Story Time...

Since I don't have much to update about (always a great thing with Miss K) and it's been quite a while since I posted last I thought I'd share a few stories :o).

In January I had a lady schedule to come to my home for a workshop to learn more about Heritage Makers.  She brought a few friends along and we had a lot of fun talking and sharing life stories.  When Miss K woke up from her nap and came out to see everyone the lady asked if she had met us before, other than at the county fair where she had learned about my business.  I told her she looked familiar as well but I didn't know why, I assumed it was because I was remembering meeting her at the fair.  Then she asked how old Miss K was and commented on how cute she was, etc., as always her smallish size was brought up and I explained she had a heart condition, that's when the lady realized where she had seen us before, she asked if we had brought Miss K into the local ER before and I said "yes, she was in SVT at 280 BPM" and she said "I was the one who did her work up in the ER!"  Then she turned to her friends and said "this is that baby that came in last summer!  The one who scared us all to death!" and the other ladies, who just happened to be nurses at the same hospital as well, all said "yeah!  We remember that story!  You guys were sure she wasn't going to make it!"  Miss K has been quite the talk of the town since her scary SVT beginning!

About a month or two ago we were at Home Depot picking up some supplies.  At checkout the girl was so nice and talkative.  She saw the baby carrier in the shopping cart and asked if she could see the baby.  Our conversation went sort of like this (though for sure not word for word, lol):

Checker:  Boy or girl?
Me:  Girl (lifting the cover)
Checker:  Aww!  She's so cute!  And so tiny!
Me:  She's actually kind of chunky, almost 16 pounds!
Checker:  How old?
Me:  Almost 6 months.
Checker:  Awww, my baby girl is almost 13 months, I can't believe how big she is now, seeing younger babies always makes me miss the tiny baby she was.
Me:  Yeah, she was quite tiny to begin with.
Checker:  My baby was 5 pounds 14 ounces.
Me:  Wow!  My baby was 5.12!
Checker:  My baby was delivered via emergency c-section.
Me:  Mine too!  Her heart was beating too fast.
Checker:  My baby's was too!  Does your baby have SVT?
Me:  Yes she does!  Your's does too?
Checker:  Yes!  She was life flighted to Primary Children's last fall in heart failure.
Me:  I'm so sorry!  Is she alright?
Checker:  She's great, she's now on heart medications.
Me:  Our little one is too.

We held up the line of customers behind me while she gave me her Facebook name so we could be friends and keep up with each other.  Quite the coincidence to run into another SVT mom right here in town!  Even more crazy that her baby is not much older than ours.  It makes me wonder what is in the water here, lol!


We were in the Pediatrician's office last week to make sure Miss K's congestion wasn't moving to her ears or a product of an illness.  While there the Doctor we were seeing (her primary Pediatrician wasn't available early enough for us) asked what medications she was currently taking, as always when I told him she was on Amiodarone and Propanolol he was quite shocked.  I told him she had SVT and he got all excited, not uncommon lol.  He told me a crazy story about a baby girl who came in to see him last fall, she was all flushed and didn't look like she felt well at all and when he listened to her lungs and heart he was shocked to find that her heart sounded like a little humming bird it was beating so fast.  He realized this baby was possibly in heart failure and in his words "I took a deep breath and calmed myself before telling the mom that I thought she should probably take her baby over to the ER."  He then said that within minutes of her leaving the Pediatricians office life flight flew in and took the baby girl to Primary Children's, the baby was in heart failure due to SVT.  Turns out I'm pretty sure this baby he was talking about is the same baby who's mother I talked to in Home Depot!


We had to take Daddy to the after hours clinic to have a Strep Test done last week.  While there the Doctor (who was new to us, we had never visited him before) was curious as to why exactly we wanted a Strep Test if Daddy wasn't having for sure Strep Throat symptoms, we let him know Miss K had a heart condition and we needed to keep her as healthy as possible.  He completely understood and of course, being a doctor he wanted to know what her condition was.  We told him she had SVT and he immediately got curious.  He then asked, "wait, is she the baby that was in the ER here last summer?"  Lol, we definitely started to laugh and told him yes she was, he was amazed to see she seemed to be doing great.  I asked him if he was in the ER at the time and he told us that he was not, he had just gotten off shift in the after hours clinic when it was paged out to everyone.  Yup, Miss K was definitely the talk of the town.


Miss K is doing great :o).  Our next upcoming visits are in April, first to see another Ophthalmologist for a second opinion about her eyes (from Amiodarone side effects) just as a precaution to make Mommy feel better, then we'll see her Cardiologist a few weeks after for her bi-monthly checkup and then in May we'll have Miss K's regular well baby check for 9 months (wow, can she really be coming up on her 9 month mark?  Time goes WAY too fast!).  I feel great about how things are going and I'm confident these upcoming appointments are going to go very well for us :o).

