Reminiscing ... Niko then and now.

My sweet little boy has turned 3. His birth day ... gah .. it was such a bad and dark day for me. The only light that came from it all, was my sweet beautiful baby.
My water broke at home and we went into the L&D. Labor was slow. The epidural kept messing up and not working right. Then his heartrate was dropping. When he started coming out he was blue and the OB quickly cut his EXTREMELY fat cord that was wrapped around his neck a couple times. It took them a couple minutes to get him to breathe. They wrapped him up and gave him to me and I held him tight. I heard him grunting as he breathed, though, and let the OB nurse know. She brushed me off. When my fave nurse came in, I let her know and she came over to listen and took him right into the nursery. A few minutes later my mom came in and told me that Timmy had had a seizure. He was staying with my cousin while I had the baby and he ended up having a seizure. They were taking him via ambulance to the hospital.. a different hospital than the one I was in. My poor baby must have been so confused and scared ... and I couldn't even go and hold him. I cried and cried. Then the pediatrician came in and told me that my new little baby was having difficulty breathing. He was going to keep monitoring him, but there was a chance they may have to send him to Buffalo Childrens. So I cried and cried some more. My husband left to go be with Timmy in the other hospital. My mom, that had been with me through the birth, was a wee bit busy because my sister was giving birth in the room across the hall from me. Yes, our babies were born in the same hospital, on the same day, by the same doctor, 51 minutes apart.

Gah, I felt so alone and scared and I couldn't hold EITHER of my babies. It was such a horrible time for me.

The next day they took me up to get a tubal. They tried to put the stuff back through my epidural to numb me for the procedure. Right after they put it in, my husband and a nurse came up to me and told me that the pediatrician had called the NICU at Buffalo Children's and they were on the way to pick up my baby and do a transport up there. I started crying (again) and said I wanted out. I wanted to go so we could go to that hospital. They said I couldn't because they had just drugged me up. Thankfully, though, the epi failed and I was able to walk out of the hospital within 2 hours of getting the news. We got up to the NICU in Buffalo only 45 minutes after Niko did.

(Oh, and by the way we found out that Timmy's seizure was febrile due to a severe ear infection that we had no clue about).

Up in the NICU they were pretty great. There were a couple moments where we weren't sure if Niko was going to be able to get the strength to breathe on his own or not. :( He had 3 doses of surfactant. He was on double antibiotics. They even found out he had a broken clavicle. Most likely done during birth... which was understandable because the OB wanted to get him out fast since he was blue.

I have to say, it was a glorious day the day we got to go home. Here are some pics of my boy, then and now. :) He is my emotional, super loving and thoughtful, adventurous, mischievous little boy. :)