Judah-24 hours old and Birth Story

Judah is doing great! They were able to take out the breathing tube tonight and his oxygen levels are mostly staying high (almost too high, actually!). He also had an IV line in his arm removed as well as a small catheter that was in through his umbilical cord. He had a PICC line placed in his foot that takes the place of those two lines. He's alert, breathing on his own, and with less lines in, which means...we're able to hold him! I held him for the first time around 9:30 tonight and it was wonderful! We should be able to hold him as much as we'd like until his surgery on Monday.

We also learned from the cardiologist today that they were able to confirm that Judah has an abnormal coronary pattern (the vessels that have to be switched from the pulmonary artery to the aorta). Thankfully it isn't a really complicated pattern and our surgeon believes it can be taken care of without too much difficulty. Still, it's another unexpected detail to pray for.

I know many people have been asking about the birth so here's what happened. Around 8:20 pm I noticed that I had had two painful contractions in about 10 minutes. I thought I had indigestion (I let Matthew talk me into eating sushi for dinner) but noticed that it kept coming back in uncomfortable waves. Within an hour I was really uncomfortable and we called the hospital to see what they thought. We were told to come in and get checked even if we weren't sure. After that phone call the contractions started coming less than 5 minutes apart and were very painful so we threw whatever we could in the car, called our neighbor Alicia over and headed to the hospital. During the car ride the contractions started to come about two minutes apart and I was pretty beside myself (I even made Matthew run a red light a few blocks from the hospital!). Matthew tried to stop for the valet guy at the ER entrance but I yelled (yes, I really did yell) at him to pull up all the way because I had only moments between the contractions. As I got out of the car into a wheelchair I noticed our friend Cori at the entrance (she works for the ambulance company), and it was so nice to see a friendly face. They managed to get me up to the birth center and had me start to check in...I stood up for a contraction, felt sick, asked for a bucket and as we started walking down the hall I lost my dinner and my water broke all during another contraction (I know, really gross!). Judah's head dropped way down when my water broke and I told them that I had to push, now! The OB on duty literally shoved me into the wheelchair as about a dozen nurses jumped up and ran with me down to a room, got me on the bed, and I pushed him out in about 5 minutes (it would have been faster if they hadn't told me NOT to push). It's a good thing we ran the red light and skipped the valet guy, I guess!

Obviously we were pretty shocked by the whole process, which lasted less than 3 hours from first contraction to baby born. We didn't have a whole lot of time to think about it though, because, as we've already posted, Judah was really sick right away and Matthew went with him immediately to the NICU. Thankfully Auntie Amy was there to go back and forth between Matthew and I (I still had to go through the admission process). Auntie Kayla was at home with big brother Nehemiah so we were able to completely focus on Judah.

Thank you again for all of the prayers. We have so much to be thankful for tonight, including my parents and sister Kendra's safe arrival from their trek across country from MN.

I will be discharged tomorrow sometime and we'll be going back and forth between home and the hospital a lot in the coming days, but we'll try to update as often as we can!