since we talked last, we've bought a house, bought another dog, are in the midst of establishing a business and had a baby.
about that baby.
andersen david was born on july 10 in the middle of the night. 2:37 i think it was. when the midwife said i should move to the bed to deliver, in my head i said, "she's optimistic. she has no idea how long this is going to go." but i couldn't commit energy to verbalizing that, so it stayed in my head. when i yelled "get that baby out!" she calmly replied that i was the only one who could do that. she was right. i turned to nik and said, "we're having our baby." 5 minutes later our sweet andersen made his way into this side of the world.
we had only been at the birthing center for an hour.
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as the second child, i can't help but compare andersen to oliver. their pregnancies, their births, their first months of life. like a wad of wires, it's an entangled mess of similarities and differences. of "exactly likes" and "where did that come froms." but they look like brothers. that's for sure.
oliver's pregnancy was textbook and easy, andersen's was filled with exhaustion and nausea. oliver's birth was 37 hard hours, andersen's was 2 intense ones. they're born a half a calendar year apart - oliver in the winter, andersen in the summer. oliver has the brightest blonde hair and blue eyes, andersen has the richest brown hair and what we think will be green eyes.
oliver L O V E S andersen. from the day they met, oliver has declared "this-a ah-ver's baby."
about a week after andersen was born, we got a call that he had screened positive for 2 blood tests - both related to the inability to digest properly. as we read through the fax the state of texas sent our midwife, we learned that no infant born with this disorder survived past the first month of life.
we began frantically calling the genetic specialists the state had referred us to. more tests needed.
i should pause here to tell you a piece of our story that will tell you where our minds were. you see, this was july 2015. in august 2014, we miscarried. we found out when they couldn't find a heartbeat. a couple of days later my body started the process my head knew was coming. expecting a heavy period, i lost so much blood so fast i fainted on the bathroom floor. in the er, after taking my vitals they rushed me back to a room where they stabilized me with morphine, anti-anxiety meds and an iv. a short while later, we miscarried the baby and went home in exhaustion. convinced it was a girl, we named her abigail. that was the name we kept thinking of before we found out she was gone, so it stuck. the name means Father's joy.
so when we got the initial blood work results for andersen, in the back of our minds we had just lost abigail. and we thought that we were about to lose another.
one long week later we got the genetic test results - a false positive. total relief.
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on august 5, we flew up to michigan for a friend's wedding. andersen wasn't feeling well, but we had been to the doctor the day before and got a list of things to look for - eating well, going to the bathroom, etc.
on the second leg of the flight, the one from dallas to detroit, i realized that andersen had stopped breathing.
i patted his chest - he gasped some air in, then fell limp again. but i thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because i felt his heart beating and saw a vein in his neck pulsing. i didn't understand how someone could still have a beating heart but not be breathing. so i woke nik up. same thing - andersen's lungs weren't moving but then he gasped for air again.
we called for the flight attendant and moments later a cardiologist was sitting next to us in the aisle.
the oxygen mask brought color back into andersen's gray, limp body. the eyes that had gone black and rolled back into his head were returning to a more vibrant color. [just an aside - my stomach still turns recounting this.]
the flight attendant asked the doctor if we needed to do an emergency landing - he looked down at andersen and said yes. only recently nik told me we were already on our second (of two) oxygen tanks, and we didn't have enough to make it the final hour of the flight to our final destination.
we happened to be flying near indianapolis. 15 minutes after the doctor told the pilot to land we were on the ground. i didn't realize it at the time but apparently it was a bit of a nosedive.
we didn't know it until later but riley hospital for children is one of the best children's hospitals in the nation. when we arrived, andersen's heart rate was 233. 233! they began doing tests. blood drawn, an ekg, even a spinal tap.
they cared for our family for 5 days, 3 of which he needed to be on oxygen. the prognosis was RSV, which all of us get and call a cold. but to an infant it can be horrific. the doctor explained to us that the virus tells the infant brain to stop breathing. like i said, horrific.
we are so thankful to american airlines and the crew. the cardiologist on board was amazing. the doctors on staff at Riley were on point and compassionate to our entire family. and thank God that He put this all together and saved our son.
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andersen never needed resuscitation, he was never without oxygen. which means that he's normal and healthy.
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i'm banged up and bruised. i've got a worried edge to me now. the line between being alive and not is so thin. there's a part of me that's waiting for the other shoe to drop, but that part is waning. motherhood has marked me.
but there's joy in that.
andersen, God has great plans for you.
i'm so thankful that He has given you to us.
