welcome to the world timothy john jung!
on january 18, 2013 at 4:33 am our lives changed forever with the arrival of this little guy. 7 days later we are all still alive, and while tired, we are more in love with TJ than we ever thought possible and loving every minute of this awesome responsibility of being parents. these are a few of the major highlights of our first week as a family of 3.
i had an emotional appointment thursday morning when the doctor told me that at 4 days past my due date, he could come any time but we should plan a day for the next week to do an induction. then at 10 pm that night, i started contractions. by 11 pm they were 5 min apart, i called the dr. at 1 am, and since i was hoping to have a natural birth she told me to stay home a little longer and then come in. we got to the hospital at 2:30 am when my contractions were 2.5 minutes apart, but as soon as they got me hooked up to the fetal monitor the nurse said his heart rate was dropping really low and they needed to hook me up to oxygen. a minute later the midwife got there. my contractions were right on top of each other but i was not dialated enough, so she said she was paging my ob to tell her we needed to do an emergency c-section since tj's heart rate was still dropping and not coming back up. jarred called my mom who was there in 5 minutes, and after a whirlwind of drawing blood to test my platelets, having me sign a million forms during contractions, jarred putting on scrubs, giving me a bunch of different shots, finally getting an iv stuck in me on the 4th try, and the surgical team all arriving, i was in the operating room all strapped down with jarred standing next to me. if you had asked me a week before about having a c-section i would have said it would be the worst thing i could imagine going into childbirth, but none of the desire to have a natural birth even crossed my mind when tj's health was in danger. looking back i was really thankful for reading a book that adamantly talks about any birth that results in a healthy mom and baby being a good birth and my friend laura emailing me a week before and telling me the stories of her 5 kids' births and how different they each were and that i should focus on just enjoying whatever my labor and delivery ended up looking like. and i did, because at 4:33 am my excellent doctor pulled out the most perfect little boy ever.
jarred immediately exclaimed "he looks like me!" and after wiping him off they laid him on me for just a minute before he rushed off to the nursery and i was taken to recovery. thankfully jarred and my mom got to go with him into the nursery where they weighed him at a whopping 6 lbs .5 oz and measured him at 20 inches. they soon brought him to me once they i was stable in the operating recovery room. soon all 3 of us were moved to my recovery room where we would spend the next 3 days, and the rest of friday was pretty low key with just the 3 of us getting to hang out together as jarred and i oohed and aahed over our son.
looking back, we couldn't be more thankful for the peaceful day on friday, because friday evening started 3 days of medical uncertainty and chaos when they found tj breathing really rapidly. over the next 2 days he spent a lot of hours hooked up to machines in the nursery measuring his breaths per minute that were shooting up to over double what they should have been, having blood test after blood test run to try to figure out if it was connected to an infection or a bigger problem. test after test came back clear and normal. thankfully we still were able to spend a lot of time with him and tj got lots of visitors, including jarred's family who came up from the carolinas. and thankfully we have a great pediatrician who came to seem him everyday and was in constant contact with the nurses. and thankfully he was nursing great and everything else seemed to be fine.
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| jarred's mom jane |
monday morning i had been cleared to go home but all morning we were waiting to hear the latest on tj's breathing from the pediatrician and if he could come home. when the dr. checked him out he felt fine about his breathing but said that sunday night a nurse thought she had just noticed a heart murmur and he had just confirmed that he indeed did have a heart murmur and he wanted us to get it checked out by a pediatric cardiologist immediately. since it was mlk day the cardiology ward at children's hospital of the king's daughters was closed. while we were talking chkd called our pediatrician to say there was 1 pediatric cardiologist at the hospital and he would wait for us if we could go right then. thus commenced what had to have been the fastest discharge of a mom and baby from a hospital in history. at the cardiologist's they did an echocardiogram and ultrasound to look at his heart because many heart murmurs found in babies are the result of a vsd, which is a small hole in the heart. seeing your 3 day old with tons of cords stuck all over his chest has to be the hardest thing in the world. jarred had to hold him on the table for the ultrasound because that was the point when i lost it. long story short, we found out immediately that tj does have a hole in his heart the size of 1 millimeter, but it is in a good place that won't ever cause any physical problems other than the heart murmur, and it will most likely close on its own over the next 6 months. the doctors weren't concerned at all and said it was such a minor defect she would hope it for her own child if there was going to be anything wrong at all. we headed home after that, but the entire going home day was much more emotional than i had expected.
since monday, pretty much everything has been smooth sailing. other than tj deciding that the hours he wanted to be awake each day for the first 2 days home were between the hours of 1 and 5 am and him peeing through about 5 outfits a day, the last few days have been much easier than expected. i love being a mom more than i could ever have imagined. there are a million moments a day that we just look at him, talk about how cute he is, stand in awe of the amazing miracle of God creating him, and wish that time would stand still and he would never get any bigger than he is right now. and while there is still a lack of sleep and the stressful things of parenting ahead of us, i hope i manage to keep a constant attitude of learning and growing in this awesome responsibility. because 2 things i have learned this week are that a lot of how things are going seem to depend not on circumstances, but on my attitude, and that things go well when jarred and i are focused on being on the same team and for each other, no matter whether tj is peeing straight up and soaking both of us and everything around as we change his diaper, or crying unless he is being held at 2:30 in the morning.
one of the other highlights of this week has been my sister kathryn and her 3 kids, including her 10 week old twins below, coming to visit. it has been a huge blessing to be able to have a great mom here to answer a million questions and to have her help do the traumatic things of cutting finger nails and giving first baths.
kathryn giving tj his first bath
tj with his 10 week old cousins jack and alex
today a week after his birth we headed back to the pediatrician for his 2nd check up since we left the hospital. he is doing great and after losing a lot of weight in the first 2 days in the hospital and getting down to 5 lbs 4 oz, he has been eating like a champ and has gained back all his weight and is now ringing in at 6 lbs 4 oz.. in a personal celebration for tj surviving to be 7 days old it snowed in norfolk tonight! life now is certainly different and we wouldn't trade getting to be parents to this perfect little guy for anything in the world. off to sleep, at least for an hour or so...
