Miracle Story #21(Part 1 of 4)

Kelley:

“Jeremy and I both have children from previous relationships and we’d been together probably seven years at that time. We didn’t think we were going to have any more kids.

Our kids were grown to the point where we had had the garage sale where you get rid of all the baby stuff.

We had just bought this house together and I had been involved in a big work project. This was a HUD house and it was a big project because we had like, no kitchen sink even.

At work we were going live with computerized physician order entry and I was a part of that 12-person project for Wesley.

So we were busy.

Well one day, I was with a co-worker friend of mine. And you know how us women, when we work together in close proximity, we end up being on the same cycle?

Well it was 2 weeks into our live 'go' of the project and I was like, “Beverly, did you have your period?”

“No, I had it two weeks ago.”

I’m always regular.

Oh my gosh…

It was early in the morning.

Jeremy worked at like 4 a.m. and so he was already at work. I didn't say anything to him because here we had been together for 7 years and we didn’t have any kids together.

His son was up and out of the house. We didn’t raise Sebastian together and he lived with his mom. And we had our girls every other weekend.

We had free time to do things.

We were kind of in that place where we were okay with that phase of our life and the fact that we probably weren’t going to have more kids.

So I took the test and immediately it came back positive.

Oh my gosh…

I texted Jeremy and I was like, “I have a surprise for you.”

“What?”

He thought that I was telling him that I was coming to eat lunch with him. (laughing)

And so I texted him back a picture of the pregnancy test.

He didn’t even know I had bought one.

“Are you serious?”

We ended up telling the girls that day because they found the pregnancy test in the bathroom.

My girls and I are very ‘open door’ in the mornings and so they come in and out frequently.

And they saw it.

So we were excited.

Madyson was in second grade and she told her teacher right away because there was a boy at school whose mommy was having twins. So Madyson had to announce that her mommy was pregnant too.

Mrs. Wilson had told me congratulations and I was like, “I just found out this morning.” (laughing)

Jeremy’s ex-wife had had some fertility issues and so when we first went to Dr. DeHart, that was what our major concern was.

I had never had any issues but we wanted to make sure everything was okay.

So we had a sonogram.

She looked good.

Her heart rate looked good and everything looked great, but there’s additional testing that you can get done. I think it is 11 or 13 weeks, somewhere around there. Blood work and also an additional sonogram.

We went ahead and had that done.

And Dr. DeHart was like, “Kelley you need this done because it makes Jeremy feel better. You don’t have any risk factors.”

Jeremy had had genetic testing done and he was good, so we went ahead and had it.

And I remember thinking…it’s just an extra opportunity for us to see her.

At that time we didn’t know she was a girl. The whole time that was the big discussion. I thought it was a girl and I think Jeremy thought it was…I don’t know, did you think it was a girl?”

Jeremy:

“I was hoping it was a girl. But I had a feeling it was a boy.”

Kelley:

“Madyson and I were like, “It’s a girl. We know it’s a girl.”

So we ended up deciding that we we were going to have a reveal party.

So we had another sonogram at the regular time and they put the gender in an envelope. She put it between two pieces of paper and sealed it. And I immediately took it to work, because I knew that if it was left in my hands, I would cheat.

I gave it to my friend Crystal at work.

Later on she was like, “Kelley I was for sure that you were going to text me and ask me what it was!” (laughing)

I had planned it that on a Tuesday we would get the results, and on Saturday would be our reveal party.

So then on Saturday we found out that it was a girl, and we were all excited.

Except for my oldest.

She was devastated. (laughing)

She just didn’t want another sister.

So then it was New Year's and everything was still looking really good.

We went to our friends Rick and Melissa Hodge’s house for New Year's.

She’s an OBGYN doctor and there were a couple of other OB docs there as well. There was an anesthesiologist there also, Dr. McKay. Jeremy got to know him and they became really good friends.

Some labor and delivery nurses were there also.

It was weird, looking back, because it was like setting us up for good things.

I’m glad that Dr. McKay was there and that Jeremy got to meet him.

The following weekend, it was a Friday actually, and I just didn’t feel right.