The Beginning

Birth 8-8-11:
Our story begins August 8, 2011. Our baby girl (who we'll call Miss K throughout this blog) was due to arrive via scheduled c-section on Wednesday August 10, 2011. No medical reason for c-section, just the simple fact that my first baby was delivered that way when my cervix wouldn't open and I never went into labor. Monday August 8 I went to my last routine check up, everything was great just as it had been the whole pregnancy. I arrived home a few hours later after a some quick last minute shopping before baby arrived. After a short nap with our son I woke up to my water breaking, something I didn't plan on considering I had never experienced it with my first baby. I called my doctor who suggested I head to the hospital as soon as I could. When my hubby got home from work we packed up and headed out, calling my parents on the way so they could meet us there and take our son home with them. We arrived at the hospital at 7:30pm and got all checked in, they did some tests on the fluid leaking to see if it was amniotic, the first test was positive but the second was questionable, while they were debating about the second test my water seriously broke, for sure no question, lol!
When my water broke I had a strong contraction and baby's heartbeat skyrocketed, the nurse came in to give me my IV and noticed it, it was so fast the monitor couldn't keep up with it, it was actually halfing the beats it was so fast. Neither nurse could count it out accurately, they were guessing it was over 200 beats per minute.
The next thing I knew they had the on call OB rushing in to hear the heart beat, he really didn't like it. Within seconds the Anesthesiologist was in my room and they were pumping my IV full of all the necessary stuff for surgery. They wheeled me back to the OR and placed my epidural in there. The OB started prepping me and my own OB barely walked in to help just before they started cutting.
Baby sister was born via C-section at 9:25pm. She cried for us. Then they whisked her off to the NICU. Her heartbeat was still too fast, but it had slowed down a little. While in NICU she started grunting while breathing and her heart rate wouldn't slow. They had to give her Adenosine to slow the heartbeat and then checked her lungs to find that her sacks around the lungs weren't expanding on their own. They had to hook her up to a CPAP machine (a breathing machine that gives the effect of putting your head out the window of a fast moving car, this was to give her lungs the extra boost to inflate like needed). They placed an IV to keep fluids and sugars in her and kept an eye on her.
I got to see the baby for a brief second before they rushed her off. As of right now I have not held her yet. It's been rough for me.
At 12:00am the NICU was able to take the baby off all the machines and tubes, except IV of course, and she did great. As of 6:00am she still hadn't needed to be hooked up again and was breathing on her own just fine. Her heart rate is still a concern though and they have called in a Pediatric Cardiologist to come in for a consult about long term care for her.
We are praying that it's nothing serious and that we will be able to feed her today and take her home when I am released on Friday.
Daddy is having about as hard a time as I am though he gets to go down to the NICU and see her whenever he wants to while I am bedridden and waiting on nurses to get me up and moving enough to go down there. Daddy has held her a few times and seen her quite often without tubes hanging all over her.
I'm sitting here waiting as patiently as possible to get to go down and hold her myself for the first time.
She weighed 5 pounds 12 ounces and is 19 inches long. Quite a tiny little thing for as big as we all thought she was going to be! But she doesn't look scrawny like Roo did, in fact she looks like she does have chunk potential :o). She's adorable with a head full of long, dark hair. She's a sweetie and the nurses say she doesn't cry much and handles all the poking and prodding very well for a newborn.

Diagnosis 8-11-11:

Miss K is doing much better. We talked to the cardiologist and he said what happened is she has an extra spark in her heart, kind of a tendon or something, that made it beat faster than it should. The Adenosine they gave her last night at birth to slow her heartbeat down broke that spark. It's not a permanent fix though, it's possible she could have a re-occurance and need to go to the ER for the shot again either in the near future or not until she's older. She could very possibly outgrow this by her first birthday and not have to worry about it again, they may have to put her on a daily medication for this until she's a year old but they're not sure yet. There's also a slight possibility she could have it happen again when she's in her teens. So many "if's" here, not really what we want to hear. But right now she's been given a temporary bill of good health and is doing great. I have been breast feeding her today, she's doing great, we've had 2 great feedings and the nursing staff is impressed with her. They are going to remove her IV in the next few hours because her hand is swelling up from it and instead of placing another one they think she's great to go without so that's awesome news :o). We will be given training on how to check her pulse and heartbeat at home and have been instructed to check it at least twice a day during diaper changes from here on out. They have been awesome to notify our pediatrician of these issues and saved me the trouble of having to remember everything and repeat it.

We're excited to say we most likely will be bringing her home with us when I get to leave Friday morning. Keep us in your prayers.