this is our first family picture <3
and this is our baby boy <3
so its been 3 months since the birth of our little boy! i couldn't be more happier than i am now <3 i would like to just say these last 12 weeks could not have been any tougher than what they were. .....okay not really! but you know what i mean, and if you don't.. well you are about to find out!
June 2012: i was 20 weeks and Zach was getting ready to leave for AIT, we found out that our little man has Spina Bifida. so spina bifida is this... in a normal person our spine is closed....
(the left is a normal spinal cord and the right is with the defect)
now there are 2 kinds of spina bifida... one being Meningocele and the second being Myelomeningocele. My little boy has Myelomeningcoele (which, if you can see, is the bottom right picture). Myelo babies usually have skin that covers the defect and the Mengie babies have no skin and theirs is more often than not worse. the defect can cause a number of different things based on where it is located on the back, ours was just about in the same spot as the baby in the picture. its hard finding that out while you are pregnant, and when they tell you what could really happen is probably the hardest thing to hear...especially on your first child. So this defect is caused by a lack of Folic Acid, usually in women but could be caused by men as well. some things that could happen to the child because of this defect are things like they have no control of their bladder and bowels, they are paralyzed, clubbed foot,they have mental disabilities or no mental functions for that matter... and a few more things that just depend on where the defect is located. when we found out what was going on and talking to the DR they had told us that out baby was paralyzed, he will have some mental disabilities, has bilateral clubbed feet, and would have a hard time controlling his bladder and bowels. for weeks and weeks every time i went to the Dr's they always asked me what i knew about what was going on with my baby and every time i had to tell them and it hurt, i would go home and cry or even cry while i was there because no one wishes that on their first child or any child for that matter. i was constantly blaming myself for having this lack of folic acid and for doing this to my child. this pregnancy was a tough one, and i told myself never again am i going to have kids and put them through what this baby has to go threw, but i eventually let all that go and finished my pregnancy...
October 2012: in my first appointment this month i was able to decide if i wanted to go vaginally or c-section.. i chose a vaginal delivery and we set an induction date. My original due date was November 13th, my little brother's (Nathan) birthday, and my DR was wanting to induce me on the 4th to have him on the 5th or 6th... so we were planning on finishing his room by the end of Oct. so we could bring him home and eventually put him in his own room. so the end of Oct rolls around and we haven't finished his room yet!!!
November 2012: i am really starting to be done now! On the 2nd i wasn't feeling really well and we went to bed just to get up in the morning and finish organizing his room and to get the hospital bags pack for me, and baby and some pajamas for Zach! we had decided that we would go to my parents house Saturday night for a last meal without the baby and then we would go to Zach's family's for lunch on Sunday. so we went to bed about 9pm (which for us is early) only for me to wake up at 5 am with the some tummy cramps, so i get up, go to the bathroom, get some water and head back to bed. 2 hours later we get up and start the day with cleaning and packing... now i am having to stop and take breaks every 5-20 minutes... i could feel that something was different, so i called the doctor that was on call up at the University of Utah and i explained to him what was going on and he told me to come in or just wait til tomorrow for my induction.. so i told him that i would wait and see what happens.. well from then on out things just went down hill. we started to think that they were contractions and so we tried to time them... 5 mins..... 2 mins.... 10 mins.... 7 mins...... 25 mins..... do you see my dilemma now? so i just brushed it off. we decided to take a nap and then finish. we slept from 2-4:30 and then i finished packing the hospital bags for us and we went to my parents house. we had some dinner and just hung around just talking and what not and i could not handle it anymore... Zach had me lay on the couch and he would rub my head and my belly and was trying to calm me down, and the only thing i felt like i could do was cry. so every time i got a cramp i just cried and my siblings kept coming up to me and kept saying, "Sissy are you okay? is it the baby? is he hurting you?" and we were trying to keep them from worrying and kept saying, " oh my tummy just hurts... yes sissy is going to be okay" just things like that... so finally my mom said why don't you just go to the hospital just to make sure everything is okay. so we took her advice and went to Timpanogos Hospital. we got all checked in and in a room and they came in, hooked me up to a heart rate monitor, a contraction counter, and a couple other ones. like 30 mins later they came in to check me and the nurse said, " you are dilated to a 3 and you are in active labor, so we are going to keep you here okay?" and Zach and i looked at each other and told them that we need to deliver up at the University of Utah, and to that they said oh you cant travel VIA personal vehicle... so lets just wait here an hour and we'll recheck you and then talk about your options.
