Daniel is here!

Daniel Aaron Coley was born Dec. 31 at 2:00 PM!

I was hoping to not have to be induced this time, but everyone was getting pretty nervous since I had been at 5CM since Dec. 26th so we felt it was safest to go ahead and go in b/c there was a very very good chance of me delivering at home or on the road. Thankfully the doctor knew my wishes and said he would just break my water and let me go rather than starting any pitocin. Come to find out the baby was stuck on my pelvis which explained both the crazy nerve pain I had been having and why I hadn't progressed any further on my own. We were pretty discouraged that contractions were only every 10-15 minutes and pretty mild (he broke my water at 8:45 or so). Around 1:00 I noticed that they seemed to be getting closer together and by 1:30 I knew we were getting somewhere! When it came time to push I realized my suspicions that the baby was a bit bigger were likely true b/c he ended up stuck. I finally got the nerve to ask Kevin about it and I'm glad I was pretty oblivious to what exactly was going on b/c he said it was pretty scary. By the time time the doctor got his shoulders out we all knew he was big but the scale still surprised us all... 9 lbs 9 oz big!!! The other three were all in the 7 lb range!! The delivery was a bit scary for Kevin b/c Daniel turned so purple - so glad I didn't know! You can see in the pics how bruised and swollen his poor face was. Thankfully after a couple of days it went down.

The scariest part was the fact that he started having some breathing issues the night after he was born - he had been stuffy and snorting/snoring, but then his abdomen started retracting. At first I brushed it off as irregular newborn breathing, but we started to realize that there was something more to it. He was born sneezing which we though was a little odd but kind of cute and funny. There was a chance that there was some meconium in the fluid so we thought that might be part of it? We also noticed some swelling by his right eye and didn't know what that was - our guess was a clogged tear duct. The nurse came in just as he was going through one of his spells and we tried suctioning his nose out with no luck. She took him back to the nursery to try a tube so they could suction deeper down his throat and stuff. While he was in there he started retracting again and they found they couldn't get a tube through his sinus passages - on either side. It was like they were hitting bone. They called the doctor on call and he tried it as well. Between him and 3 nurses they couldn't get the smallest tube through which none of them had ever happened. By this time he had been gone for a while which was making me nervous. When the doctor came in with out him and sat down I knew there must be something going on. While he was in the nursery Daniel started retracting again (thankfully the doctor was able to see it b/c in between "spells" he pretty much looked fine) so they hooked him up to a pulse ox and his levels were too low. He was stumped b/c he could breathe through his nose well enough to nurse, but didn't appear to have any open passages. We were pretty close to him being transferred to a children's hospital in a neighboring city, but they were able to get his oxygen levels up high enough. It was an incredibly emotional and scary time but things leveled out. The next morning they were able to get the smallest feeding tube through both sides confirming that there were passages, but they were very small, likely from all the swelling. It was tough to see him hooked up to all the monitors, but it was comforting in a way to know what was going on with his body without having to guess. I'm also thankful that he did it in the hospital before we went home b/c it would have scared me for sure.

We never got any definitive answers as to what it was, but the theory was that he just had a lot of swelling and fluid clogging everything up so we were finally able to go home on Thursday (thankfully our hospital has a rooming in policy so even though I had been discharged I was able to stay there with him).


Fast forward to this morning and he had another "spell." It's likely we'll be taking him to an ENT doctor early next week to look at things a bit closer. The fact that his eye isn't watering or crusting over has us thinking that it is not a clogged duct and because it's on the same side that he can't really breathe through at all has me concerned (when using the suction bulb I can't get any air to go through). Kevin has some sinus issues, as do a lot of the men on his mom's side of the family, makes us think there might be some structural issues but hopefully we are wrong.

Anyway, it's been an interesting week to say the least, filled with quite a few surprises! Hopefully by Monday things will settle down a little bit, but I know it will take us a while to get into the swing of things.

Oh, and the nurses nicknamed him "the hornet" b/c he's a pistol and kept ripping the wires off by grabbing them with his toes (he went through a couple dozen sets of the sticky pads and pulse ox sensors - each!). Let the fun begin!