March 19th 2013 was a happy...and scary day for our growing little family. Our little Kate was born 3 weeks early. I went into labor at about 4 a.m. in the morning. I finally decided it really was labor a little after 6 a.m.. I got up, showered and got ready to go. When McKay woke up we called my parents and they picked up Cambri and we headed to Orem Community Hospital. By the time I got all checked into the hospital and they got me checked out they confirmed that I was in labor and started prepping me for the C-section. All the prep went well and Kate was born at 9:22 a.m. I heard a good cry and thought, great everything is okay. Then I didn't hear anything and saw respiratory therapist take her to the surface they check the babies. I was trying to see what was going on and saw a purple little arm and foot from behind the doctor. I started to get a little worried and then about 7 or 8 nurses showed up and I got more worried. The anesthesiologist started to give me a play by play of what was going on. She had aspirated some fluid and the respiratory therapist was using something to breath for her. McKay turned white and got very light headed so a nurse got him some orange juice. He was okay after that. I also started having trouble breathing at one point, I think it was partially due to what was going on with Kate and partially the effect of the spinal tap they gave me to numb me. They then took Kate out of the room while I continued to get stitched up. This was probably the worst part of the day for me. I didn't know what was wrong or what was being done about it. McKay went with the baby and I just had to stay behind.
Once I was stitched up and in my room is when I started getting word about what happened and the play by play on what was happening. I got a lot of medical mumbo jumbo thrown at me that went over my head in my current condition. Then it was dumbed down for me and I'll give you the highlights. They think she was born fine but at about the 4th or 5th second of her life she aspirated the fluid and it had damaged her lungs. They had her on a cpap machine that was blowing air into her lungs and at the same time they were suctioning the fluid out of her lungs. They were waiting to see how she did to see if they needed to transport her to the UVRMC NICU. By about 4pm they decided she did need to be transported. Even though she was taken in a van and not a helicopter it was the life flight team that transported her. It took the team a few hours to prep her and make sure she was stable enough for transport. At this point I still had not seen her more than just the few minutes trying to get glimpses of her from behind all the doctors and nurses. Before they took her they did bring her into my room for about 2 minutes. They sedated her and put her on a ventilator for the transport. McKay left went to UVRMC to continue to see what was going on. They also gave her some antibiotics in case of infections.
Kate ended up spending 12 days in the NICU. The first few she was on a ventilator and then spent another few days on the cpap. She was also being fed through a tube that went down her nose and straight into her stomach. Her last couple of days in the hospital she was there just getting up the energy to eat on her own. Except for the 2 minutes before she left Orem Community Hospital I didn't get to meet my baby girl until March 23rd (she was 5 days old). Once I was released we went straight for me to meet her. I spent about 5 days spending the entire day at the hospital to be there for eat when she needed it. During that time I got to spend some good time with her but I missed being with my little Cambri.
On Saturday March 30th we got a call letting us know that she was ready to come home. We were so happy. We learned so much through this experience and we had so many little blessings though it all. We had a lot of family that helped us, we couldn't have done this without them. Our families help made it possible for me to spend the days with Kate while they took turns watching Cambri. We had meals brought to us by members of the ward which made it so we didn't have to buy dinners and lunches every day. We had the best nurses, doctors and other health care professionals that knew what they were doing and took great care of our little girl, they also did a great job at keeping us informed and involved in caring for her.
Another little tid bit of information is that Kate was actually named Hallie for a few days. We were deciding between Kate and Hallie and it was hard to decide because I hadn't met her and even though McKay had she was pretty lifeless for the first few days. When it was time for me to be released from the hospital I had to fill out the paper work for her birth certificate and Hallie was our runner up name when we named Cambri and as a name I just liked it a little bit better than Kate. After spending some time with her as she started to come to life a little more it was starting to get uncomfortable calling her Hallie. I thought at first I just needed to get use to it, so we left it for a few days. It was feeling more and more wrong to call her Hallie so one morning I told McKay what I was feeling about the name we had chosen and he said he had been feeling the same way and was going to mention it to me soon. So we decided to try calling her Kate before telling anyone we were going to change it. We also decided to pray about it. After trying it out for a couple of days it felt right. We are so happy to have our precious Kate home! Pictures and the full story of the day we brought her home will be coming shortly!
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