Baby Isaac Has Arrived!

On Tuesday I started having contractions in the morning. I had them irregularly all day, and by that evening I was having them every 7 to 10 minutes. Michael and the boys and I went and ran a couple of errands, and when we got home around 7:00pm I started having the contractions about every 2 or 3 minutes, so Michael put the boys to bed and we called a friend to come stay with them while we went to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital about 8:30pm, and I was dilated to a 7. I got the epidural, which worked just right this time, and then they just had me wait. I was strep B positive, which means that they try to give the mom antibiotics for 4 hours before the baby is born, so they didn’t want to break my water because they were trying to wait the 4 hours. I got the first dose of the antibiotics, but my water broke on its own before they could give me the second dose. After my water broke, he came really quickly. I pushed once and his head came out, and I pushed a second time and he was delivered. That was definitely the quickest delivery yet!

Isaac Steven Bradshaw was born at 11:43pm on October 23rd, seven days before his due date. Michael told me later that he had the chord wrapped around his neck when he came out, but I didn’t even know that. I held him, and then they checked his weight and height and cleaned him up a little bit. He was 8 lbs 13 oz and 21 inches long, so he was our second smallest baby – Camden was 9 lbs 8 oz, Kolby was 9 lbs 1 oz, Isaac was 8 lbs 13 oz, and Eli was 8 lbs 8 oz. (I’m rather glad he wasn’t a 10-pounder).

He got a chance to nurse and we held him and called all the family members, and then we moved to our room. They took him to the nursery for a little bit, and the nurse must have noticed how tired Michael and I looked, because he was all bathed and dressed when they brought him back to us. By then it was quite late, and we got about 4 hours of sleep before morning. Isaac was a noisy breather – kind of making little snorting sounds every once in a while and breathing loudly, but he slept well that entire time. I tried to nurse him a few times the next morning, and he didn’t really latch on well at all. A little while later we let the nurse know that it seemed like he was having a little trouble breathing, and she said that she would take him to the nursery to give him some saline drops and use the bulb to suction his nose. We thought that would be a good thing to do so that he wasn’t so stuffy and he could then nurse without any trouble.

After a little while, we were informed that the bulb had not helped, and they had talked to the pediatrician who had ordered a few tests to check on why he was having trouble breathing. A chest x-ray didn’t show anything abnormal and they put a tube down his throat, but it went down fine, so they didn’t suspect any problems with his throat. They said that they tried to pass a tube through his nose, but couldn’t – so they suspected some kind of blockage. Some NICU doctors came and said they were taking him to the NICU and they were going to see if they could figure out what the problem was.

So, when we went down to the NICU a little while later to see him, they told us that they thought it might be a dermoid cyst (a blockage of dead skin that would have to be removed in surgery, but which was not any type of cancer) in the nasal area which was making it hard for him to breath through his nose, but that they would have to wait until they got a CT scan to see if their hypothesis was correct. Later that night we returned to the NICU and a resident showed us the CT scan. It did not show a cyst, but just that the nasal passages looked more narrow than they should be. We had to wait until this morning until we talked to the ENT (ear, nose, throat) doctor to find out his diagnosis and plans for treatment.

So, today the ENT told us that Isaac has a pretty uncommon condition called Congenital Perform Aperture Stenosis, which just means that the nasal passage is really narrow. They said there is no real reason that this happened, it is not genetic – it just happens to be the way that his bones formed, and they didn’t separate as much as they should have. I guess this is a pretty uncommon condition. But they made it sound like it isn’t going to be a serious problem, and he shouldn’t have any long-term effects from it.

Isaac’s scan showed that the bones in this area were a little closer together, and on one side the soft tissue looked like it was really close together. This is a pretty rare condition, and there is not much information about it online. We did find a few articles that mentioned that babies with this condition could also have one large tooth in the middle, instead of two top teeth in front – but Isaac’s scan showed normal teeth. Other articles mentioned a triangular palette associated with this condition, but we haven’t noticed anything like this in Isaac. In fact, except for the breathing problems, he seems to be doing just great, and he looks like everything else about him is just how it should be. The doctors told us that other articles say sometimes this condition is associated with problems with the hypothalamus and pituitary, two organs in the brain that control many of the hormones needed for growth and development, like thyroid and growth hormone. They want to do an MRI tomorrow while he is already sedated for the surgery, just to make sure that everything looks ok. The doctors seem to be doing everything possible to help us out here.

They are going to do surgery to correct this tomorrow morning. They will remove some of the bone and put in two tubes to make the passages stay open, and then the tubes will be surgically removed in about 3 weeks. They will do this all through an incision under his upper lip, so it won’t leave any scars. I am pumping now, and they hope that he will be able to start nursing normally after his surgery. And they said that as long as everything goes well, he will be able to go home from the NICU two or three days after his surgery. We are not allowed to sleep in the NICU and I got discharged from the hospital today, so we will be home tonight, and then I will probably return to be with him in the morning. My mom is arriving tonight, so that will be helpful to have her here. (By the way, my parents were able to return and see their house last night since the evacuation for the wildfires down in San Diego, and their house was not damaged by the fires at all. A couple of the houses up the hill from them were burned, and the fire burned down the hill to within 50 yards of my parents’ property, but their house and yard were not touched). So, thank you to all of you who have helped out with watching the boys for us this week. And thanks to everyone for your prayers and support. We really appreciate it! I’d better head back down to Isaac’s room now to be with him.

I will post photos of Isaac once I’ve had a chance to get them off of our camera on our home computer. But he’s really cute – he has light brown hair that looks kind of golden in the light, just the same color as Camden’s was when he was born, little round ears, dark eyes, and it looks like he’ll probably have a dimple on the left side. Michael thinks he has the Bradshaw nose. And Tyce Kearl said that he definitely looks like a Bradshaw boy. He is long – he looks tall and he has cute long feet and long toes. And he is strong – when they rolled him on his tummy yesterday, he was lifting his head up over and over. I can’t wait to take him home with us!