My oldest just turned 13 on the 7th. Holy crap! I have a teenager. Certainly I'm not old enough to have a teenager!! What a journey this has been. My first child. My first pregnancy. It wasn't a good pregnancy. At my 24 week checkup, they discovered that I didn't have very much amniotic fluid. The very stuff that helps the baby's lungs develop. The very stuff that protects the baby from the walls of the uterus. Imagine a carrot in a ziploc baggie. Empty all of the air out of the baggie so that there is no air around the carrot and it can't move. That was Sarabeth in my uterus.
I was put on bedrest for the remainder of my pregnancy, had a nurse come to my house every day to draw blood to check for infection, and to monitor the baby's heartbeat. I also had to go into the doctor every week for another ultrasound and to monitor the baby. At 35 weeks gestation, I had an amniosentisis done to check the development of the lungs. The results were not good. The lungs were not developed enough yet. But, the baby was getting too big to be in my uterus without fluid protecting it, so they decided they needed to deliver.
On Feb. 7th, 1995, the day after my 2nd wedding anniversary, I went in for a C-Section. I couldn't deliver her naturaly because the stress of it would have been too much on the baby. And because I had no fluid, they still had a hard time getting her out via C-Section. And she wasn't breathing. NICU was there waiting and immediatly started performing CPR. After 7 to 10 minutes (according to her chart) they intubated her. That means they put an air tube down her throat into her lungs to help her breath. She was rushed to NICU and put on a Oscillator to breath for her.
After my hour in recovery, the doctor came in to tell me that I had a severly retarded and deformed child that probably wouldn't live through the day. They were in the process of performing chromosome tests on her to properly diagnose her. But the doctor was wrong. Every day she blossomed like a flower. The chromosome tests all came back negative. The only problems she had were underdeveloped lungs and a club foot. She stayed in NICU for 31 days and then came home and was kept on oxygen for 5 months until her saturation level was o.k.
Over the course of 13 years, she has had 4 surgeries on her foot and on both knees. Other than that, you would never know that she was a preemie who was severely deformed and retarded and was pronounced dead in the delivery room. All of her baby pictures are in storage so this is all I have. Read about her birthday here.
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