Garrett's Birth Story - November 20, 2012

The Sliger Family:  Together at Last

To all my dear friends and family, please know that before now I wasn't trying to ignore your messages.  I just wasn't able to respond to many because 1.) it was too emotional to relive everything and 2.) I literally couldn't put down my boy from kissing him so much from being thankful that he was okay.  Now that Garrett is healthy, it all just seems like a crazy dream.  
            Garrett was born on November 20th after an agonizing 24-hour labor.  He was induced on Monday on the 19th, five days after his due date, after I couldn't sleep all night long that Sunday night.  He wasn't supposed to be induced until the 24th, but I just had a really bad feeling.  I believe that this was God's way of protecting our son because the doctor said that if we hadn't induced him when we did that he could have faced even more complications than the ones he experienced. 

            Starting from the beginning, the first six hours of labor felt strangely peaceful.  I actually couldn't even feel the contractions even though they were large and fast since I was on pitocin to induce labor.  They felt like someone was rubbing ice along my lower back.  The nurses kept coming in surprised that I didn't feel any pain yet.  The doctor wanted me to get an epidural though, so I went along with it even though I wasn't feeling anything yet.  Unfortunately, the anesthesiologist messed up the epidural.  They had to do it FIVE times.  I cried and cried.  Actually, it was the only time I cried during the whole labor and delivery process.  Unfortunately, the darn thing wore off on half of my body a short time later. 

            I was feeling a lot of pain about eleven hours in to labor; however, it was only on my left side.  It was intense back labor. I got through the pain by using the breathing techniques I learned in class as well as progressive muscle relaxation.  Brent also played a key role in helping me feel comfortable.  His loving kisses, encouraging words, and mere presence gave me strength throughout it all.  Later on in the evening, I had an allergic reaction to the epidural.  My whole body started itching.  I had deep marks across my face, neck, and arms from hours of incessant scratching.  Also, my whole face became very swollen. 

            At some point in the middle of the night, I got a fever.  They said that I got some kind of infection.  So, they put me on two antibiotics.  Then, this caused my blood pressure and heart rate to drop dangerously low requiring them to give me a dose of epinephrine to jump start my heart to a proper rate again.  Poor Brent... he felt helpless and anxious since he didn't know how to help me. 

            Thankfully, my water broke on its own.  When it did, it made such a loud popping noise that I literally jumped.  This sped up labor though and after what seemed like an eternity, it was finally time to push.  We ended up pushing for three hours.  After the first hour, the doctor was concerned because our son's head was stuck between my pelvic bone.  His head was positioned in such a way that doing a c-section would not have been a safe option.  She didn't want to full him back out the other way backwards and risk hurting his neck or spinal column.  

            Brent and I could tell that she was worried because she became very serious.  She suggested that they turn off the pain medicine booster that they had brought in a couple hours earlier.  She said that I might have more successful pushes if I was in extreme pain (i.e. doing a natural child birth after all of this craziness).  After another hour of excruciating pushing, though I still only ever felt pain in my lower back, the doctor had another talk with us.  She said that our son's head was still stuck.  At the point, I felt completely defeated.  My back throbbed, my eyeballs itched, my body felt exhausted, and I just wanted it all to be over. 

            The only thing we could do though was just to keep on pushing.  A nurse brought in a full-length mirror in the hopes that seeing everything would help me.  It actually freaked me out at first until I finally got to see our boy's head.  When I saw a head full of dark-brown hair, the urgency of the situation really hit me.  Our doctor said that since he was stuck in the birth canal that she wanted to use the vacuum extractor.  I had heard horror stories about this and started to object.  She countered by saying that it was now a point of saving our boy's life.  Brent and I agreed.

            She tried the extractor once, but it slipped off of his head.  Hearing your doctor say, "damnit," is not a reassuring sound.  Since this happened, she said that she didn't feel comfortable using it again.  He was so close to coming yet still so far it seemed.  As we were rounding out the third hour of pushing, by only the sheer gift of strength from God, he was finally born.

            The insanity of his birth didn't stop there though because he had passed his first bowel movement, meconium, while still in the womb.  The second he was born, our doctor started saying a bunch of technical terms.  Our room became flooded with eight nurses.  Our boy was placed on my stomach for thirty seconds.  His body was a deep purple color that I will never erase from my memory.  He was covered in meconium.  He didn't move.  He didn't cry.  He didn't breath.  I just held him in shock.

            The whole scene moved in slow motion.  The doctor cut the cord hurriedly, something Brent had wanted to do.  A nurse grabbed our son from me and took him to the corner.  They started pumped air in to him and shaking his limbs trying to revive him.  No one in the room would look at us.  I felt like an observer to that madness.  I remember thinking, "He will be okay.  God will make it okay.  The nurses will make it okay."  My whole body was literally shaking in pain from the delivery.  I could only look at Brent because I didn't have the emotional strength to look at our son.  Brent was crying.  No one in the room would answer his questions about whether our boy was going to be okay.

