And Then There Were Three...

I've written this post about a thousand times in my head - from my hospital bed in the middle of the night, sitting beside Caleb's hospital bed many afternoons in the Special Care Nursery, from the glider in Caleb's room during midnight feedings, and here I am, the day before Caleb's 2 month birthday and I'm finally writing it down! Sorry, this is going to be long. I'm mostly writing it out so I won't forget how everything happened b/c I'm sure a few months from now I won't remember the details. In fact, many things about the first month of Caleb's life seem like a distant memory now when they were vivid reality only a few short weeks ago. So, I apologize and don't feel like you have to read it all, but here's the story of the Redmond family going from just us two to a family of three. If you just want to see pictures just scroll down! :-)

Jason and I celebrated 4 fabulous years together on Thursday, 10/18 - seriously, the most fun 4 years of my life! We had dinner at Maggiano's and even ended up exchanging a damaged wedding gift at Crate & Barrel, even four years later! And, as an anniversary gift to both of us, Jason purchased a new camera, since we figured we'd need one in a couple months when Little Man made his appearance. Talk about good timing! :-)

Friday and Saturday we enjoyed time at home, cleaning out the office and trying to get some things organized since we only had about 8 weekends left until Little Man came and I was determined to have everything ready by Thanksgiving - Christmas presents purchased, nursery finished, junk cleaned out, etc. The best laid plans often go awry. :-) I remember telling Jason on Friday or Saturday that I was having some Braxton-Hicks contractions, and by Saturday afternoon they were actually a little uncomfortable. I remember googling "Braxton-Hicks with pain" to see if this was normal. Plenty of sites said that can happen so I wasn't worried, just figured I'd overdone it with all the organizing. We went to our LIFE Class social that Saturday night and when people asked about my pregnancy I mentioned I'd been having contractions that were a little uncomfortable but this was apparently normal. A group of us girls even stood in the kitchen and watched my belly tighten a few times!

Sunday morning I woke up at 6:45am having a contraction and I remember thinking maybe I should start paying attention to these. I laid there and counted three in about 15 minutes. Now, what kind of pregnant girl doesn't realize this is a problem?! This one! We were a week away from our birthing class - I assume they go over things like timing of contractions in birthing class. Oh well. We went on to church and I definitely noticed them all through the service, and when I ran into my mom before LIFE Class I told her I was a little uncomfortable but we were still fine for lunch - they were taking us out for our anniversary after church. I sat beside my sweet friend Su-Anne in LIFE Class and at one point leaned over and asked if she'd had contractions that were uncomfortable at 32 weeks. "No!" she said, but I still wasn't too worried. Just figured I'd take it easy the rest of the day.

We headed to Cheesecake Factory for lunch and had a great time, but I have to admit, I was starting to feel like I needed to lay down. I was having more and more contractions. We headed back to the church for a reception to say goodbye to our sweet friends Jay and Laura who were moving the next weekend, but I told Jason I could only last about 10 minutes and we needed to head home. I asked Laura too if she'd had contractions at this point, which of course she hadn't, and I told my friend Bryan about them too. I'm just glad I mentioned it to several people or it would really have been a shocker! We left church, originally intending to go shopping for my sister's birthday present - sorry Laura, you'll get it at Christmas! :-) On the way home I downloaded an app to count my contractions - over the next hour they were averaging about 45 seconds, coming every 3-4 minutes. I guess I was afraid of overreacting or something - I still thought they would go away. I did call Atrium just to let them know and see if they had any advice. Dr. Breazeale told me to lay still for about an hour, drink some water and see if they'll go away and call back if not. Well, in the next hour they were wrapping around to my back, and I decided that regardless of what the Dr. said when I called back, I thought I should probably be checked. So I took a shower thinking that if I was going on bed rest or something it might be a few days. Priorities you know. :-)

We called our families on the way to the hospital just to give them a heads up. I didn't want to - I thought we should find out what was going on and then call, but good thing Jason insisted, so at least they had a heads up! I talked with my sister as we were driving and walking in. She had early labor with her first at exactly the same time - 32 wks and a few days. Weird I know, but she went on bedrest for the next month so she gave me some idea of what they might do at the hospital when we got there.

