Happy 4th Birthday!

Yesterday I "reminisced" about the days before Josh was born. I'll continue it here.


We had hoped for even a few more days. What's a few days in labor? The contractions weren't regular so it could happen right? Well it was not to be. They had sent me back to a regular room and we had dinner (not the best idea considering LOL)  Later in the evening they put me on the monitor for a 30 minute check of his heart rate, this was all routine. They noticed that every time I had a contraction, his heart rate dropped. This is called decelerations. They thought that because there was very little amniotic fluid that when I contracted, the cord was getting compressed.  They warned me that this was not good. If it happened 4 times in an hour, we were going to have to deliver. It was about 3:45 in the morning when they decided that this was going to happen. I won't lie. I cried. I was scared. We knew he was going to weigh a little over a pound. We also knew that he only had a 75% chance of surviving. But we did have some science on our side. I had gotten steroid injections as soon as we hit 24 weeks to help strengthen and develop his lungs.


C-section was the only option. This scared the hell out of me. That wasn't even in the plan, but then again none if this was. It was an urgent decision. The prep was fast and in we went. Dave was amazing. As scared as he was he was trying to amuse me at the same time. Josh was born at 4:42 in the morning. They took him away  as soon as he was born. I got the "it's a boy" before he was taken to be worked on. Dave got to see him a few times before me. It would be another 10 hours before I could get out of bed and get to the NICU. What a motivator I tell you!


I wish that no parent ever has to go through what we did. And even this was mild compared to some. There are some babies that suffer terrible brain damage due to bleeding in the brain and some that have issues like CP. We have been so blessed.


Josh is now a happy, healthy 4-year old with a few minor issues that frankly are not all that bad considering where we started.


So


HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSHUA DAVID HARRINGTON!