Sunday, September 9, 2007

Colby & Avery come at 25 weeks and 5 days gestation

Tracey had been having bouts of contractions all through our hospital stay. Each time, she'd get hooked up to monitors and sometimes given IV's to try to stop them. For a long time, that seemed to work. The doctors and nurses were wonderful. They would come in each day and tell us how the nurses would check the records at the beginning of each shift hoping to see that we were still there.
Then, on Sunday, August 26th, Tracey started having more persistent contractions. They continued through the night and finally, on Monday, August 27 we were sent back to ICU. By this point, we were worn down from weeks of living in the hospital. Very little sleep and a roller coaster or emotions had taken it's toll on us. The doctors checked Tracey to find that she was progressing into labor. They declared that we needed to hurry into the operating room for an emergency C-Section. Within 1/2 an hour we found ourselves in an operating room, Tracey was strapped to an operating table and I was donning the blue hospital outfit. Within minutes the doctors asked me to stand up and see my baby girl, Avery, for the first time. I sat back down to tell Tracey how good she looked. Then came Colby. It all happened so quickly that it's a blur now.
They were born at 25 weeks and 5 days gestation. Both babies had been able to get the benefit of staying in utero for 3 more weeks because of their mom's resiliency. During this time Tracey had gotten shots of a steroid to help the babies lung development. Colby weighed 1lb 15ozs. Avery was 1lb 13ozs. Both measuring 13 and 1/2 inches. Although it was much sooner than we hoped, our babies where now with us.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The last line brought tears to my eyes...