You know that ‘off’ feeling?

So I told the girls, “Let’s just watch movies in our bedroom.”

And we let them make pallets on the floor.

And then I woke up in the middle of the night.

And I was spotting.

This isn’t right.

The OB brain in me was like, ‘Okay…this is the nurse curse. I just know too much.’

And then I called Dr. DeHart’s line.

I believe in signs.

The nurse that called us back told me her name was Midge. And come to find out, I worked in post-partum care with Midge.

Midge is a nurse practitioner and I didn’t know until that time that she takes calls for Dr. DeHart.

“Oh Midge, it’s Kelley.”

I told her what was going on and she said, “Okay Kelley, I think you need to go ahead and go in.”

So we called my parents in the middle of the night and they told us to drop the girls off with them. Thankfully my parents are both retired and they live here in Wichita.

As we were driving, I told Jeremy that I was already starting to have contractions. I kept breathing through them.

And it was too much.

This is not right.

So we showed up to labor and delivery, and they were all girls that I worked with on third shift at that time.

They were like, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Oh Lord do I know.”

They took me back to a room and put me up on a monitor and they said, “Okay, well what’s going on?”

“I’ve been spotting and the nurse practitioner told me to go ahead and come in.”

The resident that came in was Dr. Doane and she was actually a really good friend of ours. I knew all of the residents, but she was one of my favorites.

She came in and she said, “Well what’s been going on in the office?”

And I said, “Well I know that I have low lying placenta.”

Dr. DeHart had said that, but he was never concerned about it.

He just said, “You know Kelley, it will probably go up by the time you’re ready.”

She said, “Well lets go ahead and do a sonogram of your placenta and just make sure that’s not why you're spotting.”

So they came in and did an ultrasound of the placenta.

And everything looked good.

They watched me.

The standard is Tylenol and Benadryl and to watch you.

If baby looks good, they send you home.

I wasn’t dilated.

So they sent me home. It was around breakfast time.

We went home and I slept all day.

And it was a nice day.

Jeremy got on the roof and he was taking down all of the Christmas lights.

I remember that.

When I finally woke up, he was like, “We should probably go over and see the girls. They’re probably freaked out. They haven’t seen you all day and mom and dad got Taco Pronto and they were like, “Come over and see us.” ”

So we went over there.

And while I was sitting there I started having contractions again.

I had Dr. Doane’s cell phone number so I just called her. (laughing)

“Dr. Doane, this is Kelley and I think I’m contracting again.”

“Well how far apart are they?”

“I haven’t been monitoring them, but just a second.”

So we were sitting there for a while and they were like a minute to two minutes apart.

And she says, “You have to come back in.”

Somewhere in there we had called Midge again also, and Midge was upset that they had sent me home.

“Kelley, get back in there.”

So we went back in from my parent’s house.

Then at that time, Dr. Brubaker, one of the other residents, got involved because Dr. Doane was off.

She checked me and this time, I was dilated.

They decided they were going to put me on magnesium sulfate to stop the contractions and for neuro-protection as well.

It was early.

And I was only 23 weeks and some change at that time.

“We’re going to have the NICU docs come in and give a game plan, Kelley.”

I’d never been on magnesium sulfate, but I’d taken care of patients on magnesium sulfate.

When you’re a police officer and you’re given a taser, you have to be tased. I somewhat think nurses should be given a little bit of magnesium sulfate to understand how these patients feel, because it was horrid. (laughing)

I instantly started vomiting.

Jeremy can’t stand hospitals.

We were going to go to lamaze classes because I was afraid he wasn’t going to make it through the delivery.

My other two were vaginal deliveries at the Birth Care Center and they were great. I had pushed once or twice with Kayla and once with Madyson. My epidural had never taken with Madyson so I pretty much had her naturally anyways.

So here we were.

I was getting sick and I was thinking, 'Oh gosh.'

The NICU doc came in and he talked to us.

I was only 23 weeks and 5 days along.

He asked about resuscitation.

“If you delivered right now, what would you want?”

“Full resuscitation.”

