Preston Lamar DeFries

Forgive this post for being a little bit late. Two weeks ago Jaime gave birth to Preston Lamar DeFries. He was born on December 9, 2009 at exactly 10:00 PM.  He measured in at a stout 9' 1" and 19.5" long. He gave us quite a scare when he was about a minute old, which resulted in a 10 day stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Kaiser Walnut Creek hospital. We want to thank all of our friends and family for their love, support and prayers. The story is a little lengthy, so we'll start with the good stuff...pictures!  Keep scrolling for the play by play of our 10 days in the hospital.

Less than 1 min after birth

The first few hours in the NICU. They put him on a CPAP to help him breathe.

His oxygen levels were still low, so they put in a ventilator.

After a few days, Jaime got to hold him.

Then I got to.

Thanks to Grandma Jacobson for coming to help while we were at the hospital.

Changing his diaper in the NICU

First day at home.

First bath at home.

Preston hates to sleep with his hands stuck inside his blanket.

With Grandma DeFries. They were able to spend an afternoon with us during a layover in SF.

You've seen the pictures, now the story...

We got to the Hospital around 1pm on Wednesday, December 9. Jaime was already half way dilated, so they admitted us right away and gave Jaime an epidural. Then we just hung out in Jaime's room for the rest of the day. The nurses came in periodically to check the progress and kept commenting on how smoothly the labor was going. At around 9 pm the nurse came in and said she thought Jaime was about ready to start pushing, and twenty minutes later she was. After about 40 min. of pushing Preston was born! It was a miracle! The nurse immediately put Preston on Jaime's chest so she could get some skin-on-skin bonding time while a couple of other nurses were cleaning him up. He was crying and it sounded like he had some mucous stuck in his throat. Then, he started turning blue and got really stiff. One of the nurses wisked him off of Jaime and put him on the examination table beside the bed. The next thing I knew, there were two nurses doing CPR and a lot of shouting. Then, someone pushed a button on the wall and about 20 nurses and doctors came streaming into the room. They kept up the CPR until Preston's heart and respiratory rate were stabilized. The whole time I was pacing back and forth between the Jaime and Preston trying to see if both were doing okay, but feeling powerless to help in either case.  Eventually Preston was stabilized enough to move and they wheeled him into the NICU. I left Jaime and went to the NICU, again powerless to help with anything.

In the NICU I watched as they hooked him up to all of the monitors, started an IV, and took a chest X-ray. His oxygen saturation level was too low, so they put him on a CPAP machine at 100% oxygen to make sure he was getting enough. They kicked me out at about midnight because they had to change shifts and told me that they would keep working on getting him stablized and call us if they had any news. I went back to Jaime's room where they were just finishing stitching her up.  Then we moved to a recovery room where we tried to get a couple hours of sleep.

At around 3:30 am we still hadn't heard anything and I couldn't lay there any longer, so I walked down to the NICU to check the status. Preston was hooked up with three sensors on his chest, one on his foot, an IV in his arm for antibiotics, a tube through his belly button to draw blood, and a ventilator and feeding tube down his throat.  It was a tough sight to see. The nurses said that the chest X-ray had showed a lot of fluid in his lungs. They didn't know if it was leftover fluid from the birth, or if it was an infection like pnemonia, so they had started him on 3 different antibiotics to get at any infection that might be there. They had also sent out some blood cultures so they could identify the specific infection causing the fluid in the lungs. I was only able to touch him through the holes in the side of the plastic casing over his bed. Once again the nurse suggested I try to get some sleep and they'd let us know as soon as they figured out what was wrong.

I went back to visit Preston a couple of times during the night. At around 6, I called a friend of mine who lives nearby and he came and assisted me in giving Preston a blessing. Even though we really didn't know what was going on, both Jaime and I had a good feeling that things would work out.  Then around 10 or so in the morning the Neonatalogist came in to tell us that the nurses had observed a seizure earlier that morning. They were not sure of the cause of the seizure or if there was any damage. The doctor had immediately put Preston on medication that would "calm" the brain down to prevent further seizures, then orderd a CT scan, a spinal tap, and an EEG. The CT scan looked for physical damage or deformities in the brain (tumors, swelling, etc.) and came back negative. The spinal tap drew fluid from the spinal cord to see if any infections were there, but the culture didn't grow anything. The EEG showed a small seizure on one side of his brain. This seizure didn't manifest itself physically, but the test picked up the irregular brain waves, so the doctor adjusted the medication they had given him.

After that first day, the goal was to wean Preston off of the IV's and Oxygen that he was getting so he could come home. Jaime and I fell into a routine of sitting in the NICU visiting Preston and trying to get rested in between. On Friday night Jaime was discharged, however since Preston was still there they let us stay in one of the empty rooms. Slowly both Jaime and Preston got better and stronger. On Saturday night through Sunday morning, Preston was weaned off of the ventilator to a CPAP, then from the CPAP to a nose cannula. Slowly they began to remove sensors, tubes and cords until we were able to bring him home on Saturday, December 19.

We want to thank everyone for their prayers, phone calls, cards, gifts and support. Everytime we think about all of the people who were pulling for Preston both Jaime and I get a little choked up. We are so happy to have him home now and he seems to be doing really well.  It is amazing how quickly you can love someone that you just met.

There will be a lot of follow up appointments with pediatricians, neurologists, physical therapists, and audiologists, but Jaime and I both still have a good feeling that everything will be great.