Christophers Story
 Christopher was born December 20, 1995 after a normal pregnancy, yet a complicated delivery. It was just like every other day. I sat on the couch wondering, "When is this baby going to come out?". My mother was there with me and she replied, "Soon enough honey, soon enough.". I was 40 weeks and I was ready to get this baby out of me. I'd gained 60 lbs with him, and was so miserable and uncomfortable. I felt a sharp pain in my right side and thought "This is it." But the pain seemed to get sharper, not like when I had my daughter. I still thought maybe I was in labor, so I called my husband to come home. He was home within 5 minutes and ready to take me to the hospital. I told him to call the midwife first to tell her we are on our way. She said to come in and be examined. So, we took my daughter to the babysitters and off we went.
When we arrived at the hospital, the nurse took me right into a room and left my husband and my mother out in the waiting area. The nurse examined me and then called in another nurse..who also examined me. They put on a fetal monitor and did numerous checks for the babys heartbeat. But they seemed puzzled. They couldn't find his heartbeat. They left and I sat there a little worried as to what was going on, but not alarmed that anything could possibly be wrong. Awhile passed (what seemed like forever) and the midwife showed up. She also examined me, then checked for the babys heartbeat and also had no luck. Next thing I knew, I was being wheeled to the ultrasound room. I was hooked up and the midwife left looking for the tech to do the ultrasound. The tech was nowhere to be found. The midwife seemed a little frustrated at this point and decided to do it herself. Once she got a clear picture of the babys heartbeat, I could see my husband and mothers faces drop..I knew then, that something was terribly wrong. Within a few minutes I was being prepped for surgery. As we rolled down to the OR, the midwife explained that they were going to have to take the baby. I don't remember much after that except counting backwards from 10 and only making it to 7.
When I woke up, I was in the recovery room. First thing I did was ask where the baby is. The nurse told me just to relax, that he was ok. I drifted back out and woke up again in a room. I looked up and my husband, my mother and some friends of mine were in the room. None of them looked too happy. I immediately asked where the baby was. The nurse came in and told me that he would have to be taken to a different hospital. I begged to see him before they took him. They rolled him in in an incubator type thing. He was loaded with all kinds of tubes and still bloody. His arms were straight out to his sides and he appeared to be sleeping. Then he started moving...the moving, I later found out, was a seizure. They took him away and I fell back asleep for the night. I spent the next 2 days recovering from the emergency c-section and trying to find out as much information as I could about what happened to Christopher. My husband refused to go into detail with me about what was happening, until I was better and up to it. He was traveling back and forth between the 2 hospitals everyday. He was also trying to make sure my daughter was taken care of. He was very supportive.
I couldn't take not knowing what was going on, so I told the doctors that I wanted to go see the baby. They didn't think this was such a good idea, but I didn't take no for an answer. I asked if it would be possible for me to go see him and come back that evening. The doctors checked me out, gave me some pain meds, and said it would be ok to go, as long as my husband was with me at all times, and I was to stay in a wheelchair the entire time. I agreed to this of course and we drove the 45 minutes to the hospital where my son was at.
When I got there, we went into a little room, where we had to put on a gown and scrub our hands. My husband wheeled me into a room full of babies. The room was full of beeps and machines and tiny little babies that were very sick. Christopher was towards the back of this room. When we got to him, I stood up and looked in his basinet. He was covered in tubes still, but all cleaned up. He was intebated, and under a warmer and he appeared to be sleeping. I asked my husband to go get the nurse for me. The nurse came over, introduced herself and tried to explain to me what was happening. She told me that he was put into a phenobarbitol coma because he was having multiple seizures at birth. She explained he would be in this coma for a little while until the doctors ran some tests and got the results back. She tried explaining some other things , but to be honest, I tuned her out. I was scared that he wasn't going to make it. I reached to him and put my finger in his tiny little hand. His hand was so loose. I rubbed his little back with my other hand. I broke down. I couldn't understand what was going on. My husband then said it was time to leave, so I kissed his little cheek and sat back down in the wheelchair.
When we arrived back at the hospital where I was, I made it known that I was ready to go home. So the next day, the doctors released me. I spent the next few days going back and forth between home and the hospital. I was getting a bit stonger, physically, but emotionally I was a wreck. I kept asking myself, "what could have happened, what did I do wrong, was he going to make it?".
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