“Okay then we’re not even talking about a 23-weeker Kelley, we’re going to talk about a 24- weeker. We’re going to go ahead and order steroids. This is our plan of care for now.”

“Okay.” “

Jeremy:

“He had a book that had all of the percentage rates, statistics.

A baby born under 24 weeks…the survival rate is next to nothing.

So he was like, “We have to get you through the 23rd week and at least get you to 24 weeks, because then at least the increase is a 25% rate of survival.”

And I was like, “Man, that’s still not a whole lot, but at least it’s not zero.”

Doc said, “So we’re just going to try to get you to the 24 weeks.” “

Kelley:

“I think the age of earliest viability now is, I want to say, somewhere right around 22 weeks. We were at Children’s Mercy later on and they had 23-weekers like it was nothing.

So 24 weeks seems pretty good now.

I felt bad because one of the labor and delivery nurses, her name is Bernadette Sanders, she had to give me my steroid shot.

They give those shots in the butt and it hurts so bad.

And the next day she was the nurse on duty again that had to give me the second one as well. (laughing)

I was like, “Oh Bernadette, you have to see both sides!”

But I started contracting again.

They had kept me on magnesium sulfate for 12 hours, and then they took me off.

Dr. O’Hara was upset because she wanted me on it for like 16 hours.

I think you can be on it for 24 hours.

Dr. O’Hara came in and talked to us.

She’s maternal fetal medicine.

There are two of them that work Wesley, Dr. Farley and Dr. O’Hara.

It's kind of a preference on the OBGYN as to which one they use.

I like both of them.

So Dr. O’Hara came in, and Dr. Hodge came in as well.

And they were sitting there with us and they were joking because the contractions had stopped.

They were like, “You know what, at 40 weeks we’re going to have to induce you Kelley. That’s what’s going to happen.”

Their prognosis was that this was a fluke thing.

You know, like I was going to need to take it easy, but everything would likely be okay.

The nurse in me was like, “I Googled everything. There is all this medication that I can be on. What else can we be doing?”

And Dr. O’Hara was optimistic like, “Nope, I don’t want you on bed rest because it can increase blood clots. I want you to take it easy but you’re probably going to have to be induced. That’s what’s going to end up happening.”

“Okay.”

So we stayed in labor and delivery for the night.

But then I started contracting again.

They put me on magnesium sulfate again.

And I got sick again.

But it was totally different.

The first time I was puking. The second time I was red, like apple red.

They had to bring in a fan and I just sat in front of it.

It was just a totally different reaction.

And they could only keep me on it for 6 hours that time.

So they put me back on it and they shut the lights off.

Again I stopped contracting and she looked great.

She was bouncing all over the place.

They had to take two washcloths and fold them in half, and they put two bands on me, because she liked to go under my right pelvis.

After she delivered I had the biggest bruise on my pelvis from that monitor digging in because they would pin her down so that she would quit moving in order for them to keep a heart rate on her.

She was so active. (laughing)

When they took me off magnesium and watched her, Dr. DeHart said, “I’m going to send you up to 4 Womens, which is the antepartum unit. We’ll do a non-stress test tomorrow. Everything will be good. You won’t have to be on the monitor all the time. She can move around and then I’m going to send you home and I want you to take it easy.”

"Okay."

So our game plan was to be dismissed on Thursday.

We had been in since Saturday.

Tuesday afternoon we got to go up to the antepartum unit, and then Wednesday afternoon I had my first non-stress test.

They put her on the monitor and she kind of had, they call them, variables.

She had some blurbs in her heart rate.

Dr. Bennis was a 4th year resident. Her husband was actually one of the directors at the west YMCA, where I worked out.

And we were really good friends.

She was on duty and so she was watching her on the monitor because after you have your thirty minutes on the monitor, a resident has to come up and look at the strip and say whether the heart rate is reactive or nonreactive.

So Dr. Bennis was watching it, knowing I was on there.

She said, “You know, I really would like you to get a bolus of fluid and then do the test again. I don’t like that she is having these little variables in her heart rate.”

