September 2008
Sunday: We had a wonderful day at the Sizz in the morning and headed down to Nephi after to hang out with the fam! Later in the evening I started getting a little bit of a tummy ache. No big deal..probably just gas right........wrong. By the time we got home around 10:30 I was done for. I decided to go lay down and maybe just sleep it off.....wrong. I woke up at 12 in horrible pain. Tim had just drank 1/2 a bottle of Nyquil so he was out cold and slept right through my moaning. I went to the family room to lay down so I wouldn't disturb him and after about an hour violently threw up in the kitchen sink twice. I decided at about 2 that things were progressing far beyond a typical Jade tummy ache and went to wake up Tim. "Tim wake up. I am so sick".."Oh No".....snooze Tim was back to sleep in about 3 seconds. "NO TIM WAKE UP". Tim skyrockets out of bed. I'm clutching my right side heaved over in pain. "Something is very wrong!" Tim rushes me to the car and flies up to Utah Valley Medical Center in Provo. The drive is probably around 10-15 min...but to me it felt like an hour. Every light I thought I was gunna lose it.
Monday, September 15th 2008: 2:30 am We finally pull up to the ER and they immediately rush us up to the Labor and Delivery room. First instinct was that I was in preterm labor. Second was that maybe I had a Urinary Tract Infection that had traveled to my kidneys (been there before..NOT that)...or that maybe I had gallstones or something.....nope. They hook me up to like 50 machines and give me a steroid shot to help TJ's lungs develop as much as possible incase I have to deliver in the next few hours. The pain is horrible. I honestly feel as if I am being stabbed in my right side. They decide to give me a shot of morphine........I was out cold. I hardly remember the next hours/day. Monday went by in a blur and all I remember is hearing the words "Pre-eclampsia" and "We need to deliver him today". My mind was racing and all I could keep thinking was "I'm only 30 weeks...this is way too soon." Dr. Broadbent was my doctor and he was incredible with reassuring me that TJ would be ok, but that we had to deliver him or I wasn't going to make it. The only cure for pre-eclamsia is delivery. He asked if I wanted to do a c-section or see how long it would take to induce my labor and deliver vaginally. I did not want to have a c-section and I wanted to give as much time as possible for the steroid to take affect on TJ's lungs. I asked if we could wait and do it vaginally. Dr. Broadbent said yes but that we only had a certain amount of time and if I wasn't dilated then he would have to do a c-section. My baby was healthy and fine, it was a matter of how long my body would last. I asked to wait. In and out of consciousness I learned that my blood platlids were severely low. They should be around150 and they were at about 65. And my liver enzymes should have been at 10-20 and 30-50 but they had jumped to over 200 and over 500. These were all symptoms of pre-eclampsia. That was the reason for the severe pain on my right side. My liver was freaking out!
Family began to come and I was so thankful for the help and love. I was basically out of it but I'm sure Tim was in horror. Watching his wife lay in a hospital bed knowing that his baby was coming 10 weeks early. I am so grateful there were people there to support him and comfort him. So many phone calls were made and so much paperwork was signed. I can't imagine what was running through his head, but I know that having our family there kept him from breaking down.
They began to induce labor and I could hardly feel a thing. I'm sure the morphine hadn't quite worn off yet. As time went on my platlids kept dropping, and my liver kept getting worse. I kept praying that I could hold off dilating enough to give TJ time, yet was worried about how bad things were going to get. Eventually the morphine had worn off and I felt the first contraction. It wasn't bad, but my liver pain was starting to come back. I told them they could start the epidural because I did not want to feel that liver pain again. They weren't sure if an epidural would even block that pain but we started anyway. I rolled to my side waiting for the dreaded epidural. (I've heard horror stories about how much they can hurt). But immediately my liver started throbbing. I hardly felt the prick of the epidural, it was nothing compared to this weird side pain. Luckily within a few minutes my entire lower body was numb. Completely numb. I can't really describe that feeling. Only people who have had an epidural before know what I'm talking about. But I was just happy the pain was gone.
As time went on I slowly and even more slowly began to dilate. I started at a 2 then in two or three hours I was at a 3. Two or so more hours went by and I was at a 4. Then a 5.....it was a long process. And all the while my platlids kept dropping 50..45..32. About an hour after I had been dilated to a 5 (It was around 10:00 pm) they had decided we had waited long enough and we were just going to have to do a c-section. The nurse checked me one more time and SUPRISE I was a 10! And she could feel his head. Yep in about 45 min to an hour I went from a 5 to 10. It was awesome. They rushed me into the delivery room..and after three strange pushes (I could not feel a thing. My legs kept flopping all over the place) he was out! Timothy James (TJ) Ranagan. 3lbs 13oz 16 1/2 inches long born Sept. 15 @ 10:24 pm. They cut his cord and rushed him in to be cleaned and checked and taken to the Newborn ICU. Tim went with TJ and my mom stayed with me. It was such a weird experience, but well worth it. I was taken to my room to recover and all was well.
