This weekend was a special one. We celebrated Lydia’s 3rd birthday on Saturday. She came to us by way of an absolute miracle.
Sarahs first eight months of pregnancy went really well with Lydia. Routine checkups were great and ultrasounds showed a beautiful healthy girl waiting to greet us. It wasn’t until 4 weeks before our ‘official’ due date Sarah noticed Lydia wasn’t moving much, if at all. We were a little concerned but I was sure everything was going to be just fine. We agreed that if Lydia didn’t move during the night we would go to the midwive’s office the next morning to make sure everything was all right. I went to work early that morning and took off for what I thought would be a quick 45 minute break to listen in on Lydia’s heartbeat. I’d heard Lydia’s little heartbeat before and knew we were looking for the orange LED display to read 150 beats. Trouble was, the midwife wasn’t able to tell if she was finding any heartbeat at all. This was when I started to become very concerned. They tried for what seemed like only a few minutes and then told us to walk across the street to the hospital as they were going to be ordering a ‘biophysical’ be done to make sure everything was ok. What we found out later is that they told us a fib so that we wouldn’t become scared or nervous. Once we were out of the midwive’s office they called in an emergency C-Section. They knew she was fading fast. We didn’t find this out until Sarah was strapped in for a second time to see if we could find Lydia’s heart beat. It was again unsuccessful and we were then delivered the news that Sarah will need to undergo an emergency C-Section. I can’t describe with accuracy the range of emotions that swept over us both. All I can say is that I was now scared that I could be losing our little girl and my wife was about to go through major surgery.
After waiting right outside the operating room and making numerous frantic phone calls, I was given the news that Lydia was out but wasn’t breathing on her own. She also had a very low heart rate and needed to be shuttled off to the NICU.
3 weeks later we brought her home. Once Lydia was in a more stable condition in the NICU doctor’s had said Lydia should have an expected stay of closer to 3 months. What a fighter. Lydia was also given a hearing test while in the NICU and ended up showing a moderate to severe loss. They showed us on a chart what Lydia would be capable of hearing and not hearing. On this chart we noticed she wouldn’t be able to hear normal conversation or what we might consider ambient noises (dogs barking, birds chirping, etc). They said she would be able to hear aircraft, lawn mowers – things of that nature. Today as I am writing this she has almost no hearing loss at all. The last test she took almost wiped her clean of having any sort of labeled hearing loss.
She talks to us everyday and lets us know when she needs something. She identifies all of her siblings (whether that be with affection or not). She plays with toys and enjoys sitting on my lap and eating chips. She loves to flip through the pages of books no matter if there are pictures or not. She loves shoes. She loves to talk on the phone. She laughs like Snoopy.
She is our miracle.
Here are a few snapshots of today’s visit to the pumpkin patch.
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