Labour and Delivery (May 24

Labour and Delivery (May 24 - 25)

By the time we got to the hospital, I was already at 7 cm. My midwife thought we would be in and out of the hospital, going home with a healthy baby within a few hours.

The hours passed, and by 6 PM, my water had broken but I was still at 7 cm. At that point, I decided to get an epidural, and my midwife had to get the OB team involved because baby was showing signs of distress: his heart rate dropping and not recovering well with each contraction. I don’t want to get into the details of the labour and delivery; quite frankly it was traumatic for me and us.

By the time baby Beckett was born, at 2:52 AM on May 25, there were two OBs, one resident, two or three labour and delivery nurses, a full respiratory/resuscitation team, and my midwife (looking concerned) all crammed in the room. Beckett was breathing on his own, but he did not cry and was not moving much. I heard someone (maybe my midwife?) suggest skin to skin time with mom and baby and someone came and put Becket on my chest.

He was so beautiful, with chubby cheeks and the most precious little round lips, but something felt wrong.

My midwife kept coming and checking on Beckett, lifting his floppy arms with a worried look on her face. I remember panicking each time as the arm quickly flopped onto my chest without any resistance and without any response from Beckett. One of the more experienced OBs was wrapping up his work, said something along the lines of “I think he’s just shocked from the stressful delivery. He’ll be fine” and then left. A few minutes later, the others remaining in the room did not agree, and they called the NICU to do an assessment. The doctor from the NICU took a look at Beckett, said something about signs of “hypoxia” and “cooling for 72 hours”. Beckett was quickly taken away to the NICU with Keith following behind while I was getting stitched and cleaned up. I remember feeling numb, like none of this could actually be happening. How could everything have gone so well for over 9 months to have it all crumble in a matter of hours?

When you make it past the 36 week mark in pregnancy and everything seems healthy and normal, I don’t think your mind ever even considers the fact that your baby could end up in the NICU fighting for his life. That reality was incredibly difficult to acknowledge, let alone accept.

Comments

Aunty Mommy Guest Post

For those who don't know me, I'm Melanie 👋 - Chantale's twin sister, and known to Little Bee as Aunty Mommy 💕 Little Bee and Aunty Mommy I've been thinking about writing a guest post for a long time. I have so many thoughts, emotions, unsolicited advice, rants, stories, etc. etc. etc. that I want to share, but don't know where to begin. So, what follows is a little bit of all the above, but mostly just Auntie Mommy's stream of thoughts. There's lots more where this came from, so I expect you'll be hearing from me again soon. Little Bee Beckett is my fave guy. Seriously, I just can't get enough of his sweet little face. But he's so much more than just a cute face (he does have the cutest face though). Just cute It has been such a joy to watch Beckett grow and learn new things. Yes, he is behind, but I could not be more proud. His usual day is filled with more exercise and physio than a professional athlete (probably. I actually have no idea wha...

July Update

Hello! It's been quite a while since my last Beckett update, and I'm very sorry! I have my reasons, of which include: we bought a house, sold our old one, had a two-week therapy intensive for Beckett in June, moved, and I started back at work (plus continued with regular weekly physio appointments and less frequent other appointments of various types). It's been busy, but generally things are going well. Beckett had a two-week intensive at Canadian Center for Development (CCD) at the beginning of June. I had hopes that he would "master" independent sitting during this intensive. I think my goals and expectations were too black and white for both myself and Beckett. Beckett still isn't sitting independently. Even though the skill has not been "mastered", during this intensive - and in the weekly physio sessions since - we've seen a dramatic improvement in Beckett's body awareness, his core strength and his posture. He has all the building blo...

Hello again! Here’s an update

Happy New Year! I meant to create a blog post a few weeks ago to wrap up 2024, but life got busy and here we are. It's been a long time since I've written an update, so I guess there's quite a lot to update you all on. In October, Beckett completed his 3rd ever therapy intensive at Canadian Centre for Development. He continued to work on his independent sitting skills, weight bearing in his arms, his intentional reaching and grabbing. He did really well, and within a few weeks we really started to see his body awareness and strength improve. This is what we've been told from other families that have been through intensives - normally you see the biggest impact about a month after the intensive wraps up. This was certainly true after his 3rd intensive. His posture and strength is so much better than before. We are still constantly fighting his strong extensor thrust that results in him throwing himself backward when sitting, and makes it really difficult for him to hold...

Little Bee and Me

Search This Blog