NICU Awareness Month -part one
In support of
Ailah Rose Hardy
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Ailah Rose Hardy
Considering it is NICU Awareness month, I’ve decided to share a little of Ailah’s birth story.
The day before Ailah’s due date, April 21, 2020, I was unable to feel Ailah move. I tried everything! Fruit juice, bouncing on the yoga ball, candy, laying on my left side, loud music. Nothing was happening! Everyone kept saying she was so big there was no where to move. All day I tried not to worry about it, but by 11pm that day I decided to go get checked. My amazing friend Kim took me in, where they decided that they wanted to do a stress test. They discovered that although she had a heat beat that was decent, there was no movement and no breathing happening.
They called the doctor on call and turned to me and said- you are going to be a mom in 15 mins!
I called Jenna and she rushed over to make it for the baby to come out. I have never had so many heightened mixes of emotion.
I was laying there like a dissected frog and just repetitively saying I was nauseated. Thank goodness for the good looking anesthesiologist who stood by me.
Jenna turns to me and says she’s out! I kept asking why don’t I hear her crying?
Then a nurse walks up me and tells me that a group of them were going to take her up to the NICU and a couple of docs were going to see me up and take me to recovery. All I was aware of was- she was born on her due date, she came out at 8lb.2oz and white as a sheet.
This is where our NICU journey started. It was decided that Ailah had a fetomaternal hemorrhage, which after some testing and labs was determined that she had lost 2/3rds of her blood to me. When she was taken up, they hooked her up to many things and put her on a cooling blanket for 72 hours with a bunch of medicines to get everything to restart. The first time seeing her, 8 hours later (luckily Jenna went up first to check and prep me), was the most horrifying sight anyone should see. She was hooked up to so many things. We went allowed to touch or stimulate her. After the third day on the blanket, they started to ween her off the heavy anesthesia they had her on and see how her mind and body were going to wake up. By the fifth day, the doctors were concerned about some of her organ functions and told me that I might have to decide in the next day or two if she would need to be transferred to do ECMO. That was a choice I could not wrap my mind around. Jenna and I stayed in the hospital with her for 5 days and then I was discharged.
Part 2 to come soon! We are in Charlotte NC doing some intensive therapies 😊 and staying super busy.
The day before Ailah’s due date, April 21, 2020, I was unable to feel Ailah move. I tried everything! Fruit juice, bouncing on the yoga ball, candy, laying on my left side, loud music. Nothing was happening! Everyone kept saying she was so big there was no where to move. All day I tried not to worry about it, but by 11pm that day I decided to go get checked. My amazing friend Kim took me in, where they decided that they wanted to do a stress test. They discovered that although she had a heat beat that was decent, there was no movement and no breathing happening.
They called the doctor on call and turned to me and said- you are going to be a mom in 15 mins!
I called Jenna and she rushed over to make it for the baby to come out. I have never had so many heightened mixes of emotion.
I was laying there like a dissected frog and just repetitively saying I was nauseated. Thank goodness for the good looking anesthesiologist who stood by me.
Jenna turns to me and says she’s out! I kept asking why don’t I hear her crying?
Then a nurse walks up me and tells me that a group of them were going to take her up to the NICU and a couple of docs were going to see me up and take me to recovery. All I was aware of was- she was born on her due date, she came out at 8lb.2oz and white as a sheet.
This is where our NICU journey started. It was decided that Ailah had a fetomaternal hemorrhage, which after some testing and labs was determined that she had lost 2/3rds of her blood to me. When she was taken up, they hooked her up to many things and put her on a cooling blanket for 72 hours with a bunch of medicines to get everything to restart. The first time seeing her, 8 hours later (luckily Jenna went up first to check and prep me), was the most horrifying sight anyone should see. She was hooked up to so many things. We went allowed to touch or stimulate her. After the third day on the blanket, they started to ween her off the heavy anesthesia they had her on and see how her mind and body were going to wake up. By the fifth day, the doctors were concerned about some of her organ functions and told me that I might have to decide in the next day or two if she would need to be transferred to do ECMO. That was a choice I could not wrap my mind around. Jenna and I stayed in the hospital with her for 5 days and then I was discharged.
Part 2 to come soon! We are in Charlotte NC doing some intensive therapies 😊 and staying super busy.
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