Baby Finley

Finley Cornell Page

6 pounds 12 ounces 20 1/2 inches

11:24 AM 11/24/13

 Well, things are already starting to turn into a blur so I figured I better record the birth of this sweet little boy before I forget!  I think I tend to forget things as a coping mechanism... or I'm just losing it.

Over the past few days I had felt a decrease in the baby's movement.  He was still moving, but it was much less.  I read that as long as they moved 10 times a day they were fine and that closer to delivery the baby could move a lot less.  Sunday morning I woke up and the baby didn't move at all.  Usually right when I wake up and right when I lay down to go to sleep were his most active times.  I got the boys situated with cartoons and ate my Lucky Charms and kept thinking he would move but the stinker never did.  So I woke Tyson up after about an hour and a half and he went downstairs and got our fetal heart rate monitor.  Ya, we have one because I tend to be a nervous wreck - can you blame me?  His heart rate was in the 150s.  At all my appointments it was about 145 so I felt a little more calm.  I took a bath and put some stress relieving essential oils in the tub.  Unfortunately I think I'm allergic to the oils because my legs were suddenly on fire!  I had to get out of the tub after just a couple minutes.  Tyson asked if he was moving yet and when I said no he said we had better get to the hospital.  We got the boys bathed and ready and got loaded up.  About the time we got in the car I started having contractions.  

We dropped the boys off at my parents' and by the time we got to the hospital I was in pretty severe pain.  They checked me and I was 4cm.  The baby's heart rate was a little fast, but not too concerning.  They figured it was just from my adrenaline.  They got me into a room and tried to start my IV and draw my blood.  That was a real problem.  The nurse had a hard time with my IV and decided she wasn't even going to attempt the blood draw.  She started running fluids to see if she could get my veins a little more volume and got the phlebotomist.  That poor kid tried SO hard to draw my blood.  Probably about 10 times.  Two or three different nurses tried and no one knew what to do.  At this point it had been about an hour and I was dying in pain.  I do NOT remember the pain being that bad with the other two.  When the anesthesiologist walked in I was so happy.  The nurse said, "I think that's the first time she's smiled since she's been here!"  He was telling me all the side effects and blah blah blah and I was like I don't care just do it!  I got my epidural.  Then the phlebotomist came back to try again.  It was determined that the blood draw would have to come from my foot.  Worked out great as I was getting numb.  Then my water broke.  It was completely thick brown meconium.  I knew this was a concern, but didn't realize how bad it was at this point.  The nurse checked me and said I was still at a 4.  I was shocked.  I had been in so much pain for the last hour.  The pharmacy wasn't sending up my meds so Tyson went to go get them himself.  Perks.  She quickly started my IV of benadryl and vancomycin because I was GBS (group b strep) positive.  Dr. Nipperts who was on call came in and introduced herself to me.  She explained to me that because of the meconium and the problems we were having with his heart rate there would be extra people in the room during the delivery.  She also told me that if we couldn't get his heart rate under control or get him out quick we would have to do a c-section.  I said, "that's fine.  I feel tons of pressure."  So she checked me and said, "Well that's because the baby is right here and we need to push."  So I went from a 4 to a 10 in 15 minutes- never even got any pitocin!  And then he was born.

He didn't cry.  Not one little noise.  Because of the Benadryl I was falling asleep.  It was awful.  I was in and out of sleep from the second he came out.  I heard them call a code pink and I knew my baby was unresponsive.  I guess they did chest compressions for 30 seconds.  I had no idea.  I was asleep and feel terrible about it.  They sucked all the meconium out of his lungs and took him right out.  Tyson went with the baby and then I was out like a light.  I knew they were stitching me up etc... and the nurse kept checking to make sure I was conscious but I was out.  I hate Benadryl!  But maybe it was for the best because if I had been awake there's a good chance I would have been absolutely freaking out.

 Tyson came back and said he's really sick.  They think he has a bad infection.  His lungs aren't working quite right.  He's going to be intubated.  He's not able to keep his blood pressure up.  And his heart is pumping way too fast.  I remember just saying, K.  The pediatrician came in and told me the same thing.  I was just struggling to keep my eyes open.  They decided to fly him to Primary Children's.  Tyson called Kelsey and JD to be with me.  When they got there I was shaking uncontrollably from the epidural.  It was awkward.  I couldn't stop and I was still in and out of sleep.  Eventually my whole family showed up and we were all able to see him before they flew him out.  I cried when the boys walked in.  I don't know why really, I just like them a lot.