Well, they called us back and the sweet nurse hooked us up to fetal monitor, took some info and then did some sort of swab test. She said if it came back positive then we could expect to deliver in 2 weeks but if negative we had at least a few more weeks to go. Well, she immediately could tell it was positive and there was no need to send it to the lab. She said, "Why don't I go ahead and check your cervix, just in case we need to move things along." I'll never forget her face - she didn't say anything specific at first, just said that I was pretty dilated and she was going to call the doctor to have him come check me out too. At that point I was pretty sure bedrest was in my future, and probably a night or two in the hospital. When she came back in she told me I was 8 cm and we weren't leaving the hospital that day without a baby! "What!" I said. "Can't you stop it? My sister had early labor at this point and they stopped it!" Nope, not at 8cm apparently. Well, at that point, it was like someone pushed a button and nurses descended upon our little cubicle like a flood. I was getting an IV in my left arm, the nurse on my right was asking all kinds of questions, someone took Jason in the hall to fill out paperwork, and it was like organized chaos. She told me if I felt my water break or the urge to push to let her know - WHAT! I haven't had my birth class yet! We'd been reading several books b/c I was planning to have an unmedicated birth so I knew a few exercises but we weren't ready!

Dr. Breazeale arrived, apologizing if he smelled like grass - he'd been doing yard work. :-) He did an ultrasound and his exact words were, "Well, if this wasn't already complicated enough, he's breech, so we'll have to do a c-section." Jason asked what kind of timeframe we were talking about b/c we needed to let our families know. He looked at the clock and said, "Well, it's 5:50 right now...he'll be here by 6:30." WHAT! I looked at Jason and said, "Get the camera!" The nurse said there was time so he ran to the car (thankfully at the last minute on the way out the door I told Jason to bring the camera, just in case), and on the way breathlessly called both sets of grandparents to let them know they'd have a grandson within the hour.

He met me upstairs as I was wheeling down the hall and we laughed about the fact that we didn't have a name yet! He had to go into a separate room and get scrubs - the way he tells it scrubs were flying right and left as he frantically searched for his size. Meanwhile they prepped me for surgery. Okay, I just have to admit, I did not enjoy a c-section. It was scary, probably b/c I didn't know what to expect, and I felt a lot more than I thought I would. The Lord was with me and I remember laying there and not even sure what to pray - the only verse that came to my mind in that moment was a verse I had memorized when I was 6 years old, preparing for a different surgery - "What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee", so I just said that to myself over and over. There were so many sweet nurses, and I remember one getting right in my ear and telling me what was happening and what I would feel as they put in the epidural (which I didn't like either!) and prepped me. I was shaking all over, which they said was the adrenaline, because even though it sounds like I was freaking out I really wasn't. I felt amazingly calm, it was just all happening so fast so I was a little behind on processing it all. Finally Jason was able to come in, and talk about surreal - there I was with my arms stretched out to my sides like a cross, my whole body going numb, a blue sheet right in front of my face and looking up at Jason as we tried to grasp what had just happened! We tried to talk about names for about 20 seconds, at which point I said, "This is too much - we'll have to figure it out after!" I was determined not to be the mom whose kid doesn't have a name when they're born - again, my plans went out the window! Within a few minutes, the Dr. said we have a leg, an arm, another arm, another leg, and finally his head, which was apparently stuck in there pretty good b/c it took some tugging, which I could feel, to get him out! I couldn't hear him cry right away and they whisked him off so fast I couldn't see him. Jason said he heard him crying but I couldn't. Plus, they made me remove my contacts and since I didn't have my glasses with me I was blind as a bat! Jason followed him and was able to be with him while they helped him breathe and put me back together, literally. I got sick, which was pretty freaky considering I was wide open, and the nurse beside me said, "That's very normal when they're putting the uterus back in." Okay, not comforting! Where had my uterus been! And were they going to put everything back in the right place! :-) Seriously, those were my thoughts. 

Finally, they wheeled me back to recovery, where Jason met me and I was able to put my contacts back in so I could see again. We called/texted our families, and I called my sister. Her first words were, "I'm so sorry, I told you all wrong!" :-) Honestly, throughout it all, I felt extremely calm and peaceful. I know it was the Holy Spirit, and I truly was never scared for Caleb. It's like I knew in my spirit he was going to be okay. But still I was in shock. That's also where we picked his name. We had already settled on "Caswell" for his middle name because that's Jason's middle name as well as Jason's grandpa's middle name. No, we did not get engaged at Fort Caswell. :-) We had a short list of some name options and Caleb was one of them, but in that moment it just rose to the surface - a strong and brave warrior in the Bible. So, Caleb Caswell Redmond it is!

On the way up to my room they wheeled me into the special care nursery so I could meet my baby for the first time. I couldn't see him very well with everything they had him hooked up to, but they told me I could touch his leg. It was the strangest thing - touching this little leg that had just been inside me a few hours before. But he was here - and our lives would never be the same. :-) That night I only slept about 30 minutes. Our sweet families had been waiting downstairs for hours, having come when Jason called and none of us realized how long it would be before they could see us. They couldn't see Caleb until the next day, but we visited with them for awhile and then at some point after midnight we tried to sleep. But that was the first time I had a chance to process the previous six hours. I laid there thanking God for modern medicine, for sparing Caleb, wondering why I was blessed to live in 2012 when so many women throughou the centuries would have lost their baby and maybe died themselves in the same situation.

