What happened during delivery and how come I didn’t announce Ethan on my blog?

Hello Everyone! My my my - how long it has been! Most of my close friends and family know all of the recent goings on:

• Terry and I are still a couple 
• We had a baby boy, Ethan Jay McCullough-Byrne, born March 8, 2013, 6lbs 13oz, 19.5 inches long
• He was in the NICU for 7 days (although most don’t know exactly why)
• We’re all home now building our life together
• I went back to work at 3.5 months, and Ethan spends half his days with Terry and half at a daycare

So – why the need for a blog?!

I’m going to unveil the reasons for both taking a 5 months hiatus and the reasons I feel the need to start writing this blog now more than ever. However, I’m going to unveil it over the next four blog posts. (Four seems to be my lucky number!)

Blog Post #1 – What happened during delivery and how come I didn’t announce Ethan on my blog?

All smiles about to get
my surgery!

This is to answer some of the questions I received about why we didn’t have that big beautiful announcement plastered all over our blog. I don’t think I’ve ever been shaken to the fundamental core of my being as I was during March 8, 2013 at 8:05am. Here is the story of Ethan’s birth.

I had a cesarean. Ethan came out and was fine for about 10 seconds and then stopped breathing. We’re not entirely certain why… he coughed and then he basically went into shock and just gave-up. I figured this was normal at first – and then the whole energy in the room changed. The nurse, who had been so happy-go-lucky during pre-op switched her persona. She got very serious and made a phone call. I heard her say, “We need you down here right now.” Ethan wasn’t crying. I was completely silent – just waiting for everything to click and be ok. It didn’t. Suddenly I heard the nurse say, “Oh shit.”

At that point I completely lost it. I started crying – asking what was going on. No one answered me. I could see my Ob-Gyn’s face. He looked worried, panicked even. Then I started yelling, asking what was going on. The nurse started performing CPR. I just heard her repeating, “1 and 2 and 3 and…”. I started praying. The nurse made another phone call, “I mean I need you right now.” At this point I was hysterical. I knew what was going on… my son was being resuscitated. I was crying, praying and just saying over and over again, “please breathe baby, please breathe.” A team of people came pouring in. I don’t know what they were doing. I couldn’t see anything but there was commotion – the very specific dance of highly trained professionals working to save a very little human being.

 It’s hard to paint a picture of the scene accurately. I was still being operated on so I couldn’t see what was going on. Terry was holding my hand. He could see the operation in progress on one side and his son potentially dying on the other. No one was talking to us. No one was telling us it was going to be ok. No one was speaking at all, except for me and the nurse. She was just repeating, “1 and 2 and 3…” and I was just repeating, “Please breathe baby, please breathe.”

This lasted almost 3 full minutes. This was an eternity. It was so long, I had actually begun to mentally prepare myself for the worst. I was preparing to be told there was nothing that could be done. I was preparing myself to go back to postpartum without my son. I was preparing to walk into our nursery at home and cry alone. I was preparing to have to tell everyone that I had lost my son just minutes after he was born.

And then he breathes...

Our little son right after CPR...
but alive!

And then he started to cry. And it was like the room, which had felt like it was spinning out of control,

stopped and righted itself. It was like my heart was able to beat again. Terry muttered through stifled cries, “He’s alive, he’s breathing.” I started laughing, the only way I could release the fear which had threaded its way into every fiber of my person. And then Ethan cried louder. They wrapped him up and brought him over to us. He was so pale… he looked like a little bug. I have never been happier in entire life.

His breath was weak, so they had to take him to the NICU. Terry and I were alone while the doctor finished sewing me up. We were wheeled into recovery. They finally told us we could go to the NICU, but not me, because they couldn’t fit the gurney in there and since I had had an operation I could not get up, not even to be in a wheelchair. I told Terry to go, to be with our son. I was alone.

Wheeled by my little son,
but unable to hold him yet!

On the way to Post-partum they allowed me to be wheeled passed my son. I could not touch him or hold him yet. This was so incredibly hard for me. I was told I’d have to wait for about 8 hours and I had to be able to complete certain tasks before they would let me get up and get into a wheelchair to see my son. I told her, “If you need to me to run a marathon right now I will do it. Just tell me what to do – I have to get to the NICU.” 8 hours to the minute I was wheeled in to finally hold my amazing little man.

I will talk more about the whole NICU experience in the next post.

Finally - 8 hours later, holding
my son for the 1st time

Remembering….

Terry and I didn’t talk about what happened with Ethan for a few days. We had a new focus, making sure our son was healthy and getting him out of the NICU. But when we finally had the courage to re-group and share our individual experiences they were very much the same. It’s easy when looking back to think, it wasn’t that bad, we over-exaggerated it. But we did not. In the days following we spoke with both the nurse who saved our sons life and my Ob-Gyn – both of whom had shared that what they experienced with Ethan was very rare and incredibly frightening. Sure, some babies stop breathing when they’re born. Usually they are given oxygen, their airways clear, and they’re back breathing within seconds. We were told this was different. He flat-lined and was out of for so long. Just another minute or two and Ethan would not have made it. They would have called it.

After that, I couldn’t really think about it. I couldn’t talk about it. The faintest memory would make me cry. I pray no one has to experience their child getting CPR. So I folded up the blog. I didn’t have the energy. I posted on Facebook and I send texts to my close group of friends and family with pictures and updates. I highlighted the positive and tried to keep as much of the negative private.

And now, in true Katrina fashion I bare all – the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful and reality of everything we’ve faced since then. Unfortunately, like the beginning our road has continued to be filled with some pretty significant ups and downs.

Ethan's First Video!!

Next Blog Post – Blog Post #2: In the NICU and out of the NICU

Future Posts - Stay Tuned!

#3 – What About Terry and I?

#4 – Why are Ethan’s eyes always looking to the right or the left?