 I was SO happy they got to see him so it wasn't so confusing to them.

 Tyson pulled his pharmacist card and they let him ride on the helicopter!  They said they've never let a dad do that!  What a little sweet talker!  It helped that he weighs a buck 35!

 He was extremely impressed with the Life Flight crew.  The flight took 6 and a half minutes.

 The boys loved watching the helicopter take off.  Especially Cal!  We all know how he feels about helicopters!

I was released this morning around 9 and finally got to go see my baby.  I think he's pretty cute!  He is very heavily sedated with morphine and ativan so he really doesn't move.

Here's what we know now:

He has a blood infection.  That is bad.  Blood is all over your whole body and in every organ.  Therefore, infection is all over his body and in every organ.  This is called sepsis. 

His blood culture was positive for strep.  Probably the GBS that I had.  He is getting ampicillin and gentamycin to treat the infection.

Today he had a spinal tap.  It did not look positive for meningitis.  That is good.

He is not able to maintain his blood pressure and is therefore on a high amount of dopamine.  He has low blood pressure throughout his body and pulmonary hypertension between his lungs and heart.  And something about a left shift.  I don't know what this means.

His heart rate is still high.

He is still on a ventilator and requiring 37% oxygen.

We are hoping that all of these complications are due to the infection and that as soon as the antibiotics start to get rid of it, these symptoms will resolve.

Here's a video of the little guy. The ventilator pumps his lungs really fast.  I don't like it.  It freaks me out.  But Tyson says studies have shown this to be more effective in infants.

So, bottom line is he seems pretty stable, but he is not out of the woods.  We know babies can die from this.  When I got to the hospital today the neonatologist (who was like an awesome grandpa) gave me a huge hug and told me that I saved my baby's life by getting to the hospital when I did.  He told me that if we had waited another hour we would have had a very different outcome.  I cried a lot.  

And that is about it folks.  We feel very blessed to have Primary Children's Hospital so close by.  We have definitely felt an outpouring of love and prayers on our behalf.  We are SO lucky to have such wonderful family and friends in our lives!  Thanks for all your help so far!  I'll try my best to keep you posted!

Randoms

Just a few random photos...

Easton has just a touch of OCD if you haven't noticed.  He needs things to be perfectly symmetrical and needs a different utensil for each food item of a meal.  There's quite a list of things that he needs to be just right.  It's frustrating at times, but I know just how he feels:)

I hired a maid service to come help me with some cleaning before the baby.  My mom brought Kennedi and Collette down to help me and took the boys back with her so we could work!  It was great!  We got so much stuff done that I just couldn't get myself to do alone like change lightbulbs and patch walls.  They did an awesome job!

And here's the boys.  Holding dead pheasants.  Not sure what else to say about that.

We have a pretty great life.  I went to the doctor this morning.  I am dilated to 1 cm.  That's all.  Not thrilled about it.  There WILL be a baby here by my next post for sure.  Counting down the days!

Easton is 5!

By sheer coincidence, the morning of Easton's birthday, we decided to take away Callan's binkies.  When he fell asleep the night before the bink fairy came and took his binks away and left him his own remote control helicopter.  He came running into our room the next morning saying, "dad! dad!  I got my very own helicopter just like yours!  It was just sitting on Easton's bed!"  It worked out great because it offset some of the toys Easton was getting all day.  He hasn't let it leave his sight since!  He's done really well without the binks.  For his first nap he kind of panicked and said, "I need my! ... well I need something else to put in my mouth!"  He's done really well though.

Easton had a Wild Kratts birthday party with 14 friends!  We made creature power suits for everyone and creature power discs for each animal that they used during the games.

 After games, cupcakes, and presents we still had some time to kill so we let them watch one episode of Wild Kratts to calm things down.  We were so glad Aunt Collette was there to help!

That night we went to Payson for a Page party!  Easton got spoiled with Ninja Turtle toys!  He loves them!

We had tacos, played with cousins, and visited old grama and grampa.  It was lots of fun!

