Joshua's Birth Stats

Joshua Michael Nix

Born 9:50 p.m. May 9, 2008

Birth weight: 2 pounds 13 ounces

Birth Length: 16 inches

Gestational Age: 28 weeks 5 days

Hospital: American Fork Hospital

Joshua's Birth

As I was entering the third trimester I was excited. Tax season had ended and I soon would be able to start cutting back my working hours and would have the time to start doing some projects that I wanted to do before the baby was born. It was also spring so the weather was getting better which always makes me happier. And Brian had graduated and we walked together in April. Everything seemed to be going perfect.

On May 8, 2008 as I got ready for bed I noticed that I was bleeding a little bit. It was hardly at all, so we decided to call the doctor in the morning. The next morning we called the doctor and they did not seemed to concerned since I was on blood thinners and everything on my ultrasound from seven weeks ago looked good. They even specifically said my placenta was high on my ultrasound so unless I was having contractions it shouldn't be an issue. I wasn't so I went to work.

Later that afternoon I started having weird pains, but I looked up braxton hicks and they sounded exactly like that. They weren't too bothersome so I just ignored them. This was my first or second day of reduced hours at work so I was glad to leave an hour early. I wasn't feeling well so I went home and laid on the couch until I went and got Brian from work. We were supposed to go to the temple that night, but I didn't feel like going, my stomach hurt and I wanted to lay down. Brian came out from work and said he didn't want to go to the temple that night he wanted to clean our bathroom. I thought it was random, but our bathroom did desperately need to be cleaned because we had recently booted our cats outside, but before then, they would be put in the bathroom when we were gone and the bathroom was covered in cat hair.

We then rented Hairspray and ate dinner. I was starting to feel really uncomfortable and started watching the clock to see how close together my pains were. I was in total denial that I could actually be in labor, and I didn't want to be one of those people who go to the hospital when they aren't actually in labor. I also started kicking Brian every time I had a bad one. (I might have been in a bigger hurry to go to the hospital but my bleeding had pretty much stopped). After watching the clock I realized that these could be contractions and told Brian and he called the doctor but we just got the answering machine, and so then we called my mom. My mom and dad were at a play and we just happened to call during intermission. My mom told us not to wait for the doctor to call back but to go to the hospital right then.

Well I refused to leave without brushing my teeth because something we had for dinner had a lot of garlic in it. Brian was a little upset, but I wasn't leaving without brushing my teeth. I brushed my teeth and then used the bathroom and started bleeding heavily. We then rushed out the door to the car.

Brian drove to the hospital as fast as he could. He wasn't worried about the police, he figured if we got pulled over we might get a faster ride to the hospital. We never did, but Brian did have to slam on the brakes a few times really heavy which made me have really hard contractions. We made it to the hospital and my parents met us there. I walked to the emergency room where I was promptly put in a wheel chair and taken up to labor and delivery. When we got up there I was excited to see my doctor was already there. He was the doctor on call that night.

At this point I wasn't actually too worried because I knew there was medicines that could be used to stop labor. I was convinced they would just give me the medicine and I would either be on bed rest in the hospital or at home for the next few months but there was no way I was having that baby that night.

They hooked the monitors up to me to look for contractions and to watch Joshua's heart beat. The contraction monitor must have been placed wrong because I was early because it wasn't picking up the contractions. That was frustrating because I thought if they would realize I was in labor they would give me the medicine and everything would be okay. I just thought that as long as Joshua wasn't born they could stop the labor and make me just wait to have him. I was also annoyed with the pain of being in labor because I didn't see the point, I couldn't possibly be having the baby that night, so why didn't they just stop it. (I have since figured out that stopping the labor wouldn't have done anything for my case anyway, and the drugs are not a cure all, and talking to friends that have been on them, the drugs are quite miserable to take).