...... 1 hour later.....
they came back in and checked me and said you're not quite dilated to a 4 yet so what we can do is set up our transport team to take you up there VIA ambulance... so i called my mom and she, my dad, and two of the family friends came over and sat in the room with us until the transport team got there. when the transport team got there and the hospital got all of my insurance papers and consent to let me leave they gave me a morphine shot (to help with pain) and a shot that started with a 'T' to help slow down my contractions... and man-o-man was i on cloud 10 million when they gave me that Morphine!!! (ha ha ha ha ha) so i got my very first ambulance ride that night however they wouldn't let Zach come with me... so he grabbed all of my things hopped in the car and drove home to grab the bags and some food and my iPod so we could play and not be bored! so we were driving in the ambulance (with no sirens :( boohoo) and by the time we got up there Zach came walking in at the same time!!! and we got all situated in a room, hooked up to more machines and a drip and then went to sleep. around 1 am the nurse came in asking if i wanted an epidural, i told her no not right now and as soon as she left i had Zach go and get her cuz the morphine was wearing off.. so i got my epidural around 1:30-2ish and it was the best thing not being able to feel my contractions.
November 4, 2012: around 8:30 am the nurse came in and announced we were going to start pushing!! so we started the practice pushes and then we stopped at 9 and i got a break (even though it was only like 2 or 3 pushes i needed that break) the doctor came in around then and they ended up putting me on oxygen because of my heart rate and so then we started pushing for real around 9:30-10 o'clock.
.............(I'll spare you all the details)....................
10:44 AM: Ryker James Sedgwick
weighed 8 lbs even and was 20 1/4 inches long
(my little miracle 3 days old)
... i saw him for 2 seconds and didn't even get to hold him. they took him away to start assessing the situation, how bad/ good everything was. when they came back to tell us how much he weighed and how long he was i asked her if he could move his legs and she had told me she wasn't sure because he hadn't moved really at all. so Zach went out and got his parents, his sister and my mom. soon they all came in and a nurse came in with them and told Zach that he could go and see little baby ryker. he was gone for 30 minutes and came back with pictures so that i could see my little baby... an hour or two later they put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me over to see him! i was so over come with joy and sadness.... joy, because i knew he was MINE! and i would be able to hold him and raise him... and sadness because he had to be here in these conditions. :( when ryker was still unborn the DRs said that he had a "bubble" of skin on his back that covered the unclosed spine (as you see in picture A)
HOWEVER!!! when he was born he had excess skin (where the dotted lines are) so they sealed it all up layer by layer! so because of that he was on a strict "no-back" orders which means he could not lay on his back for 2 weeks... so they gave us a car bed... so he could lay on his belly for the 2 weeks ordered. so that Monday rolled into Tuesday then Wednesday and he was doing SO good and they were going to discharge us on Saturday... that's when everything started to go down hill... he started to desat... which means his oxygen levels started going down the drain...so he had oxygen and we had to wait til he could stay above the recommended oxygen... so we waited..and waited and things started to get worse and worse. they said they needed to put in an EVD which does the same thing as a Shunt but it just emptied everything into bag. so then we had to wait that over that weekend until they could put the shunt in... so we got the shunt in on Monday, the beginning of week 2 and waited a couple more days just to get everything in order and so the DRS knew that we knew what to look for. We finally got to go home and take our little boy home with us! <3 i was ecstatic!! we got home and two days later we went back up to Primary's because something was wrong with his Shunt.... the DRs asked if we could wait til Friday, when our appointment was and they would look at it again.. we said okay and went home.. Friday comes around and it turns out that he had to get the shunt revised because it had started to fail... we got that all fixed and here we are now.
Jan. 24, 2013: we went up to Primary's again so that we could get his feet looked at to see what we would have to do to start getting the casting done! (casting over 5 weeks to the right) so the dr looked and ended up casting that same day! and Ryker didn't like that very much! he loves curling his little feet up and snuggling with his daddy, so this was a big change! the doctors told us that he'll have to get these temp casts off every week which brings us now to...
February 6,2013: as of current Ryker or "turtle" is cutting his first tooth, is getting week 3 casts on tomorrow.. and and is getting checked for pyloric stenosis. hopefully everything is okay! wish us luck!!!
<3
He loved his binkie
my first time holding my baby
