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The Story of Gabriel
Our 23 Weeker
Gabriel was discovered by pregnancy test on a Wednesday and a
week later on Thursday we found ourselves in the ER. Bleeding
had started as if I wasn't pregnant at all. The ER docs feared
that I had an ectopic pregnancy, a pregnancy in the fallopian
tube that results in internal bleeding, and rushed me in for
ultrasounds. My husband Tony was at work and there I sat alone
scared for my and my baby's life. Turned out that I had many
more problems than I thought, but none of them were ectopic
pregnancy. I found out that night that I have one kidney. They
call it horseshoe kidney, as my two kidneys are connected behind
my back in the shape of a horseshoe.....hence the name. LOL I
also have what they call a bicornuate uterus. This left me
knowing that my chances of miscarriage multiplied and chance of
premature delivery were near 100%. My biggest problem was we had
no medical coverage at all and I couldn't afford to have an OB/GYN.
I also didn't want to get bad advice from someone that didn't
understand my problems. So I started my search for a qualified
OB and continued with life as normal. One night, around 19-20
weeks, my mom just happened to ask how I was doing (my mom was
active duty Air Force and used to be a nurse in Labor and
Delivery). I told her what the baby was doing and she suddenly
became worried. She told me next time the "baby moved" to let
her feel it. I did and she said that it wasn't the baby
moving....I was contracting. She had great
timing....Christmas/New Year holiday. Do you know how hard it is
to find an OB, schedule a new patient appointment, and actually
get seen during the holidays? The contractions weren't bad and
they weren't getting worse....but they had been going on for a
month or so. We decided to wait for the high risk OB we had
finally found based on the idea that I didn't get worse. We made
it until our appointment. I was indeed contracting but my cervix
was closed and the contractions were light. We decided to send
me home and to see how I progressed. A week later, the
contractions were so bad I couldn't sleep. So back we went. This
time went a little different. This time my cervix was open and
my water had started leaking. I was admitted to the hospital and
put on drugs to stop my contractions. It worked for a few days
and I wouldn't recommend those drugs to anyone because they have
some funky side effects. And because of those side effects, I
couldn't stay on those drugs forever. So, on Monday January 15,
2001 the decision was made to go ahead with an emergency
c-section when the baby decided he didn't like the contractions
anymore and I was progressing through labor quickly. I learned
that one of the reasons for c-section of a preemie is because a
baby so immature cannot handle the rigors of natural delivery.
The doctors became worried that if I progressed much further
than a natural delivery couldn't be stopped. At this point,
everyone had told me that it wasn't good but no one told me that
my baby's chances were next to nothing. When they rolled me into
the OR I had no idea what I was about to put myself through. I
won't go into detail about what happened in the OR.....it just
wasn't pretty and I'm glad I don't remember much......too bad
for my husband Tony. I'll just say make sure you don't have a
natural tolerance to pain meds before starting a surgery that
you are awake through. Anyway, Gabriel Antonio Ramirez was born
at 10:26 A.M. weighing 517 grams (1 pound 2.2 ounces) and was 11
1/4 inches long at less than 24 weeks gestation. He was
intubated in the delivery room and had Apgar scores of 3 and 8.
He was breathing on his own at birth but not well enough to
sustain life. I don't remember seeing him, but Tony said that he
was too scared by what he saw to touch Gabriel when they told
him he could. They took him pretty quickly to the nursery where
they stabilized him and waited for a transport team to take him
to a hospital equipped to handle such a young baby. As soon as
they were able, they wheeled my whole bed into the nursery to
see my baby for the "first" time. At seeing my baby I lost hope
completely and just sat numbly. He was soon transported to
University Hospital where I didn't see him for two more days.
With babies this young, the major milestones are to reach ages
of 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, and then 100 days. We reached the 1
week mark with not much ado, all things considered. It was a
second to second, minute to minute, day to day but nothing big
happened. That is if life is nothing big. LOL He had two or
three blood transfusions that week and was on more drugs then I
can remember. The first big event occurred at eight days old when
he had to have his PDA surgery on his heart. He recovered
quickly and had a few good weeks before his first blood yeast
infection. He almost didn't come out of that one. We were told
several times that he might not last the night, but every time
God blessed us with one more day with Gabriel. Gabriel's yeast
infection lasted for several weeks and he was touch and go for
that whole time. About the two to three month old stage, we
became pretty confident that, someday, Gabriel would be coming
home with us. We had to wait for three main things to happen.
One is he needed to get off the ventilator. "Vents" are a great
tool to help babies and adults alike but there is one thing that
a lot of people don't know about them. Vents damage healthy lung
tissue. The unnatural breathing induced by a ventilator causes,
especially in the immature lungs of a premature baby, the break
down of the air sacs in the lung. Lung tissue cannot repair
itself, which is why smoking is so bad. In babies, they can
sometimes, in their major growing stages, produce enough new
lung tissue to overcome the damage. Gabriel's x-rays of his
lungs looked like those of a smoker that smoked three packs a
day for 20 years. He had so much damage that doctors, and nurses
alike, didn't think Gabe would ever come off a ventilator (not
that they told me that until later) or, at best, get off oxygen
support. But we, once again, were blessed when at 74 days old my
boy was extubated and stayed that way. The second thing that
needed to happen for Gabriel to come home was he had to gain
weight. He had to prove that he can grow on his own and at day
80 Gabriel was still under three pounds. The third and the one
that seems to take the longest is he has to be able to eat on
his own. At this point he hadn't even had a bottle because of
being intubated. On day 80 was his first bottle feeding, a task
he had never attempted before. Many babies, after being
intubated for so long, have an oral aversion. They don't want
anything in their mouths. They also don't understand that hunger
pains don't take care of themselves like they did with a feeding
tube. They are so small and so weak that sucking on a bottle,
swallowing a mouth full, and breathing at the same time is too
much for them. This is a time that a lot of babies lose weight
or don't grow because they spend so much energy during feedings.
Gabriel finally reached all those goals mid May after two laser
eye surgeries and one bilateral hernia repair. May 18, 2001 was
the day we got to bring our four month old boy home.....and on
oxygen. The oxygen was discontinued in October of 2001, five
months later, and he never needed support again. Gabriel has
finally caught up is size to his peers, but he does have some
developmental delays, and he did have one more surgery on his
eyes, but he shows no other signs of his 123 day stay in the
hospital. Thanks to all of the doctors and nurses that cared for
my little man his first 123 days and to God for loving us so
much and gracing us with this gift. I hope we are up to the task
of raising this miracle child. A special thanks to Barbara
Sutherlun, a nurse at University Hospital in San Antonio, for
supporting us so much, for being a friend, and knowing when we
needed a distraction.
God Bless You! |
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