I spent the next four days in the hospital with Jason right by my side the whole time - what a trooper. I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have him. Caleb spent the next four weeks in the Special Care Nursery at Rex. What an amazing group of people - we could never thank them enough for how they took care of him and us through that whole time. We feel truly blessed. It was more complicated than we had planned but exactly what God had in store for us. We had the opportunity to meet so many special people and grow together as a family as we never would have. Thank You Jesus for taking care of our baby and our family - he's yours.

Meeting Caleb for the first time - Sunday night, October 21, 2012

Born at 4 lbs, 11 oz & 18 inches 

First time we held Caleb - Kangaroo Care on Monday, 10/22

On Tuesday they had to put Caleb on a nasal canula to give him additional oxygen.

Sweet face - even behind all that tape. He loved to hook his little fingers on that oxygen tube and try to pull it out! At one point he did pull out his feeding tube - the orange tube you'll see in his nose in later pictures. His nurse said she walked in and he was just holding it in his hand!

Diaper change! Jason was such a trooper and wanted to do it all. Now changing his diaper at home seems like a piece of cake compared to changing it insdie this box! The incubator was kept super warm b/c he was unable to regulate his body temperature at first. One of his big stepping stones to going home was being able to keep his body temp up on his own.

Bili light - he had to spend several days with this light shining over his incubator due to his jaundice. I'm not sure how but this light helps his body process the additional bilirubin in his system until his liver is able to do it on its own. Love the shades! Like he's lying on the beach somewhere :-)

My sister came for a visit two weeks after he was born so here she is meeting him! I also took advantage of her insanely good organizing skills and she helped me get some more things ready in the nursery, mainly the hand-me-down clothes that had taken over the room! Thanks Laura for coming - it was a bright spot in a crazy four weeks!
I don't have a picture but my mom was also my hero - she drove me back and forth to the hospital every day until I could drive, and then she still came and sat with me every day after that, bought my lunch and kept me company until Jason could come after work. Thank you mom for everything - I'm sure I would have had an emotional breakdown if it wasn't for you! :-)

Another big stepping stone in going home was that Caleb had to learn to take all his feedings by mouth instead of the feeding tube - either breastfeeding when I was there or bottle feeding when I couldn't be. Here's Jason getting a chance to feed him too! 

Car seat test!

Big boy bath time! This is one of his sweet nurses, Deb. And I love that he fits in this little bucket! Can't wait to show him that one day :-)

Daddy is being sympathetic to Caleb's struggle here I think :-)

Dr. Breazeale - my OB who delivered Caleb. He came by several times over the weeks to check on him and see how he was doing.

And here we are with Dr. P, Caleb's neonatologist. We really liked him and were so thankful for his expertise. (It's something like Perciaccante - I know, that's why everyone called him Dr. P!)

And these are just a few of the very special nurses who took care of Caleb - I know it sounds corny but I think of them like his angels, sent from the Lord to care for him in ways we never could have. And they truly took care of us as well - teaching us how to care for him, answering our questions - probably the same ones about a thousand times! And really I didn't realize until we left how much I had enjoyed their company, just getting to know them and sharing our lives with them as well. They made being in Special Care more of a blessing than a hardship. We are eternally grateful to them.

Lori

Jessica

Arlene

Lisa

From left to right: Shannon, Meg, Brandy

Brandy

 Amy

Here's Caleb with his first girlfriend - he was a little shy :-). This is Wrenn, and she was his roommate in Special Care for the last two weeks he was there. His sweet parents, Matt and Lindsay, are believers as well, and Jason (who knows everyone) had actually played softball with Matt and had taught Lindsay's younger sister about 10 years ago! It was so special to have them share our room and to be able to encourage each other. We love you guys!

And here's Caleb meeting Shafer, another little guy in special care. Jason went to NC State with his mom so we ran into her quite often as well. Shafer had been there a long time, at least 6 weeks before we got there and he stayed about 5 days past us. Another believing family in Special Care - I think the Lord was up to something! :-) The best part is, all of us - Wrenn, Shafer and Caleb - were home for Thanksgiving.

We're going home - Sat, 11/17! Putting on big boy clothes to go home in!

Meg, one of our nurses asked if I wanted to carry him out, like I would have if he'd come on time. Of course!

What a journey, what a blessing, and what a joy to have him home! Now, if we could just get some sleep. ;-)