Life is Good

Trish was discharged on Monday night. I spent my first night in a real bed since this all started. (Because it’s all about me.) She is recovering remarkably well. Greyson is breathing well. He has been treated successfully for a heart murmur. And although some set backs are expected, he continues to improve. If he meets all his milestones and goals, we should be able to bring him home in 3 or 4 weeks. Time will tell.

Worth It!

Did you ever have new parents show you some scraggly alien looking thing while asking you if that’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I might be one of those people. Greyson was far bigger, healthier and cuter than I ever imagined. The first time I held Greyson in my arms, six weeks of hospital rooms, bed pans and blot clots were instantly washed away. The tears could not be stopped. It was such an incredible, precious moment, it’s something I will never forget. He really is cute. My mom, sister and mother-in-law were awesome supporting all three of us. I was close to useless.

Here are some pictures for you.

Trish

Meanwhile, back in the OR, Trish decided to keep things interesting. The placenta had grown/fused itself to the wall of the uterus, a rare condition called placenta accreta that we didn’t know about. During a normal C-section, the placenta is moved easily out of the way. But this time, because of the accreta, it had to be cut apart to get the baby out. This caused a lot of bleeding for some one who already had a hard time keeping her IVs open and had a low red blood cell level. Then, the placenta had to be scraped from the wall of the uterus, causing even more bleeding. She received four units of blood and two units of plasma during the surgery. She was in there for more than two hours.

Greyson Marley

Greyson Marley was born via C-section on 11:58 am on July 9th, ten weeks earlier than expected. He weighed in at 3 lbs, 15 oz. The whole experience for me is a blur. Seems like I was in and out of there in only a few minutes, or maybe it was 10, or 20. I accompanied Greyson the crew that was working on him NICU. Trish and I had agreed on this ahead of time, something about babies being mislabeled, lost, sent home with the wrong parents. After he was deemed stable, I watched him get plugged in… a CPAP to help him breath, a line into stomach to remove pressure, a heart monitor, a respatory monitor, an oxygen sensor, a sensor to measure his skin temperature, a line inserted through his bellybutton as an IV and another one to measure blood pressure an take blood samples. That’s a whole lot of lines and tubes for such a tiny boy.

Go Time

Thursday morning started out quiet. There was even talk of moving us back to Ante Partum. That wouldn’t last. The bleeding started again. I got dressed, put my cell phone in one pocket and my camera in the other. I knew what was about to happen. The door slammed open and an army of nurses rushed in. There was no announcement. There were no protests. Just two very worried soon to be parents. She was whisked out of the room so fast, there was no time to say anything. A nurse hurriedly persuaded me to put scrubs on. I had two phone calls to make. I took a deep breath and did my best to sound calm and relaxed. I wasn’t. I called Trish’s mom to tell her we were going in for the C-section. She didn’t understand, she thought everything was stable. So had I. As I did my best to hide the nervousness in my voice and reassure her, nurses in scrubs were holding the doors to the OR open waving me in. I had to go. The call to my mom was much different. “Mom, we’re going in.” “I’m on my way.”

Not for Faint of Heart

One of the unfortunate things about all the bleeding was passing clots. For some reason, the nurses always seemed to associate the size of the clots with certain fruits. Many clots were ‘cherry-sized’ or ‘grape-sized’. Most clots that week were plum-sized. But Wednesday night, Trish passed a clot that put us in a whole new category, well into the citrus range, we’re talking grapefruit… full-sized ripe grapefruit from Florida. I don’t know why they were still using fruit to describe the clots. I was fairly certain Trish had just expelled her liver. It was so big, they had to bring a scale in to weigh it. 27 grams, very impressive. If you haven’t lost your lunch and are still interested, I’ve got a cool picture of it.

A Rough Week

The week leading up to Greyson’s birth was a tough one for mom. The bleeding had increased from every other day to three in one day, two were very heavy. Our doctor drove in from San Francisco that night to do the C-section, but after a long discussion we decided to wait. The next day, Monday, her red blood cell level had dropped below a level safe for surgery. Trish was on some heavy duty meds, so I’m not sure that quite set in for her, but it sure made me nervous. On Tuesday, the level dropped even further. Until this time, a blood transfusion was something we hoped to avoid. Now it was inevitable. She received blood transfusions on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ante Partum

The bleeding continued. It was intermittent and unpredictable, sometimes worse than other times. We spent most of our time in the Ante Partum unit, a place set up for long term care of expecting mothers. We spent a lot of time working on keeping Trish comfortable… trashy magazines and daytime TV and lots of visits from friends and relatives. If bleeds were bad enough, we would be moved to labor and delivery where we could be monitored more closely and be stuck with more needles. It was particularly tough on me since I had to sleep on an uncomfortable rollaway cot, rather than a pull-out chair/bed thingy.

Hospitalized

Early in the morning on June 4th, Trish woke with bleeding. We took her to Alta Bates. We thought we may end up spending the night there. We were shocked to learn that we might spend several days or even a week in the hospital. We had no idea we would be spending the remainder of her pregnancy there. All of our summer plans were suddenly cancelled.

Crawchoa's catching up with the tymes!

After refusing to succumb to the blogging craze for far too long, the Crawchoa's have decided to create a blog to keep family and friends up to date with us. Stay tuned for updates!