Well, my littlest granddaughter is here. And, I mean littlest.
Happiness on the one hand, and terror on the other. My beautiful little granddaughter. My daughter fighting for her life.
You see, my oldest child almost lost her life giving life to this wee little baby. I am still stunned by that fact. She almost died. I owe the lives of both of my daughters to the grace of God and Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. This narrative has a happy ending, but the middle is the hard part.
Beginning. My oldest child is pregnant again. We are cautiously optimistic. She has had several very hard pregnancies. We are fraught with anxiety. She goes for the ultrasound because she is of advanced maternal age. The ultrasound says it is twins! Wow, what a surprise. I am expecting my 9th and 10th grandchild. Oh my!
Middle. Sometime later, we get devastating news. One of the twins has stopped developing and is not going to make it. Sadness overwhelms me. I cannot explain how much this news devastated me. I could barely contain my tears for weeks. I still think of that little baby even now and how much I miss it. I know the pain this causes Chris and John.
Chris is having trouble carrying this last baby of hers. She develops a seborrheaic hemorrhage condition. Wow. Disturbing diagnosis that I have never even heard of. Apparently, other people have had these and their babies were born just fine. It is when a spot in the uterus starts bleeding. It can cause miscarriage at the worst. She spent most of the summer on bed rest. She had to stay in her room flat on her back for most of the time. Then it would let up. Then the bleeding would come again. Stop and start. Start and stop. Kind of like my heart. It is so hard to watch your child (no matter how old they are) suffering. Chris wants this last baby so badly.
The doctors let her off of bed rest because it doesn't seem to be helping with the bleeding anyway. She bleeds more. All this time, the baby inside is rocking and rolling with it. She is unfazed by all these catastrophes. She's got this.
Then she develops placenta previa. Good grief. Really? That is disturbing because it sometimes causes premature delivery. A Cesarean section was planned anyway, but now it is definitely the only way to go.
Then one day, the doctors said this. Go home, live your life as normally as you can, you are no longer in danger - your pregnancy is now routine. They didn't see any more signs of disaster. She should be routine from now on out.
Well, the very next day, Chris started having contractions and her water breaks. She is 26 weeks pregnant. She went to the hospital. They were going to keep her for about 6 weeks until the baby can be born at 32 weeks at the earliest. They wanted to keep the baby in there until 35 weeks, but realistically, they were aiming for 32. Well, she didn't quite make it that far. Nora Elizabeth Jean Carter was born at 28 weeks. She weighed 2 lbs. 14 oz. She was 15 inches long. She is perfect in every way.
Nora has amazed everyone with her progress. From the first day, she has not needed any medical intervention whatsoever. They used a cannula for the first day or two, but then they found out that Nora could tolerate room air. She is being fed through a tube in her nose because she doesn't know how to feed yet. She is our little warrior princess. She is "light years ahead" of where the NICU nurses expected her to be at her gestational age. She is our champion. We are all in love with that wee little baby.
My daughter had to have an emergency hysterectomy as well as the c-section. She is bleeding to death. She is in critical condition and has no idea that her little girl is even alive. We are called to the hospital in the very early hours of Monday morning. Praying constantly. Making nice with the visitors who come to hold vigil. If she doesn't stop bleeding, she will die. John (her husband) decides to post on Facebook that his wife is in critical condition and we need prayer immediately for Chris.
The prayer warriors begin praying and my baby girl begins getting better. They do a procedure where the insert gel into her femoral arteries to stop the bleeding. Praise the Lord, it works. Chris ended up needing 30 units of blood. She was on a ventilator. She is still alive. Thanks be to God for his grace! She asks about Nora and she wants to see pictures. She had to pass a few "tests" for them to take the ventilator tube out of her lungs. She does well. You see, I thought that if she would just wake up, she would realize that she needed to fight to stay alive for her children. That is what happened. Prayer warriors begin praying. God intervenes. He lets my child live so she can mother her own children. I will be forever grateful for this. I am humbled and thankful.
So, Chris does so well that they let her come home. She is sore and weary, but she also misses her home and her other children. We have been holding down the fort. It seems that it takes many more people than we thought to replace Chris. She is amazing.
She seems to be doing great. Then the unthinkable happens. She gets an infection. She goes back into the hospital. She is given a good prognosis. She has a Urinary Tract Infection and a hematoma where her uterus used to be. The trick is to not let the infection get to that hematoma. The hematoma is a normal "complication." So is the UTI, because of the length of time she had the catheter in. She was throwing up and had fever. I was sick with worry. Tears abound. My little girl is sick again. She can't take much more.
God prevails. The IV antibiotics and fever reducers are working. Thanks be to God! She is feeling better. They are keeping her a few days to make sure nothing else comes up. Please God, don't let anything else happen to my girl.
On a very positive note, Miss Nora is now 3 lbs. 4.6 oz. and is doing spectacularly. Now if we can only get her Momma to follow her example. I pray that this is the end of the complications and now she has to just heal and get better and better every day.
My lesson in all of this is that no matter what, we aren't guaranteed life. No one is. It is God's grace that allows us to live. So, love your people. Make sure that they know you love them. Make sure that you don't let petty things affect your relationships. There is no time for that. Forgive more easily. Don't let yourself be so easily offended. Don't let some misunderstanding or hurt feelings keep you from your people. Enjoy your family. You never know what tomorrow might bring. You never know when the last time you see them will be.