Sunday Easton got to give a talk in primary on gratitude.  He did a great job!  After church we headed to Sandy for a Cook Party!  Grama Cook had asked Easton what he wanted for his birthday dinner and he said, "pears."  She asked if there was anything else she could make to go with that and he said, "maybe some apples and grapes."  Then he whispered in her ear that it might be a great idea to have a cake shaped like a pteranodon.  Grama made all his dreams come true!

She happened to have a pteranodon toy to put on a sheet cake and then Uncle Trace carved a very lifelike pteranodon into the frosting.  He says frosting is his preferred medium.

Easton got a BYU jersey and helmet, church clothes, tmnt shirt, and an avengers puncher.

 Callan was also spoiled with a BYU outfit.  Birthdays are hard for siblings!

 Here he is with the whole haul!  We got him a subscription to National Geographic Kids.  It's been fun to read to him and hear him remember all the fun facts.

He's one lucky five year old!  And we kind of love him a lot!

Halloween 2013

We had a fun Halloween this year!  The boys' costumes took lots of planning.  I planned on keeping them really low key (which they were) but Easton was extremely opinionated about every little detail.  I first painted the shells green and that caused a major melt down, so we had to repaint brown.  The strap had to go diagonally across the front shell, and all kinds of other details or he would freak out!  All things considered, they turned out alright!

We had a ward chili cook off and costume parade.  We lost Callan for about 10 minutes and searched the entire building and outside only to eventually find him licking chocolate frosting off of the dessert table.

When we carved pumpkins Easton had a vision in his head that he was having a hard time verbalizing so he had to spend quite a bit of planning time with dad drawing it out to make it just right.

Easton made a scary white pumpkin with stitches and Callan made a "happy happy happy" pumpkin.

I had to work Halloween morning.  I didn't get the memo about dressing up, but our friend Alicen dressed up as a pregnant lady since she has to stand between the two of us all day!  We thought it was pretty great!

I got to leave work at 4:00 so we could get ready for trick or treating.  We made mummy hotdogs, orange jello, and frankenstein pudding.  Grandma and Grandpa Cook were our first trick or treaters.  

I dressed up as Krang to make my Easton happy.

We didn't trick or treat a ton because Callan is the slowest trick or treater ever!  But they didn't know they were missing out on half the neighborhood and were happy with the candy they got.  We came home and the boys watched "The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" in their bed.

Cornbelly's

We got our Cornbelly's passes again this year.  We love it there!  My only complaint was that every time we went this year the parking lot was full and I had to basically carry all three children and their pumpkins a mile to the car!  But I guess it was worth it!

Callan was obsessed with all the tractors and trucks he could climb in!  

We didn't get a pass for Tyson, but he was able to come with us one night.  We saved a lot of the fun stuff for when he could come: the corn cannons, gemstone mining, and the friendly fire game.  That was probably the boys' favorite!  We all had to put on goggles and shoot balls at each other with air guns.  It was pretty great.  

We also went on a family date to Gardner Village to see the witches.  We had dinner at Archibalds and then the boys went around trying to find all the witches.  I read the list of witches to Easton beforehand and he remembered every one!

Callan & Ducks

Callan is at a fun, but hard age.  I feel really bad trying to make him grow up.  He's doing really well with potty training.  He is sleeping in Easton's bed now.  He has a really hard time going to bed at night and he wakes up randomly crying pretty often.  Lots of times it's because his legs hurt, but sometimes it seems to be for no reason.  He hates when I call his old room "the baby's room."  He wants it to still be his room and his crib, but the baby can use it.  

He has said some funny things lately.  He still likes to use the letter G to start most words.  He told the neighbors all about the gay (stray) cat today.  He is excited for his "January Birthday."  Easton asked him what he wants for his birthday and he said, "Nothing.  Just candles on my cake and something special in a bag."  He likes to wrestle with brother and dad and sings his own theme song before participating.

He had three fillings done at the dentist.  They didn't numb him, but had me give him a dose of phenergan and atarax.  And plenty of laughing gas!

He did so well!  I was shocked.  I was literally sick about the appointment all morning wondering how he would react to the medicine and stuff.  I may have shed a little tear, but he did great!

