Lincoln Ryder Cole Day 1

Lincoln Ryder Cole was born August 13th at 9:46am!

On Monday around 2am I was woken by the feeling of something rupturing. I jumped out of bed and realized that this is what it feels like when your water breaks. Holy Moses. David jumped up as well and was calmly informed of what had just happened. After talked with the doctor on call, we decided to wait and labor at the house as long as possible. I took this time to finish reading the labor and delivery chapters of several books I've been reading. David vacuumed, cleaned the down stairs, paid some bills, took the dogs out and packed his bag. At 6am we were off to the hospital. My contractions were under three minutes apart at this point.

Upon arrival at the hospital I was 4cm dilated. By the time I was taken into the actual delivery room about an hour later I was 7 1/2cm. This baby was coming fast! My contractions were coming strong and very close together. I was given a shot to slow them down with no success. A few minutes later, another shot, no success. They main thing we were concentrating on was Baby's heart beat. His heart rate would drop very low during my contractions and didn't have time to catch back up in-between because they were so close together. We watched the monitor and waited. I was offered an epidural and took the opportunity before it was too late. Epidural in, we waited and watched the monitor. No change. We were told there was no way this baby would make it through a vaginal birth. As much as I wanted to avoid a C Section, I had the mindset going in that I would be willing to do whatever was safest for Baby. David was given daddy scrubs, and everyone prepped for surgery.

At 9:46 Lincoln Ryder Cole was born via C Section. They took him to clean him up where the respiratory therapist put an air tube in. Once the tube was in, David was able to cut the rest of the cord. They prepared for him to go to NICU but wheeled him by my head so that I could see him. They held him out to my so that I could get two hands on him and kiss him before he left. I was then stitched up and taken to recovery.

After I left recovery, the nurses wheeled me into NICU so I could lay beside Lincoln for a little while. We then went to my hospital room and waited for news about his status. We were told by the Neonatologist that they were going to move him that day to CHOA at Egelston because they couldn't get him stable in the facility at Gwinnett. David was able to go down and see him all packed up and ready for transport. After his arrival at CHOA in the CICU, we got at call that he was going to need an emergency procedure done in the Cath Lab. They went through his leg with a catheter to put a stint in his heart in order to allow blood flow in-between his left and right ventricle. This is necessary for a baby with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Typically, a baby with HLHS is born with this duct open, but Lincoln's duct was closed or almost closed. (David will explain more medical details in another post). This was a very delicate and dangerous procedure, but we received a call from the doctor later in the evening and he told us that the procedure had been a success. We were obviously very relieved and thankful.

As David and I are typing this, we are realizing that there is so much information and so many details from each day, that it would take a very long time to go back and write about it now. So for now, we will stop with day one and our next post will be what is currently happening. Its actually Sunday evening right now and more than anything we want to be able to keep all of you updated on what is most important to pray for. I will eventually write out Lincoln's "Birth Story" with lots of details that ladies will enjoy reading and guys can skip all the fun and gross parts.