain grew more intense.  We got here and they took us to a labor and delivery room where they hooked up a fetal heart rate monitor to Holly to keep an eye on the baby and figure out what was causing the kidney pain.  During the course of the next few hours while Holly was being questioned about health history, drugs she was taking, history of the pregnancy, etc, one of the nurses noticed that the baby's heart decelerated for a few minutes.  So we waited and a couple of hours later, it happened again.  Then again a couple of hours later.  Each time when it happened the nurses came in and Holly had to roll around on the bed in order to get the baby to move so they could find the heartbeat.  The first really bad episode happened while I was on my way back from running to the apartment to pack an overnight bag.

So Sunday was spent trying to figure out what the heck was going on and trying not to freak out with the fact that our baby's heartrate was slowing down for no apparent reason.  I'm glossing over quite a bit of details for the sake of my wife, but this was a pretty stressful day.  (If only we knew.)  Holly's mom flew up on Sunday evening to be with us and help out with trying to keep us both sane and also in case anything happened.  I was very thankful for her presence as it gave me the opportunity to not be on the edge all of the time.  From my memory, Sunday night was filled with more decells and the rolling over and such at ungodly hours of the night.  The worst part about Sunday night was the possibility that in the midst of one of these decells that they might have to do an emergency c-section to get the baby.  Luckily, our baby came out every one looking great according to the monitor and so the docs weren't too on edge about it.

Sometime early Monday all of this craziness stopped and Holly started dealing with contractions.  We had a consult with the perinatologist (high risk pregnancy) and neonatologist (premature babies doc) which didn't really help matter too much.  The perinatologist wasn't too concerned about it because the baby tested great on every ultrasound and the heartrate monitor, except for the decells.  The neonatologist came in to just describe what would happen if the baby was delivered in the next few days.  Through another ultrasound, they figured out that's Holly's kidney pain was because of a spasm that forced urine from the bladder back into the kidney.  They gave her some medicine that helped that out and we had a great afternoon.  In fact we went 14 hours without a decell and thought that we might actually get to go home and forget this whole ordeal.

Needless to say that didn't happen.  About 5 that night the baby started to decell and did so about every 3 hours through the morning. We did another consult with the perinatologist, on Tues morning, who discovered that baby had the chord wrapped around her neck.  Which is not uncommon because 1 of every 3 babies born have that occur.  The difference is that certain movement that our baby made caused the chord to compress and thus slow down her heart.  Luckily for us our baby is a fighter and she always responded beautifully from each of these episodes but after Tuesday, which we will call the night from hell, we were all spent emotionally, physically, you name it.  (I think I also forgot to mention that Holly's dad flew up on Monday evening as well.)  Tuesday night consisted of a decell at about every 2-3 hours.  Some of them were very long and at least once we thought that they were going to take Holly back to get the baby.

So on to this morning.  We were visited again by the perinatologist who was not acting too serious about the situation until he discovered that the baby had decelled 14 times in a 24 hour period.  After a consult with him and one of the OB/GYN's from our practice we decided to schedule a c-section to get the baby out.  She appeared strong and healthy and no one wanted to chance another day with that many decells.  So in a matter of 45 min I found myself in an OR holding my wife's hand while our baby was born via c-section at roughly 32 weeks!

I will never ever forget our baby's first cry.  It was such a huge relief because she sounded normal and gave a really strong cry.  Holly and I both started to cry ourselves as the whole experience had finally come to this incredible moment that we will forever share as husband and wife.  We had created a living human being!  Amazing is the only word that comes to my mind.

Now on to the truly amazing things.  Our baby was born 8 weeks premature.  One of the last things to develop in a baby is the lungs and so it's usually pretty touch a go with a newborn at the stage in development.  Luckily, Holly was given 2 steroids shots to help with that development and I'm glad that was able to take hold.  Our baby weighed 3 lbs 14 oz which is fairly big for that stage in development, or so I'm told.  She measured 17 1/4".  She is breathing with very little assistance and for the most part on her own.  Every test that they have done on her shows that she is actually a little ahead of her development.  I've seen her twice but not been able to hold her as of yet.  She will be in the NICU for about 3-4 weeks depending on how she continues to develop.  Hopefully three weeks though.

We have named her Karis Olivia.  Karis is the greek for grace, although it's spelled with a ch, we liked the K better.  Olivia just seemed to flow with it.  I can't believe that I could love something more than I do that little one.  We had a lot of scares the past few days, but now we are on a journey of excitement and more of the unexpected.  I believe that Karis is going to be alot like her mom.  She's moving just as much now as she was inside the womb.  She's fiesty and ultimately I think that is what brought her through this whole ordeal.  Well that and the faithfulness of our awesome God.

Thanks to all of you who have prayed for us in past 3 days or so.  The community of God's people are an amazing bunch.  All of the encouraging texts and those that went out of their way to pick up my in laws (Doug and Pegge, Darren and Ashleigh), do our laundry (Doug and Mear) and those that lifted us up in prayer.  Sorry to those that I wasn't able to contact in the madness, I hope that you'll understand.  I have so much more to say, but I think I'll stop here.

God is good.

All the time.

All the time.

God is good.

Thank you God for your grace and the gift of this precious little one in our life.