The doctor was quite absent, he said he was waiting to be able to send me up for a ultrasound. Later when I went in for my 6 week check-up he said he felt like he shouldn't send me up for an ultrasound, and after the birth he realized that Joshua would have been born up in the ultrasound area, and would have probably died. So I was quite grateful that he hung back and waited, even though it was annoying at the time.

During this time they did give me a percoset for the pain. It didn't really do too much, my labor had picked up quite a bit by the time it kicked in. I was also feeling a little nauseous, and often I will cough when I feel nauseous and it makes me feel better. I was coughing quite a bit and my mom was convinced I developed a lung infection in the last hour. By that point I was almost in transition or in transition so I wasn't able to tell her why I was coughing I just told her I was fine and she didn't really believe me. She was also trying to teach me Lamaze breathing while I was in labor, I never did pick it up.

After a while the doctor came in and said that the baby wasn't handling the contractions well and that they were going to do an emergency c-section. I thought they were going to do a spinal block and I was scared because I didn't know how I was going to be able to hold still long enough for it. I later found out that they were probably just going to knock me out. They took me back to the operating room and Brian was waiting to see if he could come in and be with me. The doctor asked me if anyone had checked me, and I said no. He checked me and popped my water. He then told me to push, I pushed twice and Joshua was out and handed to the team of nurses.

The doctor went out and told Brian that he had a baby, but he didn't know if it was a boy or a girl because he handed the baby off so fast. Brian fortunately knew that Joshua was a boy from the ultrasound and was able to come back with me. While the doctor was gone I was just laying there in shock telling anyone who walked by that my baby wasn't supposed to be born yet. One of the nurses working on Joshua told me if I listened real carefully I could hear him crying, and I could. -I later learned from a nurse that was working in the NICU that was one of the nurses that took care of Joshua the night he was born that Joshua was almost able to breath on his own (hence the crying), but he did end up having to be bagged and then put on a ventilator for a while.

Brian came back in and they sewed me up (Joshua came so fast they had to cut me a little bit), and starting pushing blood out of me. They told me I had a placental abruption which basically means my placenta tore off from where it was supposed to be. It made me bleed a lot, so they had a lot of blood to push from me. They then took me back to the labor and delivery room and hooked me up to pitocin to try to slow the bleeding. My mom stayed with me while my dad and Brian went down to the nursery to see Joshua. They were getting ready to take Joshua down to Utah Valley Medical Center (we were at American Fork Hospital). My dad has a camera phone so they took some pictures and brought it up to me.

They wouldn't let me go down to Mother and Baby where Joshua was because I was still bleeding too heavily and there are less nurses down there to take care of you. My dad said that Brian was going to go down to give Joshua his name and blessing. I was really upset because this was something I was really looking forward to, and now I was going to miss it. I asked my dad if he thought Joshua was going to die, he said probably not, but we shouldn't wait for the blessing just in case. I was quite upset. Fortunately the nurses worked it out with the transport team to bring Joshua up to my room before he went down to Provo so I could see him and I could be there during his blessing.

When I first saw Joshua I realized that everything was going to be okay, he looked a lot better than I expected. I was able to touch him for a minute, and then Brian gave him a beautiful blessing. Then they took him down to UVRMC. Brian rode down in the ambulance with him, and my dad drove down to our apartment to get some things for us including our camera. My mom stayed with me and they gave me a shot and my bleeding finally slowed enough to take me down to Mother and Baby.

Brian went down and made sure Joshua was settled and taken care of and took a few more pictures and then came back to be with me.

Pregnant with Joshua

I want to blog about Joshua's birth and NICU experience before the new baby is born. But since I am so slow at this blog I thought I should skip ahead and talk about his birth, and then go back and fill in the years in between. So here is the story of how Joshua got here.