“I haven’t had a shower since Saturday. Can I have a shower?”

“Yes that’s fine.”

So I had a shower.

I came back. I got in bed.

And they hooked me up to the monitor.

I was videotaping her heart rate and she started to have these deep variables into the 40’s.

I screamed out to the nurse.

In my mind I thought, ‘Okay I have to turn over, because if it’s a pinched cord I can move her.’

At that time they had an IUFD, an intrauterine fetal demise, or fetal death in utero, on the floor that was delivering.

If they’re under so many weeks, they’ll deliver them up on 4 Womens, down the hall from where I was.

And they also had a surgery patient that was coming back.

Here I was supposed to be this normal patient that was going to be on the monitor, so the nurse had the door open and was watching my strip out in hall, but she had these other things going on as well.

So I yelled out and I turned the other way because her heart rate was going down again.

The nurse brought in a wheelchair and slung me into the wheelchair and she goes, “We have to go downstairs. We have to get you to labor and delivery.”

So I frantically started calling Jeremy, because this was his first day back to work.

“They’re taking the baby!”

This was Wednesday.

We got down to labor and delivery.

The doors opened and Dr. Bennis was standing there.

“If you weren’t on that elevator, I was coming up to get you.”

They wheeled me back to the OR rooms.

We have seven labor and delivery rooms that are back by the OR.

They put me in a room and put me on the monitor.

Rosie was my nurse.

Rosie was the nurse that trained me when I became a nurse at Wesley.

Rosie has this white hair, a bob, and we always joke that Rosie may have delivered me because she started in October of 1982, which is when I was born.

Her being there was calming.

It was like it was meant to be.

“She’s a 24-weeker Kelley. We don’t have 24-weekers on the monitor all the time. This could be completely normal and we don’t know it. It’s okay.”

She got her completely calmed down.

She got her on the strip.

And everything looked good.

Dr. Bennis got off at seven and she said she wanted to keep me down there.

She came in and she apologized to Jeremy.

“I’m so sorry for upsetting Kelley.”

He had driven there frantically when I called him to tell him they were taking the baby.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Dr. Bennis said, “I want to keep you in labor and delivery tonight. I don’t feel comfortable sending you back up to 4 Womens. It’s what the protocol is, but I just don’t feel comfortable.”

Now we’re huge KU fans and the KU game was on that night. We watched the game and they won.

And I was like, “Okay, all is right with the world.” (laughs) We were sitting there and all of a sudden I told Jeremy, “We can’t have a January baby.”

My kids are May and June babies.

She was due April 29th.

I wanted that April, May, June lineup.

I wanted that April baby with a diamond. I had the emerald, and my pearl.

I had it all planned out. (laughs)

“I don’t even know anybody that’s born in January. We can’t have a January baby.”

He looked at me and he goes, “My cousin Richie was born in January.”

His cousin Richie died two years before, in a car accident.

Jeremy and Richie were the same age.

And they were extremely close.

We hadn’t talked about Richie since he had passed away, ever. I had only met him once before he passed away.

So it was just weird that he would bring up Richie.

It was just weird to say, “We can’t have a January baby.”

And then for him to say, “Richie was born in January.”

We even called his mom that night and asked if Richie was born in January.

It was just weird.

So through the night we were laying there.

And I remember waking up and telling him, “My back is killing me.”

I had a car accident in 2010 and I have arthritis in my hip.

So Jeremy was like, “You know, you’ve been in bed since Saturday. That’s got to be what it is.”

I was like, “Okay.”

Being a labor and delivery nurse, I would just unplug myself from the monitor and go to the bathroom. And then I would get myself back into bed and put myself back on the monitor.

But the next time I got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed that I was spotting.

I got back in bed and I called the nurse.

“My back is just really hurting.”

“Do you want a heating pad? How about I get you some morphine?”

“No, I’ll take the heating pad but I need the clarity. I don’t want to feel out of control. I don’t want you to make me fuzzy, because something is going on.”

So then I started watching it. I looked at Jeremy.

“I’m having contractions.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes. I’m timing them.”

