We Covet Your Prayers

Yesterday morning, after Seth had left to go home to help Becca get Madison ready for her first day of school, I was sitting in my hospital bed, when Dr. Denny walked in. He sat down in the chair beside me and asked how I was doing. "Great!" I said. "I'm ready to go home!" "Well," he said, "Mathias isn't doing too well."

He explained that earlier that morning, a nurse had been in the nursery holding another baby, when she looked over at Mathias and noticed that he was turning blue. She called for another nurse and together they tried to wiggle and stimulate Mathias to get him to take a breath. They tried suctioning his mouth, thinking that a mucus blockage was making it hard for him to breathe, but that wasn't it. Finally, he did start breathing again, and his color returned to normal. He had 4 more of these episodes, including one lasting about 4 minutes before Denny was able to visit with me to let me know what was going on. Denny said he suspected some sort of acid reflux, but they were running some tests, and Mathias wouldn't be able to go home yet. They would discharge me and assign me to a new room, and I was welcome to stay for free as long as Mathias was there. He told me that I could go and see him whenever I was ready. After he left the room, I called Seth to let him know what was going on, then stood in the shower and bawled.

When I got the the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN), Mathias was in the middle of another episode, and his nurse and Dr. Denny were there trying to coax him to breathe. He was connected by all sorts of tubes and wires to various monitors, and they were holding an O2 hose up to his face to encourage him. I put my finger in his hand and he gripped it tightly. I stood there and watched as tears streamed down my face.

A pediatrician was consulted, and after she watched him during one of these spells, she ordered a spinal tap in addition to the head ultrasound and GI tests that were already ordered. She told us that we could wait in our room until the results came in. I think we were in our room about an hour, hour and a half, when she came to tell us that in doing the spinal tap, they found blood in his spinal fluid, and that that was indicative of bleeding on the brain. They were going to do a CT scan and she'd come back and tell us the results. As soon as she left the room, I started crying and Seth and I held each other. When she came back, she told us that Mathias had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. She said that although these are not common, they're not uncommon either. However, they're more common in premature babies. She said Mathias was a textbook case. Babies are born appearing to be very healthy, and then about 2 days later, they have difficulty breathing. A lot of times, this happens after the baby goes home, and perhaps, many cases are missed because of infant fatality.

I feel extremely blessed that this happened when it did, and that we had Mathias in the nursery overnight instead of in the room with us. He's such a content baby that when he has these episodes, he doesn't make a sound. I think that under different circumstances, we may have discovered this too late.

Mathias is doing wonderfully today. At about 6pm last night, they taped an O2 tube to his nose, with the oxygen constantly flowing into his nostrils. Since then, he has had NO epidodes! He's on an antibiotic until tomorrow, and they'll keep him through the weekend. If, at that point, he's ready to go home, they'll send him home with a monitoring device that will let us know if these spells happen again.

Thank you for your prayers for Mathias and the rest of our family. I'll try to keep everyone posted on Mathias' condition. We love you all.