Jedidiah Wayne’s Birth Story

Disclaimer to weekly readers: Our baby boy Jedidiah Wayne ended up coming early, so these next 8 weeks or so regular blog content will be a little more sporadic and will also be a space where I share weekly updates. Feel free to follow along, or keep an eye on your inbox for when more consistent home renovation and lifestyle/motherhood find its place back here. Thank you for all of the support 🤍

Trigger Warning: I know that baby talk/pregnancy talk in general can sometimes be hard for people, but I know that talk of NICU and preemie babies can also be hard. Please do not feel the need to continue on if this is a trigger for you. 

If you have had a baby in the NICU for any amount of time, my heart goes out to you. This is not for the faint of heart. 

What a whirlwind of a couple of days.

Fun fact—this last weekend we actually tour out a wall in our kitchen and demolished half of it because we thought we had a good 6-8 weeks to go before baby boy made his arrival. Little did we know, Monday morning would bring a whole different story. 

Monday, 3/21

I had already had a typical OB appointment scheduled on Monday, but they actually added on an additional ultrasound since thI had already had a typical OB appointment scheduled on Monday, but they added on an additional ultrasound since the baby wasn’t turning and they wanted to make sure he was just taking his time instead of something being wrong. Over the weekend I had felt him turn, but of course he turned sideways (transverse in medical terms) which was not the goal, but I was glad that he was at least starting to go in the right direction.

Because he was transverse, I knew that the doctor’s appointment already wasn’t going to be the best and that there was a chance that something else could be causing him not to turn. I told Kyle on Monday morning that I felt like something was wrong and was trying to prepare myself for what I thought was going to be brought up—close monitoring of the baby and probably the talk of a c-section if things didn’t improve.

Kyle was so sweet and told me not to worry, and that everything was going to be fine. Kyle left for work, Paislee and I got ready for our day, I dropped her off at my parents house, and I drove away with knots in my stomach just wondering what was going to happen next at my appointment.

I checked in just like I always did, cracked a couple of jokes with the lady at the front desk (OBGYN offices are always so awkwardly quiet, I feel like she needs a laugh now and then), and waited.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I got called back for my ultrasound.

She was asking me very specific questions about baby movement, if I had been sick recently and how much water I had been drinking. Surprisingly (I hate drinking water so this was a win for me), my water intake had been really good for me, mostly because I was stuffed up from the end of pregnancy plus those Texas March allergies and the fact that Kyle had a cold the week before so I was trying to flush everything out before it caught up to me. The baby was also moving around like normal, and he had just made a massive flip this weekend so I wasn’t concern at all about baby movement.

Then she said it. She said what no pregnant mama ever wants to hear. “I will be right back, I need to go get the doctor.” 

The doctor has never been in that room with me. Every conversation I have ever had in there has always consisted of things like “well you definitely have a boy”, which I had heard from her since my 12 week scan, and asking about Paislee and how she was doing.

When she left the room for what seemed like forever, I texted Kyle and asked him if there was anyway that he could get over to the doctors office because I didn’t know what was wrong but I knew something was. 

Thankfully he works about 15 or so minutes away from the office and was able to head over. But unfortunately, he didn’t make it in time for the doctor to come in, take a look, and tell me that my amniotic fluid was way to low and that I would need to head to the hospital right away to get fluids for 24 hours and hope that helps so that we could move on in the pregnancy. 

I couldn’t help my pregnancy emotions, I just knew that there was going to be so much more than that. In no way was I ready for the hospital, Paislee hadn’t spent the night away from us yet, and Kyle was currently driving from work in a suit because he was supposed to have a council meeting that night. 

They checked to see if my amniotic fluid had been leaking, and when it wasn’t we were on our way to the hospital. 

When we got to the hospital, I was told that my condition was called oligohydramnes, or oligo as everyone called it, which is a condition in which there is not enough amniotic fluid for the baby. Then they proceeded to tell me the different ways that this could go, the first step getting me on fluids right away and constant monitoring of the baby. I was going to have another ultrasound in the morning to see where things were at.

Here’s the different ways I was told this could go:

Best case scenario- I would be pumped with fluids, get a scan in the morning to check for amniotic fluid levels, the baby would be monitored and doing well, and everything looking a lot better which would allow for us to go home within 24 hours or so. The doc seemed confident in this one, so I was trying to be too.

Not The Best But Not The Worst- All of the above but if my fluids were almost to the right levels (not quite where needed) in the scan the next day, I would stay another 12-24 hours to pump remaining fluids into me to get levels back to where they needed to be, hopefully be fine, and move forward with the pregnancy as long as we could. 

The Final Option- Seeing no improvement with the scan and have to take the baby out via c-section. 