So I called the nurse again and she said, “I’m not picking up anything.”

“I’m a 24 week uterus, not a 39 week uterus. I don’t think you have the monitor set right.”

So I moved it all the way down.

I had to get up and go to the bathroom again. They had put me on increased fluids during the night, I later found out.

So I got up and went to the bathroom again.

And I was bleeding even more.

At this point it was about 4:30 in the morning.

And when I opened up the bathroom door, there was this magnificent smell.

It was cologne.

It was Dr. DeHart.

He has the most amazing, distinguished man cologne.

Dr. DeHart...

It was calming.

He’s never there that early.

He was doing a lecture for medical students that morning, and he picked me up and put me in the bed.

He checked me and said, “Kelley, you’re already at 6-7 cm dilated. We can’t stop it anymore.”

At this point we were 24 weeks and 2 days.

This was the day we were supposed to be discharged.

Because that was our plan.

We were supposed to go home that day.

Dr. Doane brought in the sonogram machine.

She was transverse, instead of breech or head down, so she was completely sideways.

“We have to do a c-section.”

And then Dr. McKay, the anesthesiologist, came in.

And this ties back in to the New Year’s thing.

I didn’t ever think Jeremy would make it through a vaginal delivery, and now we were going to be having this c-section.

Dr. McKay came in and goes, “Kelley, I just saw that you’re on the board for a section. I just got off shift. I will make rounds and then I will come back and see you.”

I started bawling.

“Please do my epidural, Dr. McKay. Please do my block.”

If I can choose anything...

I think I was just grasping at straws.

I wanted to choose something.

“Okay, I’ll do your block and then Dr. George will be back there with you.”

I knew Dr. George, and I loved Dr. George.

He could do my block, but I think it was just extra comforting to me because Jeremy knew Dr. McKay.

So it was something that we could have normal.

At that time, the girls had tried to Facetime me.

They had been Facetiming us every morning.

So here I had to decline my kids, that I literally ate breakfast with every morning. So I knew the kids were going to know something was wrong.

My now 10-year old and I were so close that when Jeremy would work out of town, I would pick her up and bring her into bed with me.

So I was needing to grasp onto something.

We went back to the OR and Dr. DeHart was back there.

I sat on the table and Jeremy took his head and laid it in my lap.

They gave him a chair and I told Tara, our nurse, “Don’t worry about me, you worry about him. Because I’m worried he isn’t going to make it.” (laughing)

“Tara, I’ll be okay. I’ve been in c-sections. I’ll be taken care of. Just make sure he doesn’t pass out.”

We had a dad that passed out and hit his head one time.

So Jeremy put his head in my lap.

And I was holding on to his head.

And Dr. McKay was doing my block.

And the whole time I was going, “Are you okay? Are you doing okay? Are you sure you’re okay?”

I was talking him through it.

Jeremy told me later that his biggest fear was…

Here she is, a 24 week micro-preemie...and his whole thing was…’Is she going to have ten fingers and ten toes?’

He didn’t know.

So I got my block but then I realized that we didn’t have our phones.

“We don’t have our phones. How are we supposed to take pictures of her when we don’t have our phones?”

Tara asked, “Where are they?”

“They’re back in our room.”

“Okay, where at in the room?”

“Tara I don’t know for sure, and I don't care what you go through. If you have to go through the whole room, go through all my stuff. We just have to have our phones. We have to have pictures of her.”

Tara Wineland was wonderful. She had taught me c-sections back when I started at Wesley.

She brought us our phones.

So we were all set up in the room and Dr. George says, “Okay guys, when she is born she’s not going to cry. And that’s okay. Kelley that’s for you, because you’re used to being in a c-section with a normal baby. They always tell us that they want those babies crying, but those 24-weekers, they don’t cry. And that’s okay.”

And then we heard, “Uterus.”

And they cut.

Okay, here she comes….

And she started screaming.

(To be continued….Part 1 of 3)

Copyright © 2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.

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We are Jeremy and Kelley, and we live in Wichita, Kansas.

In the midst of our daughter being born at 24 weeks, we are Miracle Story #21.