Josephine's birth story, and some craziness

Okay, here's Josephine's birth story, but keep in mind that I'm still on some heavy drugs, so it's not going to be a great work of art as far as writing goes. Hopefully you can piece together enough of my ramblings to get the general idea.

It was a pretty routine, easy "birth" as far as those things go. Her c-section was scheduled for 7am, so we got there at 5. We got checked in and went to pre-op to get ready. It only took two tries to get my iv in (which is really good compared to past iv attempts) and minus a big bloody mess on the floor from trying to start the iv and Royce almost passing out as a result, everything went smoothly. When we were ready we went to the operating room, they started my spinal tap and went to town. All of the doctors and nurses were great, and things went pretty smoothly. I did have a partial placenta previa, and she was somehow turned the wrong way, but neither caused any  problems and she was born at 7:50 in the morning. The nurse anesthetist was really great, and when Dr. Seeker told Royce he could start taking pictures because they were starting to take Josephine out she saw Royce go immediately pale again, and offered to take the pictures for him. He gratefully accepted. :)

Josephine was pretty mellow when she was born, and got a 10 on her apgar score (which is apparently pretty rare) and they cleaned her up and we were able to talk to her for a little bit and Royce held her, and then he went with her to the nursery to get her bath while the doctors finished sewing me up. Then they took me to the recovery room and not too long after they brought Josephine and Royce back to see me. Before she was born we had kind of decided on the name Georgianna, but as soon as she was born we both thought that didn't fit her, and decided on Josephine in the recovery room (which was probably name #5 on our list) but it fit her well and we really like it. I had to stay in recovery for 2hrs, so by the time they wheeled us to our room and we got outside the door I heard Marta really excited shouting, "Mommy, Mommy" which was pretty cute to come back to. Grandma and the girls got to hold Josephine, and still every time Emmaline or Marta get anywhere near the baby they get this high pitched voice and go crazy about how cute she is. So we just hung out that day, hanging out with our cute, mellow baby, trying to get her to nurse. She, however, was not a fan. She wouldn't latch on at all, and the few times that we did get her to latch on, she would fall asleep after two sucks. Our day nurse, however, wasn't too concerned about it, but by the middle of the night our night nurse was a little more aggressive since it had been a while since she had nursed, and by the time it had been 24 hours and we had seen four different lactation specialists through the night, with the nurse coming in every hour I just finally made the call and said to give her a bottle. Honestly, we weren't that optimistic that breastfeeding would work, since we had such little success with the last two girls, but we were willing to give it a shot. But, since it didn't work we were okay with throwing in the towel earlier this time. So we started bottle feeding her, and had a nice couple of days with just recovery and spending time with our newest little one. The big girls and Grandma came at least twice a day to visit, and stopped at the cafeteria multiple times with each visit. Nana and Papa were able to come out Saturday night, and helped us out and visited, watched the girls so Grandma could get a little break, and helped us get checked out from the hospital on Sunday. 

Okay, now for the craziness. On Friday when we were still in the hospital and had given up on breastfeeding, I was talking to Royce and said that I was curious to see what happened when the Pediatrician came to check her, because when she was nursing she had a lot of those symptoms that they told me to watch for with Marta when Marta had her heart murmur, and I was curious if maybe Josephine had a heart murmur too, and Royce kind of looked at me sheepishly and said that he already knew she had a murmur because the nurses heard it in the nursery when she was first born, but he didn't want to freak me out or concern me unnecessarily so he decided to wait to tell me. Smart boy. When the nurses were listening to her heart, an older nurse wanted a younger nurse to come and listen to it, and the younger nurse asked if it was a soft murmur, and the older nurse said, "I wouldn't call it soft." Then the older nurse went and made her a special hat with a little flower on it. :) 

Ironically enough the Pediatrician walked in the room literally ten seconds after Royce and I had that conversation and said that she had a strong murmur but they just needed to wait a couple of days because sometimes these things healed on their own. So we didn't think much of it, and saw a different pediatrician on Saturday in the hospital, and were hoping that we would be able to be discharged, but she wanted the cardiologist to have a look at Josephine before we left the hospital so she set up an appointment with the cardiologist for Sunday, and that night they did an EKG.  We saw the cardiologist on Sunday, and he said that it was a significant murmur, but her EKG was fine and he didn't expect any problems overnight so we could be discharged today, but he wanted to see her in his office the next morning to do an echo cardiogram. I kind of got a little concerned that he wanted her in that quickly, but kind of ignored that though, and assumed it would turn out just like Marta's had. So we go in for the appointment, and luckily Royce hadn't gone back to work yet, so he and Josephine and I went in, me hobbling along slowly behind, and they ran a bunch of tests and then the doctor came in, and said he was just going to be straightforward and get it out in the open. Yikes. It turns out that she has a significant hole in her heart, which all newborns do at birth but close up within a couple of days, but he said the hole in her heart was pretty big, and isn't going to close up, and she's going to need open heart surgery to fix the hole. She'll go in to the cardiologist every week to keep a close eye on her, and starting with her next appointment on Tuesday they're going to increase the calories in her formula so that we can get her to gain as much weight as possible, and get her as big as possible before she has to have surgery, which will most likely be when she is 2-4months old, but it could be sooner than that. He made it very clear that not having surgery was not an option, and she'll slowly start to get worse and get to a point where she'll stop gaining weight, and that's when they know it's time to do the surgery and fix her heart. So obviously this has been a really hard thing for us to think about, and I've just gotten to the point where I don't cry every time I hold her, but we're staying optimistic, and after she has the surgery it shouldn't cause any more problems, and she'll be able to have a normal life expectancy, with no restrictions. So now we just keep a close watch on her, and she'll have to start some medications this next week as well, and if she has problems earlier then we'll do the surgery in Austin, but if she stays healthy enough until we move to Idaho, there is a big children's cardiology hospital in Spokane, which is just 1 1/2 hrs away from Moscow, and we'll most likely have her surgery there. At first we weren't sure what to do, and thought that maybe it would be better to stay in Austin and postpone Royce's new job until after she has her surgery, but then we found the hospital in Spokane, and think that wherever she ends up having her surgery will be a good option, and the cardiologist said she would be okay to fly. So now we're just watching her closely and taking things one step at a time until we can get her healthy and strong. We're grateful for all of the help and prayers that have been offered to/for us so far, and ask that you all can keep our sweet little Josephine in your prayers.