Cadence Aria was born at 5:39am on October 13th. She had to be put on Oxygen as soon as she was born because she was really tired and her lungs were full of fluid, but it was only supposed to be for an hour. They soon decided that she would have to stay in the NICU overnight and then overnight became two days (They realized that she had a heart murmur and an infection and they thought that she might have a kinked artery behind her heart) and then they started saying that she'd probably have to stay there for even a few days longer and wouldn't be able to come home with us when I was discharged from the hospital. But we only live 4 blocks away from the hospital so even though that sounded really sad I figured it wouldn't be too bad and we'd get through it okay. However, on the night before I was going to be discharged, Logan and I were just drifting off to sleep when the phone in the room rang. We instantly knew that if the phone in the room was ringing, and it was that late at night, there had to be something wrong with the baby. So Logan flew off the couch and picked up the phone and, sure enough, it was from the NICU. They said, "hey are you guys in a position where you could come down here?" Logan said, "I guess we can be, what's wrong?!" "We'll just tell you when you get down here." ...uh oh, what is so bad that they have to wait and tell us in person?! So... Logan loaded me in the wheelchair and we went down to see what was going on.
Oh, side note: my blood pressure had gotten worse since she was born instead of better so they were still watching that and planning on putting me on high blood pressure medication.
When we got to the NICU, we saw a ton of nurses and also our pediatrician (who should have been home in bed) around little Cadence's bed. At this point we started to get really worried...and they told us that she had suddenly gone really rigid, her saturation levels plummeted, and she quit breathing, she was stable again now but they were planning on life flighting her to Primary Childrens and that the helicopter was on its way. Wow! If my blood pressure was high before, it sky rocketed at this point! In fact, after they had strapped the baby into the roll away gurney thing they use to load them into the helicopter, the nurses taking care of me came down and said, "let's check your blood pressure one more time" and, as I would have expected, it was 190/109! For someone who generally has really low blood pressure, that is insane.
Another side note: My mom had been staying in a hotel with my little brothers and was going to take them to visit Aunt Janae and the boys in the morning. Her plans were flip flopped pretty quick. We called her at about midnight and said, "could you take the boys to Janae's and come down here?" In the end, she ended up leaving the boys at the hotel and making Janae go pick them up.
When we walked out to where the helicopter had landed and they let us look in and see her one more time before they took off, I couldn't handle it anymore. I stood on the grass with my mom and bawled my eyes out. I don't think I've ever cried that hard in my life. Nobody should ever have to watch their 2 day old baby be taken away in a helicopter in the middle of the night. My mom and I have both agreed that we will forever be traumatized every time we hear the sound of a helicopter.
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