Babies, Etc.

It has once again been some time since I've posted here, but we have definitely had an eventful time. Our son Liam Alexander was born on July 10, 2009, followed by my wife nearly dying and having to spend five days in Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

When I arrived at the hospital where she was in labor, they were starting my wife's epidural. I had to leave the room during the epidural because it wasn't going well and they had to do it twice. My wife was in a lot of pain, and they told me there were problems with his heart rate being too low, so it was out to the lobby to take a Xanax. (I was hoping to make it through the experience without taking anything, but that didn't last long) There were a couple more scares during labor with his heart rate dropping, but the birth went well. At one point the nurse called in some sort of alarm code and a whole troupe of people burst into the room, which did not raise our confidence. He ended up doing okay and We didn't need a C-section.

After the birth, my wife suffered from a dural headache (brought on by the epidural puncturing the wrong space) but it wasn't too bad and she was able to rest a lot. Liam is a wonderful baby, and is very mellow & quiet even when he's awake. About a week later (Thursday, July 17) she woke up with a migraine that was so severe, she couldn't even sit up. I took her into the walk-in clinic and they gave her a pain shot which helped some. We went back home and put Leigha back to bed. The migraine was eased a bit, but still there. She rested but wasn't able to sleep. When I came to check on her later in the afternoon, she couldn't see much of anything - only light and dark blobs. I called the clinic and, they told me to take her to the emergency room.

Thursday was the day that my dad & step-mom were coming up to visit us & see the baby. We hadn't seen them in over a year, and everyone was looking forward to it. As they were arriving and bringing their things into the house, I was leading my completely blind wife out to the car to go to the ER. It was good & bad timing at the same time. I was able to take off and leave the kids at home with family, but we didn't get much visiting time in over the weekend.

My mom & step-dad came to the ER with us in case my wife needed extra help getting inside, and we brought Liam in so that he would be able to nurse. She was in such great pain, that it brought tears to her eyes just to sit up, let alone walk. After it became apparent that she would be staying at the hospital well into the night, we bought some formula, took the baby back home and my mom went back to stay at the hospital.

Liam took the formula no problem and slept for 5 hours at a time during the night. I was really worried about how that would go, but not in a panic since he's the third child. I felt strongly about staying home with Liam during the night and not letting him be away from both parents at the same time. Some might think babies don't know any better, but I think it's a big deal. The time my wife was in the hospital was very difficult, especially since the kids couldn't visit her. Liam was only a few days old and having to be apart from him was really hard on her. I let him sleep on her side of the bed with me, and he was merciful and only woke up once or twice each night to eat.

My mom stayed at the hospital with my wife, and she was transferred to Harborview Medical Center during the night. She ended up staying there five days, having a whole barrage of tests, and finally being released without us knowing why it had all happened. They did tell us that she had a rare brain condition called Pres (Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome) and that she should fully recover. She was released home with her vision at about 50%. She couldn't read or watch TV. Fortunately this improved over time, but even now (6 months later) she has trouble driving at night and can't handle the light in certain stores. We have also noticed decreased short term memory and brain function in some areas. For example she enjoys word games on the computer where you have to quickly unscramble letters to make words. On one game she used to achieve level 24 regularly, but now can only get to lever four or six.

Overall things are going well now. I'm glad my wife is alive and life is carrying on mostly as usual. Months after her release, they finally gave us a diagnosis & cause for everything. This did result from the epidural drawing too much fluid from the wrong space and she technically had a stroke, except that they expect full recovery. We also found out later that she would have died had we not gotten her into the emergency room that night, and even so, the doctors at Harborview were surprised to see her walking out the door.

Since this blog was started on the theme of anxiety, I will mention that I had to use Xanax to be able to sleep on most of the nights she was in the hospital. I was in grief over what might happen to her, and also for our newborn not being with mom.

So overall, I rate bad epidurals one out of five stars.