Category: Meghan
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One Week Old
There are so many updates to share here, scenes from a week that couldn’t possibly follow laws of space and time. We will include a bunch of real detail here tomorrow, but in brief now: Button, small and so fierce, is holding strong, CPAP in place but arms wild. Her status continues to be of…
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Three Days Old
We write this from the NICU, where Button and Bear are settled in bays 14 and 15, their isolettes tucked under blankets and alive with wires, blinking lights, and two small girls. For the moment, this is their home. It is here – rather than within the vague charcoal sketches of an ultrasound – that…
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Today is the Day
Gestational age: 29 weeks +2 days We’ve hid from this moment all our too-brief, precious time: This morning our ultrasound revealed significant reverse diastolic flow for Baby C. Dr. Hayes believes that if we don’t deliver today, we could lose her, or both. It’s time. Casey is on his way to the hospital. Delivery will…
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Week One +4 and +5
Gestational age: 29 weeks +1 day Hi, friends. These two days have been a mixed bag of news – largely a wonderful one. A bag full of mostly kittens. Or the happy noises Lucy makes while she’s eating spaghetti. Yesterday Dr. Hayes granted us our first empirical goal post: If Baby C continued to show…
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A Day in the Life
Hi All – Some of you have asked how the rhythm of this experience has been, what a day looks like from the inside. Below is my daily run of show. ___________________________________________________ 24/7 – Oxygen therapy; 12am – 9:30am – Fasting 1am – Monitoring + Vitals Monitoring: Paddles (or monitors) are strapped to my belly…
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Week One +3
Gestational age: 28 weeks +6 days In celebration of another mundane day (“oxygenation of these babies is really working,” says Dr. Hayes proudly, me adjusting the cannula that now feels like part of my face), a melody is linked below that means a lot to this family. This song played randomly from a playlist of…
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Week One + 1
Gestational age: 28 weeks +4 days THEY GREW! Today was our first weigh-in since arrival, when we received the heartbreaking news that though Baby B had recently grown to 2 lb 14 oz, C had stalled at 1 lb 15 oz for well over a week. Dr. Hayes has been clear that our aim here…
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Day 6
Gestational age: 28 weeks +2 days Another partially-cloudy, silver medal, red-ribbon day – and we’ll take it. Baby C continues to show intermittent diastolic flow (the least-dangerous stage of this very dangerous condition, and the one that buys us the most time), so Dr. Hayes happily wished us “another exceptionally boring day.” The held-breath status…
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Day 5
Gestational age: 28 weeks +1 day A fine day. This morning’s ultrasound (with special guest! famed nurse-charmer, Casey) revealed marginally improved Dopplers for Baby C; at this moment, marginal is monumental. The longer we can bear intermittent or sporadically absent diastolic flow in Baby C’s Dopplers (in other words, if umbilical blood flow is presenting…
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Days 2 and 3
Gestational age: 27 weeks +5 days/+6 days Two more days down in sterile Oz! We have to say this now: Learning that you – you – have navigated here, have read this, and are here at this moment at sea… It is more than words can say. We see a lattice of lighthouses across the…
The Squires Family Five 