About the Day Eli Came to Our Family

This is a long one, but a very special part of our lives that has to be shared :) Even when Eli is 18, we will be sharing his story!

At 23 weeks into my pregnancy with Eli, I started to have high blood pressure.  It was around 140/90. Dr. Garde had me start Labetalol (medicine for HBP) once a day. I had also experienced this with Rylin but it didn’t begin until 34 weeks. We made it safely to 37 weeks. She was only 4 pounds 9 ounces but healthy as could be and I had a complete normal pregnancy with Kendall.

At 27 weeks my high blood pressure was still around 140/90 on the medicine. Dr. Garde   quadrupled my amount of Labetalol and told me to take it easy and spend as much time as possible laying on my left side. Baby boy was a little small but doing fine.  

At 29 weeks Dr. Garde added one more dose of medicine and put me on complete bed rest. I believe my BP was averaging around 160/100 or so. My amniotic fluid was now a little low and baby was measuring a little too small. Luckily, we have a ton of family around to help, and they all jumped right in and took over and a lot of friends started bringing meals. 

On May 3, (day 5 of bed rest) my friend Kara came to keep me company. Funny thing is that my blood pressure was consistently staying around 120/80! I noticed after she left that evening that baby boy hadn’t been moving a ton. I decided it was probably just because I had too much time to sit and pay attention since I was laying down holding still all day. I remember talking to a few people on the phone and mentioning that he hadn’t moved a lot, but also acknowledging that my “mothers intuition” would kick in if there was a real problem. So I tried to relax. 

*blessing/miracle: this is also the same day we (after 2 months) FINALLY got approved to put the kids and my pregnancy on a state health care plan. 

On May 4th, I spent the whole day waiting for baby to move, and he did. He rolled a few times, and nudged me a few times. Nothing as strong as usual, no sharp jabs or kicks to the pelvic bone or ribs. As the evening went on I began to get more worried. My sister in law Amanda made us dinner and hung out for a while. I think my niece (then 6 months) knew something was wrong because she was pretty upset the whole evening which is unusual for her. I tried to sleep, but failed because I was getting really nervous. I had been continuously pushing on my stomach all day trying to get a response from him, only feeling those little nudges. 

On May 5th, I fell asleep around 1 am. I woke up an hour or 2 later to check for movement again, after basically pushing him around in my stomach I felt him do a little roll. I dozed off. Woke again at about 5 am. Got up for a while and then laid in the recliner. This woke Rylin up and she seemed nervous too. I still had not felt a strong movement from baby. I was beginning to get really worried. I texted my doc and told her what was going on. She told us to come in right away to labor and delivery to see what was up. My intuition had kicked in, although I hoped I was over reacting. Grandma Soptich came to sit with the girls until Uncle J could come after work at 7am. Once we got to the hospital -30min drive- I was hooked up to the monitors and baby’s heart rate was pretty good (moment of relief), but he still wasn’t moving a lot. My doctor had the nurses start IV fluids. As we look back, this is when Dustin says he knew something was up, I was started on IV fluids and hadn’t even seen the Doctor yet. My BP was super high at this point. After a while of waiting, the ultrasound tech came in to check for a few things. The first thing they looked for were the black pockets (amniotic fluid) around the baby so they can measure them. The tech was looking everywhere and couldn’t find a black pocket big enough to measure. That is when I knew there was a problem, a big problem. I looked at Dustin and I lost it, before the tech could say anything I knew we had a huge problem. No fluid around our sweet boy. In Dustin’s terms “he was saran wrapped in there” and he really was. After not seeing what they wanted on the ultrasound, Dr Garde came in and said “you earned yourself a helicopter ride to Seattle”. There was no fluid and my BP was super high. She told us that she wasn’t sure how long I would stay pregnant down there. That our baby would probably be delivered in -max- 2 days. Enough time to allow for steroid shots for his lungs. Dustin left to go home to get some things. While he was gone, the helicopter decided it was too windy to fly and I had to go by ambulance. At that point, I had had one steroid shot and they had started magnesium in my IV. After begging Dr. Garde to come with me, I soon was on my way to Seattle, alone, with Dustin hopefully not too far behind. 

