Birth story- Baby in CICU update

lizztheo · August 2014

Nothing really prepares you for rushing your baby off to nicu right after birth. We were aware he had a possible heart condition and tried to prepare for the worst but it was still so heartbreaking. A few hours after birth, he had to be transferred from the hospital's nicu to the children's hospital cardiac ICU. He is doing well and stable, mainly there for observation. We won't know for sure if he needs heart surgery (coarctation of aorta) until he has a repeat echocardiogram in a day or two. Quick birth story: I was set for induction on Wednesday night (38w6d) for gestational hypertension. Started pitocin at 10:30pm at 2cm. I was only 3cm at 6am after receiving pitocin all night so my bag of water was broken and pitocin amped up. I was checked again at 9am and was still at 3cm. Contractions started to get very painful with increasing pitocin. At 11, I was checked again and only at 4cm so I received IV pain meds. I continued to receive them every hour until I decided on an epidural at about 12:30. They didn't recheck because I had been progressing so slowly. When they were finally actually placing the epidural at 2:15, I felt like pushing. He was born at 2:36 after 10 minutes of official pushing. It was practically a natural birth because they only gave me a small testing dose of epidural and it didn't even kick in until after he was out. I have never felt so panicked, there were at least a dozen nurses and doctors in the room trying to get everything ready and once they could see his head, they told me to push as hard as I could and get him out NOW. His head came out and I heard somebody say his shoulder was stuck, a nurse literally jumped on top of me to get me to push and they got him out. I also found out after that his cord proceeded his head and they are thinking that was the main cause of his cardiac issue after birth & they wanted to be extra cautious with the possible coarctation as well. A team of nicu nurses worked quickly on him and I was able to see him for about 5 seconds before they rushed him to nicu. Official stats: Jasper David born 8/14/14, 7lb 9oz, 21 inches. I am in love and was finally able to hold him before they transported him yesterday.

UPDATE: Jasper is doing great, he does not have coarctation of the aorta but a PDA that will not require surgery. He should be coming home today! Thank you for prayers and thoughts.