Josh & I were very lucky to be able to get pregnant right away with both of our girls and both of them were planned. I knew one thing ... that I did not want Zoey to be an only child. Finally with her in the GA Pre-K program, we were able to afford to add on to our little family. My pregnancy with Riley was very different than my pregnancy with Zoey. While I have have chronic hypertension and developed Gestational Diabetes with both girls, I had a much harder time managing them with Riley. At our 20-week ultrasound we were told that the baby had dilated kidneys, so I would need to be monitored by a Perionataologist in addition to my regular OB/GYN. The upside was that I have a lot more photos of Riley in the womb than I do with Zoey. The downside was I felt like I spent my entire pregnancy in a doctors office and I worried that my new baby would have kidney problems. Despite all of my ultrasounds, the one thing that was not picked up with the fact that Riley had a heart defect.
On Tuesday 10/5/10, I was having a lot of back pain, so I called me OB in case I was in labor, having been induced with Zoey, I didn't know what it felt like to go into labor naturally. Well, false alarm, no labor for me, but my blood pressure was high enough that the Natalie, the midwife, decided I needed to be admitted to the hospital and induction started. I guess natural labor in not in the cards for me. So off we went to get our ducks in a row ... Anne to watch Zoey over night, bags packed (I wasn't quite ready) ... and off we went to Northside Hospital. We were admitted fairly quickly and settled into a nice large birthing room. I thought that with my 2nd baby things might progress a little quicker. Nope, not gonna happen. 56 hours later which included 2 attempts (the first was an epic FAIL) on having my water broke by the midwife, an epidural and many shots of insulin, we were ready to push (yea!). Despite the epidural, I still had a bit of pain. The upside what that within 10 minutes and 2 1/2 pushes, we were blessed with a 2nd beautiful daughter. Again, I was a little surprised that she was girl since I had such a different pregnancy than with Zoey, but heck, I thought she was a boy too, so what do I know?
In an odd twist of events, I was so sick about 10 minutes after delivery that I was literally throwing up all over myself. Good thing I did, since we decided to send Riley to the nursery sooner than we would have. In the nursery they were able to see her O2 drop, because of that they called in the on-call pediatrician who heard a "clicking" noise in her heart. That prompted the visit by the cardiologist, who detected the VSD (among her other heart defects). All of this going on while she was in the NICU - so they were able to see that she had a bit of jaundice, and administered the lights
Being in the NICU, they also saw that when she ate Riley's heart rate would rise and her O2 would drop, which was rather puzzling, so a swallow study was ordered. The results being that Riley was aspirating her food into her lungs and would now require a feeding tube. The NG-tube lead us in the direction of knowing that my sweet baby would need surgery for a G-tube ... the only problem was that she was too tiny to have it done at Scottish Rite. Thankfully we have an awesome GI doctor, Dr. Olga Sherrod - not that I liked her much in the hospital, but only due to the fact that she was giving me (more) bad news - Dr. Sherrod called over to Egleston to talk with Dr. Mark Wulkan, a fantastic, cutting edge surgeon. Luckily for us, Dr. Wulkan could do the G-tube surgery, it was just a matter of finding a bed space for Riley at Egleston that held us up. So on her due date, 10/27/10, Riley was transported by a phenomenal ambulance team from Northside Hospital to Children's Hospital of Atlanta at Egleston, and on her 3-week birthday, Riley had her 1st surgery.
Nothing in this world prepared me for how she would look post-op, absolutely nothing. But with the help of of CICU nurse Lisa, we were able to understand all that was happening to her and for her. By the next day, Riley looked amazingly better.
Finally on 11/2/10, Riley was able to come home to us for the first time
- Off of continuous feeds through her G-tube
- Off of night feeds
- Cutting back on medications
- Repaired VSD (woo-hoo!)
- Eating baby foods ... and now some table foods to
- Sitting up
- Rolling over
- Tracking
- Smiling (although she is selective about her smiles)
- Reaching and playing with toys
All things that you generally take for advantage, but here we are today with a fantastic kid thanks to every one's hard work
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