Saturday, April 25, 2015

The Adventures of Mackenzie Jane

Hey everyone, a few people have been asking us exactly what's going on with Lauren and our sweet little girl.

I have included the timeline and details as best I can below. We have talked and will continue to try and update the blog as we get more news about Mackenzie over the coming days.

As some of you know Lauren was having some severe varicose vein problems during the last half of her pregnancy. As a result doc wanted to induce her on her due date. We were both torn about what to do. It wasn't completely medically necessary but very reasonable for Lauren's issues. All the way up through Wednesday morning Lauren was back and forth about going through with the induction. Thanking the Lord today that she listened to her instinct and decided to go through with it. It saved our baby's life and probably hers as well.

Lauren started the induction process on Wednesday afternoon and things went well. Baby looked good and contractions and dilation were starting to pickup. Everything went well overnight as she was having small contractions all night. They started petocin around 430 Thursday morning and things started picking up even more; stronger contractions more dilation, things were moving along well. Around 530 her water broke and was really bloody. The nurse checked her and called the doc who all agreed that it was probably just water and some cervical bleeding as a result of labor but wanted to be safe so they stopped the petocin and gave her a drug to stop contractions to monitor her and MJ. Doc rushed in for the day and came in to look at Lauren and check MJ. They did an ultrasound and everything looked good. Doc wanted to watch baby for a little and if she didn't like it we were gonna go with a c section as a precaution before it became an emergency. MJ was having minor dips in her heart rate during each contraction. Even after the contractions stopped, her heart rate still dropped a little in small, barely noticeable increments. The doctor watched MJ and she didn't like that her rate dipped just a little bit so they went in for the section. The hospital wanted her to wait until after another surgery in front of us so the doc declared it an emergency so they would be first in line. So they had to put Lauren to sleep because it's faster. Once they opened her up the uterus was full of blood and they thought it was just an abruption. MJ came out white as a ghost and not very responsive. It turns out that Lauren had a condition called Vasa Previa which is a problem where the umbilical cord attaches to the placenta wrong. This caused the umbilical vessels to be weak and when her water broke it ruptured two major vessels on the cord. The blood was some of Lauren but mostly MJ's.
They suspect MJ was hypoxic for a little while and suffered some damage from the lack of oxygen. She has some kidney and liver damage and possibly had some seizures right after birth. So they sent her to the children's hospital NICU in Jackson to receive a cooling treatment where they lower her core temp to 93 degrees for 72 hours to prevent swelling of the brain and help her body recover. She is responding to treatment, but we are really holding our breath for the MRI and EEG (brain wave study) to determine how much if any brain damage occurred. There's no way to know until then. So all we can do is pray.
The condition Lauren had her doc mentioned right before the section as a potential cause but doubted it because it's very rare and she hadn't seen one in over 15 years. There is no way to diagnose prior to delivery, no way to see where the cord is on the placenta so it's a gut call by the doc if there is a lot of blood. Doc talked to me after Lauren was stable and back in our room recovering. We were very lucky that we were already in the hospital. If Lauren had gone into labor at home and broke her water outside the hospital, the outcome would have been dramatically worse for them both. So we are very blessed that the good Lord gave them both back to me, just a matter of time to see how strong MJ is and how well her body can recover. We got some hopeful news from her neonatologist this morning. But we still have some hurdles to climb and the great unknown of her brain injury. Only time will tell. Lauren and I do not have the words to express our gratitude for the outpouring of support and prayers from our family, friends, and co-workers. Please continue to keep our sweet little girl in your prayers as we wait and hope for the best.

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