Knowing that nothing was going to change with me in the next few hours, Kyle ended up going home and grabbing a bag for P to be overnight, and a couple of bags for us. Again, we had no idea how long we were going to be there, but having some of our things even if we were just going to be there for 24 hours was going to be very helpful.

This is when things get crazy. 

While Kyle was gone, we went into tornado watch. If you’re in Texas, you know that we go into watch often during this time of year and it doesn’t truly mean a lot. But, being away from P, our house being farther away, and being alone in the hospital I was starting to worry a little bit. 

Kyle got P all set up at my parents house, and started heading this way with our dogs to drop them off at his parents house which is not too far from the hospital. When he arrived to drop the dogs off at his parents house, an announcement over the hospital and phones everywhere started going off, because we were not just in tornado watch anymore, we were in a tornado warning. With a now confirmed tornado following Kyle from our house to his parents to the hospital that was a matter of minutes behind him. 

I was put into the hallway with all of the other moms who were laboring or had just had their babies. I sat and waited it out as there was a crazy storm at the DFW airport (only a few minutes from the hospital), and I was just praying that Kyle would find a spot in the garage with the ping-pong sized hail that was predicted to come, and that he would make it here. 

Right before the storm got bad, Kyle walked in. But I will never forget that moment of having no idea what is going on with my baby or my husband as one of the most emotional and stressful days was coming to a close. 

Anyways…after the whole tornado fiasco, both myself and the baby continued to be monitored and fluids were still being pumped. There were no answers and a lot of high emotions. 

The whole time baby was being monitored he looked great. The nurses were almost starting to convince me that maybe all the fluid was in a pocket under the baby that just didn’t show up in the ultrasound because he was doing so well. 

We passed time with card games and watching Guy’s Grocery Games, until about 10:30 the nurse walked in and told me that I needed to stop eating or drinking anything after midnight just in case I would need to go in for a c-section the next day. I also had to get a steroid shot that was supposed to help the little guy’s lungs develop since that was the biggest concern at that point if he were to be born that early.

Tuesday, 03/22

If you’ve been around for a bit, you know that Kyle and I got married in his parents dining room two years ago (3/22) right before COVID hit. So, in the grand scheme of things I guess you could say we got a night (or 3) away for our anniversary! Lol. 

After a long night and waiting for a while in line for the scan the next morning, at around 9 am we finally got seen and had our ultrasound. The lady who administered it wasn’t supposed to tell us much, but I knew by the way that she was reacting that things weren’t looking much better than they did the day before. She did let us know that the day before my fluid level was at a 4, and in that moment it was at a 6.5.

Kyle and I both knew at that point those were not the numbers the doctor was wanting to be able to move forward with the pregnancy, so we began to mentally prepare to meet our son.

At 12:45pm, our suspicions were confirmed when a nurse came in and said that the doctor decided that the baby needed to come out by 1:30pm. 

At that moment, they kicked Kyle out of the room to go grab some food for himself and call who we needed to call while I was prepped for surgery. Everything happened so fast that I don’t think I truly processed what was going on until after everything happened. 

I’m almost thankful that a c-section happened this way, because I was a little nervous about getting one. I had such a great birth experience with Paislee and was honestly looking forward to another similar experience. But I didn’t have a say in the matter, and because he wasn’t head down we had no choice. 

The c- section itself was not as bad as I anticipated it would be, and the minute Kyle walked into the operating room scrubbed up they started cutting. In about 3 minutes, I heard Jedidiah Wayne crying (apparently he was grunting, but I will take what I can get) which honestly made me tear up a bit because we had no idea what kind of condition he would be in when he came out. He was born at 4lbs even, and was 17.5 inches long. He looked like a completely normal baby, just smaller. Kyle quickly went away with him up to the NICU, and was able to spend those first moments with him while they put him on oxygen and did his initial tests to figure out what his story was. 

Jed was and is the best anniversary gift that we could have ever gotten.

As the chaos calmed down and I started getting stitched back up, my doctor told me that they made the right choice because there was almost no amniotic fluid in there with him. 

After surgery, they took me straight up to the NICU so that I could see him for the first time. He looked perfect. And tiny. But mostly perfect. That’s when we found out what we figured already, that his lungs would need some help developing. We also weren’t sure if something was wrong with his kidneys, since there wasn’t any amniotic fluid. 

Since the birth, there has been so much that has happened with our baby Jed. As I know more and give ourselves time to process the information that we receive, I will share when we are ready. 

Obviously, the plan wasn’t to have a baby at 32 weeks. Plans change every single second of every single day, but God knew that for some reason this is exactly what Jed needed even though there have been moments through this process where I have had so much fear and doubt. 

No matter what happens with our baby boy, no matter what hard things we hear from doctors, and no matter how long he is in the NICU, God has been and will continue to be good and present every single day, and that’s what we’re holding onto. 

Welcome to the world, Jedidiah Wayne. We love you so much and are so happy to have this bonus time with you.