Baby!

Oh my goodness!

Baby Logan is here!

I can't wait to see him. And Jessica and Brian. He is gonna be so stinking cute. I know it. He is 7 lbs. 14 oz. My mom said that's about my birth weight.

It was a hard birth. I know Jessica and her whole family is exhausted.

I hope I can go see them tomorrow. I actually have the day off. I took off so I could take my dad to get a root canal. Now I also have to pick my mom up from the airport. But I won't have to do all that till early afternoon. So I have all morning to see them. I hope it works out.


EEEEEEEEEEEEE! I'm so excited! I hope I can sleep tonight!

5

I didn't even know there was such a thing as quintuple bypass surgery.

My uncle started to have chest pains when he bent over last Wednesday. He acknowledged it but pushed it aside having to prepare to go to his new girlfriend's parent's house for Thanksgiving. He pushed through the weekend. Having numbness and tingling in his limbs. Monday he finally decided that it was time to make a visit to the doctor. Although by the time he was ready to go his business partner/ex-girlfriend tried to get in the car to go, he had full numbness in all his extremities. He could not get in the car himself. They called 911 and the ambulance took him the ER. The doctors told him that he was too critical for their hospital and he was transferred to a hospital in Gulfport, Mississippi. The tried all night to stabilize him. They put stints in his arteries. But his body rejected them. They elected to do bypass surgery. One of his main arteries was 100% blocked, another was 95% blocked. They were unable to properly stabilize him before surgery. They told my grandparents that he had a 50/50 chance of surviving the surgery. The surgery was scheduled to be 8 hours. After only about 4 hours they emerged proclaiming the surgery a success. He had a quintuple bypass.

5 arteries were replaced. 5? I have never heard of a quintuple bypass. Triple yeah. Even quadruple. But never a quintuple. Ridiculous.

He is off the heart bypass. His heart is only functioning at 35%. He is still on a ventilator. He has to wake up before he can be taken off the ventilator. It is a very critical time. If he doesn't react favorably, he could have a stroke and die, he could have a heart attack and die, or just die. As my dad put it he could wake up, know he survived the surgery, have the tube removed, and stroke out and die. If he does survive all of this, his recovery will be long and painful.

I'm not particularly close to my uncle. He is my mom's half brother. He is kind of the miscreant of the family. He is always getting in to trouble. Dating, marrying, having kids, and then moving on. Starting businesses, losing money and moving on. He is a unique character.

At Thanksgiving my mom's other half brother came to eat with us and we were telling jokes and stories about Uncle Rusty.

I don't know what I am going to feel if he does pass. I don't know how to deal with the loss of family. The adult way. I was only a teen when my grandmother died. I'm not sure what I'm suppose to say to my mom. She is very upset. She is alone in her little apartment. My dad is stressing out about paying to fly her down to Gulfport. I guess I am sad, scared, nervous, anxious. That doesn't really narrow down how I feel.

I'll update again when I know more for whomever is interested.

Picture #4

Okay I was encouraged to post the fourth picture in my fourth picture file on my computer. I also have to list four things about this photo.

1. This picture was taken out of our hotel room at Myrtle Beach, SC.
2. Paul and I celebrated our 3 anniversary of dating that weekend.
3. That brown thing at the bottom of the picture is a huge steel pipe that is pumping sand onto the beach. It kept us off the beach basically the whole time we were there.
4. This was the most beautiful the weather there was all weekend. This was taken Sunday morning as I was packing our bags to leave.

Free birth at what cost?

Dismayed. Disheartened. Disgusted.

I think of myself as a pretty liberal person. I have a pretty much do you own thing kind of attitude about most high debate issues. Although I was watching the Discovery Health channel tonight and was thrown for a loop.
There was a program called Freebirthing.
For those of you that have never heard of such a thing freebirthing is giving birth at home without any professional medical assistance including a midwife. It goes on to include that many of these women have received no prenatal care.

Sure you might think. What do you care? It's their problem. It's her decision on what she wants to do with the birth of her child.

Well no. I can't think that way. Not about this.

To understand my feelings about this I suppose I have to go into a little personal history.
I was born with a birth defect called an omphalocele. An omphalocele is a type of abdominal wall defect in which the intestines, liver, and occasionally other organs remain outside of the abdomen in a sac because of a defect in the development of the muscles of the abdominal wall.
Sounds pretty crazy right?
The labor was short and my mom was rushed from labor to delivery. Being ordered not to push in transit. They had no prior knowledge of the defect before I was born. My mom's last ultrasound had been canceled which would have revealed the defect.
My mom described a panicked, frightened, and awestruck look of the OB's face when I came out.
I was rushed into surgery to repair the defect. The sac was delicately holding part of my liver and intestines. The umbilical cord was attached to the sac since I had no abdominal wall to adhere to. They repaired the defect to the best of their abilities.
I still have a scar running from my mid-breast bone to my pantyline. I have no real bellybutton. Just a scar where they tried to construct one when I was 5 years old.
I suffer from digestive issues that I will live with all my life. I also have a permenant teflon pad in my abdomin which was an early attempt at an abdominal wall. I have to be careful of my core muscles for I am more prone to a hernia. I have back pain because of my weak core muscles.

Though I do have lasting effects of this birth defect, I can't help but think about what would have happened if I had been born at home with no medical assistance present?

It seems pretty certain to me that I would not have survived. Or there would have been more serious complications and infections.

I am hurt that these women think so much about what they want. Or how they want the birth to go. You can't forget that its not only the birth of your child, but its the your child's birth. Its about the baby. Keeping the baby safe and free from harm.

Hosiptals can be scary and doctors don't always do the right thing.

But all I know is I own my life to the doctors, nurses and surgeons that were with me at my birth.

Who will your baby be thanking?