Brian and I had wanted a baby for a while. We had been trying for a while and I was going through school as fast as I reasonably could. The main problem for us getting pregnant is that I wasn't having periods....at all. I don't really know why, and the doctors said it wasn't worth the time and money at this point to figure it out, they just put me on drugs to make me have periods. Those drugs were miserable, I felt so much worse than I do when I am pregnant, and I gained weight faster than I do when I am pregnant too. Well the drugs finally worked (the drugs also make it harder than normal to get pregnant), and Brian and I were so excited. We even went to the DI and bought a crib. (Which after reading all the recalls on cribs was probably a bad idea, we donated it back to DI before Joshua was born.)

But 4 days later I miscarried. That was devastating because we had been trying for so long, and the timing seemed perfect I would have been due after I graduated and not long before Brian graduated. Looking back we are grateful that Joshua came a little later, because if that pregnancy had carried out just like Joshua's the baby would have been born over my finals, and Brian would have had a semester with a baby in the NICU. Having Joshua in the NICU was stressful enough when we were both done with school.

The doctor said I needed to wait a few months to try again, and I went off the devil fertility pills. Amazingly I started having periods without the pills. As soon as we could we started trying again. I was late so I took a pregnancy test right before Thanksgiving. It came back negative, I thought I would have to go back on the pills, but didn't have time to deal with it right then. We went down with my family to visit my grandparents in Hurricane, Utah. We had a lot of fun, but I was a little sleepy, I took a 3 hour nap while everyone was playing around me. I don't usually nap.

When we got back to Provo we decided to take another pregnancy test before I got back on the pills. It came back positive, but Brian and I thought the test was broken because of the way the lines came up, so I sent him back to the store for more. The next day I took another test, and I thought I was pregnant, but Brian was still not sure. So the next day I took another pregnancy test and we decided that I was indeed pregnant!

We called the doctor and set up an appointment for an ultrasound to get a due date. We went in and the doctor looked and said well you are pregnant there is the egg sack, but there is no heart beat. It is probably too early, so we will take some blood now and some in a couple of days to make sure your hormone levels are rising, and we will do another ultrasound next week.

So they took my blood and my hormone levels were way up, they were high enough that there should have been a heart beat. The doctor said not to worry yet, it should double in the next two days, and if it does it means your body is still keeping the baby and things are developing. In the meantime Brian flew to New York to interview with his current employer KAPL. He flew out on Sunday and then I went to the hospital to get my blood drawn again. After that I went to my parents house for dinner. My mom was out of town visiting her parents so it was just Emily, Nathan, and my Dad. On the way there the doctor called me and told me my blood hormone levels were going up, but not enough so I probably would loose this pregnancy. I was devastated, but went to my parents house and ate dinner without saying anything. I did take a cry break in the bathroom.

I left rather quickly and was finally able to get a hold of Brian on the phone and bawled all the way home. I was so upset I didn't even lock the door that night. Amazingly after that Brian did really well at his interview and got the job. Brian wasn't quite sure that everything was lost, and when we went back in for the ultrasound that week, there was Joshua's heartbeat. I guess my body was really excited about being pregnant and so I had high hormones or something. We went in for another ultrasound just before Christmas and everything looked good then too.

We decided to tell our family that we were pregnant over Christmas, which was really fun because everyone was so shocked. We made homemade frames that said World's Best Grandpa on them and gave one to my dad, and emailed one to Brian's dad and step dad. (It would have cost $50 to get it to them in time for Christmas, so they got digital gifts).

The rest of the pregnancy was pretty uneventful up until Joshua was born. I took Lovenox almost everyday to keep from getting a blood clot and worked full time, while Brian was going to school. I was lucky because I didn't have to work tons of overtime even though it was busy season, which was good because I was pretty tired.

We were convinced Joshua was a girl and called him that up until the ultrasound. I guess he was sick of it because there was no mistaking him for a girl. He was also a jealous little kid. The beginning of May my friend had a baby and Brian and I went to visit her. I never got kicked so hard by Joshua as when I was holding her baby. I think he was upset she was here and he wasn't because he came four days later.

Well that's the story up until Joshua was born.