Callan LOVES duck hunting.  The idea of duck hunting I guess, since he's never been.  He loves all things Cabelas and Scheels and tells me all the time that his dad is getting him a new duck call for Christmas.  He loves to play with his duck boat in the bath and the duck beanie babies at Grandma Cook's.  He throws them in the air and shoots them.  Sad.

Tyson has done his fair share of duck hunting already this season, if you ask me.  It's only the longest hunting season ever!

Soccer

Easton got to do a six week Soccer Academy at Soccer City with his cousin Crew Taylor.  He did awesome especially for not really having much exposure to soccer.  The coaches wanted them to learn to control the ball by doing tiny dribbles across the field.  Let's just say Easton had great control of that ball!  He did the tiniest dribbles you've ever seen!  Took him twice as long as all the other kids to get across, but he had that ball under control!

When they played games he really got the concept of which way his team was going and how to steal the ball.

I wasn't able to make it to his last class so Grandpa Cook took him and got these pictures and videos.  I owe him big time!

Easton did a great job and had lots of fun!

Circus

In September Easton started randomly asking if we could go to a circus sometime.  I told him the circus doesn't come to town very often but we'd watch for it.  The very next day I heard on the radio that the circus was coming in 3 weeks!  I quickly changed the channel.  I looked online just to see how much the tickets would be and they were $30 per person!  Yikes!  So I made sure not to let him hear any circus commercials and decided he'd get over it.  Then I saw and ad in the mail that said if you spent $200 at the University Mall you could get 4 free circus tickets!  It was perfect because I needed to buy a comforter for our new bed anyway so I just bought a few Christmas things to make it to $200.  The boys were so excited!

They loved getting their dinners in a special Jazz Bear lunch box!

The show didn't start until 7:00 which is usually their bedtime so it was a late night!  Especially since we had spent the whole morning in the ER!

The boys loved all the animals.  Tyson's favorite thing was the poodles.  Seriously, he thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen.  Easton's favorite was the lion tamer.  Callan's favorite was the elephants.  It was a fun night!

Seizure

On September 30th I got the kids out of the bath like normal and started getting them dressed.  Easton was being a little wild.  He was jumping on the bed and I told him to get down.  He got down from the bed and fell backward to the ground.  At first I thought he was still playing around and got mad at him.  Then I noticed he was staring right at me but was not responsive.  He started snorting and I told Callan to go get mommy's phone so I could call 911.  (He didn't.  Now I know not to count on the 2 year old in an emergency!)  Before Callan even got back though Easton had stopped snorting and started crying.  He was responsive and confused.  He didn't know what had happened.  I asked him how he was feeling and if anything hurt.  He said he was going to throw up so we walked to the bathroom, but I think he was just confused about what he was feeling cuz he never did.  So we went back to his bed and he laid down and was really lethargic for a while.  I called Tyson and told him I thought Easton had had a seizure.  He had to leave his rotation on the first day and meet me at the emergency room.

Easton seemed perfectly fine afterward.  They had to draw blood from his hand and placed an IV line just in case they needed it.  He was so brave!  He didn't even flinch or cry!  The phlebotomist was shocked!  All the blood work came back just fine and we were able to go home after a couple hours.  

We are so lucky that there is a branch of Primary Children's Hospital at Riverton Hospital which is the closest one to our house.  We were able to make an appointment to meet with a neurologist the following day.  Primary Children's is so awesome.  They make the kids so comfortable!

The neurologist said it probably was a seizure and recommended we do a couple tests just to make sure everything was ok.  We were able to do the ECG right then and there, but the EEG room was being remodeled so we had to wait about a week for that.

ECG

EEG

The EEG was kind of a pain.  We had to keep him up an extra hour the night before and wake him up an hour earlier in the morning (uh for Easton, that's 4:00).  They made him do all sorts of things like look at a strobe light for 3 minutes and blow a pinwheel for 3 minutes - it was making me want to pass out just watching!  Then he had to lay in that room completely pitch black all by himself for a half hour.  They wanted him to fall asleep but I pretty much said there's no way he'll let that happen.  After about 20 minutes he started asking for me so I had to go into the dark room and sit with the squirmy Cal.  That didn't go well...

Anyway everything was normal.  I still need to make a follow up appointment with the neurologist, but so far so good.  Hopefully it will never happen again!