Insanemom.com

Our Second Son

I was able to get pregnant right away after the passing of our first son in June, 2002 but this pregnancy was very stressful and full of tests. It all started with a CVS (Chorionic villus sampling) which is an early amniocentesis usually done between week 10 and 12. The CVS would tell us with great accuracy what the sex of the baby was. The geneticist was concerned that if we were having another boy, that the same thing that occurred with our first son would happen all over again so we had the earlier testing done. And guess what… it was a BOY! We were both delighted and frightened at the same time.

Because we did not know exactly what caused our first son’s condition, we took  every precaution to make sure that baby boy #2 would arrive safely. That meant all the standard testing for a higher risk pregnancy (since I was 35 years old at the time) as well as ultrasounds every month. There was genetic testing done on the baby, on me and even on the blood spot of our first son. We didn’t know it, but they keep a sample of blood from every baby at birth just in case. Of course, genetic testing is only really good if you know what you are looking for. We were targeting a few possible conditions but not knowing for sure what had happened to our first son, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. And guess what… all the tests came back negative! Here we go again. We were relieved and terrified at the same time since we weren’t sure what we were looking for, we still didn’t know if baby boy #2 would come out OK… Finally, in the last trimester, we did electronic fetal monitoring every week, then twice a week and we were getting to the point where it was going to be everyday when my son was ready to come out.

Our second son was born in April 2003 healthy and full of life, 3 weeks early (just like our first son). We were so happy to hear him cry because when my first son was born, I didn’t even know he had come out because it was so quiet. Since my first delivery was so complicated, there was quite a bit of scar tissue remaining which made this delivery even more difficult than the first. This was a planned c-section but my doctor said it was a lot harder to close me up and I had lost a lot of blood. We were told at that time that we may not be able to have any more children because of the risk to my life.

Our second son is definitely everything and more that our first son could ever hoped to have been. Their baby pictures are strikingly similar and to this very day my husband and I look back at pictures and think back to the time when we were caring for our first son. We also wonder, what life would have been like if our first son were still alive.

We were truly blessed to have created a healthy boy, though we knew we didn’t want our son to be an only child… I’ll get to the adoption part in my next post.

Part 1 – Our First Son

OK, you’ve been hearing about this adoption from my husband on www.netsato.com so now here’s MY side of the story. Not that it differs THAT much but women usually tend to fill in more details than men do and from the comments that he’s gotten, I think it’s about time I told the WHOLE story.

As my husband has said, pregnancy and childbirth has not been easy, nor the joyous occasion that it should be for us. Our first son was born in November of 2001 with a condition called hypotonia and to this very day, we still do not know what caused it.

Because of his condition, the delivery was very difficult. I pushed for 2½ hours then his head got stuck. I had to have a complicated emergency c-section procedure. I was 34 years old at the time. When they finally got him out, we did not hear him cry. His APGAR scores were 2 and 1. (if you don’t know what that is, go here to find out more) He spent the first 2½ months of his life in the hospital NICU and he was finally able to come home in January of 2002 with lots of equipment. He had a machine to monitor his breathing, a machine to monitor his oxygen intake, a feeding machine and we had nurses come to care for him during the day while we worked. Our pediatrician/neurologist warned us that someday he will just stop breathing and that is exactly what happened.

At 8 months of age, my husband and I were out shopping one Sunday morning. Our son was in his stroller but he was very fussy. I picked him up and was carrying him around while we finished at the store. While waiting at the checkout, I felt that our son had gone limp. There was a hospital nearby so we rushed him there while I performed CPR in the car.

They were able to resuscitate him but he was in a coma when they transferred him to the children’s hospital. We were told that is was very difficult to get him back and because he was out so long, that if he were to regain consciousness, that he would be a vegetable for the rest of his life. It was a tough decision but we decided to let him go to a better place. I am not one to sit around and mull over things. Things happen for a reason and I knew that if I just followed my heart, things would get better. A month after our first son passed away, we were pregnant again!