Then, they rushed our boy out of the room.  They said that he needed to go to the NICU for surgery.

            Apparently when the nurses were pumping oxygen in to his lungs, the meconium acted as a stopper.  He could take a breath in but couldn't expel the CO2.  This popped wholes in his lungs, collapsing them.  The air filled his chest cavity.  If the neonatologist, a recent transfer from Arkansas Children's Hospital, hadn't reacted instantly by putting in the chest tubes, our child would not have lived.  This whole process took such a short amount of time though it seemed like eternity.  Brent and I had been left alone in the room crying and wondering what was going to happen to our little boy.

            After he had been stabilized, we were told that the neonatologist wanted to send our son to Arkansas Children's Hospital as a precautionary measure. The original medical plan had been for him to maybe be an "ecmo baby" (google it...it's scary).  She said he could be there up to a month or two.  Through the process of being born, he also broke his collar bone, had a terrifying-looking softball sized mass on his head caused by the vacuum extractor slipping, and had to deal with my blood type attacking his blood type (called ABO incompatibility).  He got a bad infection from all of this as well.  He was life-flighted by helicopter without us just a couple of hours later.  I only got to see him for five minutes before they boarded him. 

            He hadn't yet been named because we had wanted him to make his mark on the world first.  I about had a panic attack thinking the worst possible things that could happen. I demanded that we name him before he left so that at least he'd have a name.  We had just lovingly called him Gussie, a nickname given by my best friend Carson.  We chose Garrett Evan which mean "warrior strong" and "blessed" respectively. 

            Brent went to ACH immediately.  He had to have his father drive his truck because he was absolutely devastated thinking about leaving me behind but also worrying about the safety of Garrett.  He says that that was the longest 3.5 hour drive he's ever made.  I didn't get dismissed from the hospital until the next evening.  That was the longest, loneliest, most awful night of my life.  I wanted Brent with me. I wanted to hold my son.  I wanted him to be okay.  I mourned the dream birth I guess I thought was owed to us after we had struggled with infertility issues for so long.  I cried about selfishly thinking this. I felt scared because all my friends were texting me and facebooking me asking for updates. I didn't know what to tell them because I literally had no idea what was happening.

            Without both sets of grandparents, Brent and I would have crumbled.  They stayed at the hospital the full 24 hours that it took for Garrett to come in to this world and they stayed with  us at Arkansas Children's Hospital for the ten days that he needed to stay there.  Speaking of ten days, everyone at ACH, the doctors and nurses, were amazed at Garrett's fast recovery.  Though it took about five days before Brent or I could hold him, let alone touch him for more than a few minutes, we felt so close to our son.  We kept vigil over him and watched in amazement as he recovered slowly but thoroughly.  Once both chest tubes came out and we got to hold him for the first time, I finally cried the tears of joy that I had hidden away in my heart.  Three days later when he got to breastfeed for the first time, I finally felt whole again.  Nursing him was the first time I actively got to participate in helping him get better.  It was nourishing for his body as well as for my soul. 

            The same day that he started nursing, he got kicked out of the "red room", the room reserved for the most critical cases.  His insistent cry when hungry signaled to everyone there that he was no longer the sick little baby that had shown up earlier in the week.  The daily chest scans on his lungs showed almost total improvement.  The mass on his head had disappeared.  A brain scan showed that he had no brain damage.  His anemia caused by the ABO incompatibility had subsided thanks to iron supplementation.  He had gained a good amount of weight going from the 7 pounds 14 ounces at birth to 8 pounds 6 ounces.

            After a brief stint in the "orange room" for the loud, healthier babies, Garrett got the okay to move to a rooming-in space where Brent and I could spend the night with him.  He was dismissed three days later. Before we left, one of the doctors came to our room to say that we should now treat him like any newborn, one born without complications.  She said that it really was something special to see him recover so fast from having been such a sick baby when he arrived.  She said that his lungs healed perfectly and that he shouldn't have any breathing problems and that his brain again looked perfect and that he should have no neurological damage. 

            We owe his successful recovery to the wonderful doctors and nurses as well as the cloud of prayers that hung over our family.  Our family really came through for us.  Our friends from work, school, church, and our bible study group rallied around Garrett showering him with love.  We appreciated all the people who came by our home to bring us food, company, and donations to help offset medical expenses.  The loving text messages, phone calls, and Facebook posts did wonders for lifting up our spirits.  This whole experience has humbled both Brent and myself in so many ways.  We know that we've been given the important responsibility to raise Garrett Evan up to do honor to this experience.  We'll do our best to lead him on the path towards the great man we know he is destined to become someday.