Tuesday: Everything was great. I was tired, but things seemed to be getting better. TJ was doing wonderful and my platlids had started to rise....slowly. The prognosis was that I would be going home Wednesday or Thursday if my platlids continued to rise. I got to see TJ and he looked so tiny but so wonderful. He had so many machines hooked up to his tiny little body it was insane, but they all were doing their part to help him stay strong. I slept a lot, drank a lot of water, and tried pumping for the first time......fun.....the day seemed to cruise by.
Wednesday: I hadn't slept very well during the night and wasn't feeling so hot by around 6 am. I had a little bit of a tummy ache, but passed it off as constipation. The nurse gave me a stool softener and I hoped that would do the trick. But this time I was super nauseated and slowly the pain just got more intense. This time right in the middle of my stomach up next to my ribs. Not at all in the same place as my liver and it seemed to high to be anything with my uterus. Suddenly my temperature began to climb and my blood pressure was through the roof. They gave me some thing for the nausea that completely knocked me out. Before long they were doing an ultrasound to check my uterus, liver, and everything in the middle. They also ordered a blood culture to try to find the cause of these symptoms. They were not associated with pre-eclampsia and just appeared out of no where. They started me on antibiotics and just tried to cover all the bases of whatever this might have been. I had a temperature of 102 and my platlids had dropped to 27. If they got to below 25 they were going to have to do an infusion. And so I waited....and for the rest of the day I had a ridiculously high temp. and just felt weird. My stomach pain went away but the fever didn't. It all just became a waiting game from then on. Waiting for my platlids to go up. Waiting for my liver enzymes, fever, and blood pressure to come down.
Thursday: My fever finally broke around 2 am. Yay! But Dr. Broadbent came and told me that I had to go two days without a fever, my blood pressure had come down a little, and my platlids had to go up so they could pull out the epidural...yes it was still in my back. They couldn't take the epidural out until my platlids were around 100 for fear that if they broke a tiny blood vessel pulling it out and that bled into my epidural space my blood wouldn't clot fast enough and then I would be paralyzed. So that was fun news. I got to hold TJ today! It was so wonderful. He was super sweet and just laid there so calmly in my arms. I can't wait to hold him without all the wires and tubes. Thursday morning my platlids were around 35...it was going to be a long wait.
Friday: I finally washed my hair! My mom came and washed it for me and boy did I need it. My platlids were at 58 and my blood pressure was up and down. I went outside to eat lunch, hooked up to IV and all! It was so nice to get out of the hospital if even for a little while. I held TJ twice today and got to feed him. There is a tube that runs to his tummy and you just push a little bit of food in at a time with a syringe. Dr. Broadbent said that if my platlids were high enough I could go home on Saturday! YAY
Saturday: My platlids jumped from 58 to 96. I was going home! They pulled out the epidural (yes I still had my epidural in my back), I got to take a shower (boy did I need that too!), I had to wait for one more IV of antibiotics to run through and I was out of there by 4! :D
So this was a pretty crazy week. TJ is doing great. He looks wonderful. He lost a little bit of weight, which is normal, and has started slowly putting it back on. I have been feeling good since I've been home and I wish I could live in the NICU. But that probably wouldn't work. They say he could be home in around 40 days..so we're keeping our fingers crossed and just want him to come home safe and sound.
This was a repost of the week that TJ was born. It was crazy, scary, and a miracle. I wrote this on 9/21/08. I just wanted to repost the story of what we went through that week. It was insane. What was crazy was the unknown at that time. We had no idea how long TJ would be in the hospital or if he would even survive. The next day after I wrote this we found out that TJ had a virus which had caused a bleed in his brain. He was transported up to Primary Children’s Hospital. After he had gotten over the virus and the bleeding had stopped they found a blood clot in his brain which was causing hydrocephalus – water on the brain – it meant that his cerebral spinal fluid could not drain on its own and that if they couldn’t get the swelling under control he was going to have severe brain damage. After a few different tests they ended up putting a shunt into his brain. It runs down into his ventricles, which are right in the middle of your brain, and it has a pressure valve on it that drains the extra fluid through a tube that runs under his skin into the pericardium surrounding his stomach. That way his body can absorb the fluid on its own. TJ came home from the hospital on December 1st 2008, 9 days after his original due date.
As we all have come to realize, TJ is doing amazing! Tim gave him a blessing in the hospital and according to all the doctor’s that have seen him he is a miracle. He should be somewhat if not completely handicapped. But our little guy is doing great! He has an appointment on the 23rd to get his shunt checked to see if it needs replaced – or possibly removed. We are super excited to find out what they say.
Right now he is perfect and we are so glad that Heavenly Father gave us this little miracle boy.
*HAPPY BIRTHDAY TJ*
Then :
Now :
I commend those of you that made it through this entire post. And reward you with this awesome video of TJ eating his birthday cake =]