*blessing/miracle: the ability to text our OB at 5 am, making it possible to avoid the debacle of trying to contact whoever was on call which would have cost us a few more hours. Do you know how much we LOVE Dr. Garde?

It was a long 2 hour ambulance ride. It felt like we were going 30mph. I texted a few friends to let them know what was going on. I received texts from family saying they had already prayed for us. I still get choked up when I remember the feeling of comfort knowing that I had parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends dropping everything they were doing to get on their knees to pray for us as soon as they heard the news. It is an indescribable feeling. When we were about 20 minutes from the hospital I, of course, was looking out the back of the ambulance and had noticed we passed a dumped over milk truck, and the traffic was beginning to pile up behind it. I knew Dustin and his dad would get stuck behind it. We barely missed the backup as it was. 

*blessing/miracle: not getting trapped in the traffic. 

When we arrived at UWMC, it took maybe 10ish minutes until I was in my room. A few minutes after this, two nurses were helping get baby on the monitor. My heart rate was in the 80s. One nurse got worried and said that the baby’s was in the 80s as well. Exactly the same as mine. The other nurse said that it was my heart rate and we hadn’t found the baby’s yet. In comes doctor #1 and we found baby on the ultrasound, his heart rate peaked at 130 then dropped again. This was when the nurse put oxygen on me and I knew it was bad and getting worse. Then came a few more people. The anesthesiologist and his entourage came and started asking me a ton of questions. More people came in. Most importantly, the chief resident Dr.Josh came to the head of the bed. He was the first person to make eye contact with me out of the 20ish people who were in there. He explained that baby wasn’t doing well and asked if anyone was coming to be with me. I told him yes but they were stuck in traffic. I also told him that it didn’t matter, I knew the only solution was to get baby out, so lets get it done. I knew he agreed. I had been in this situation before, not as severe, with the same solution. He decided to get me in the OR to monitor me and the baby to see if there was time to wait. After getting to the OR there was a lot of commotion. I was introduced to someone from the NICU and a few more doctors that would be there to help the baby. That is when I realized the journey we were about to make. Dr. Josh and the first doctor kept glancing between each other and the monitors, it didn’t look good. So he made the executive decision to deliver the baby, right away. As I was laying on a cold table, half naked, shaking uncontrollably, with everyone else running around and looking at the monitors, I watched and listened to the conversation between the anesthesiologist and the doctors, trying to hear, trying not to rip the oxygen mask off my face because I couldn’t breath. Epidural? No, it would take too long. Spinal? No, blood pressure too high. I prayed in my mind they would just knock me out all the way and get it over with. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be awake when they got baby boy out of me, I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing him with out my husband by my side. Dr. Josh must have read my mind because he said there wasn’t enough time. Before I knew it, I was being prepped for my cesarean section and counting backward from 10. I was so tired and I remember thinking “don’t close your eyes, because they will think you are passed out when you really aren’t and then start to cut!”. 

The next thing I remember was was hearing my name. I was dreaming. In my dream I remember seeing Ry and her best girl cousin, Brin, walking away from me holding hands. It was sweet. Then I remembered everything and: Ouch! My stomach! The rest is a blur. I semi-remember being rolled into my room. I know that Dustin was there. He was talking to Dr. Josh and said something about his mission and I just remember the two of them laughing because were are all Mormon. 

*blessing/miracle: out of the millions of doctors at the Hospital, I know Dr. Josh was meant to be the one with us. He helped us in so many ways. At some point, I will share more about HIS experience that day.

There were many blessings and miracles that happened to us during the week Eli was born. The few that I listed are just the ones that stand out the most.