Written by Natalie Taylor Peoples was born yesterday at 4:29pm. She was 8lbs, 10oz, 22 inches long. She’s got sort of strawberry blond hair and lots of it!
Updates
Written by 2/9 1:00pm update: It’s been pushed back again. No news other than that.
2/9 12:30p update: Last word, the C-section was pushed to 11:30. We haven’t heard any news, other than that the procedure takes 1-2 hours. We plan to drive up to Sacramento this afternoon after Kristi gets home from work to see them.
Latest word on our coming new niece: there’s a C-section scheduled for 10:30 this morning.
A lot of the stress of this last week came about because Virginia’s heart surgery in Modesto happened to be scheduled for last Thursday – which was Janelle’s due date in Sacramento. So we all were somewhat concerned about the possibility of something going wrong here at the same time as the baby was being born a hundred miles away.
Thankfully it didn’t turn out that way. Kristi’s grandmother came through the valve replacement surgery without complication, and since then has been steadily improving. She feels like she’s been hit by a bus; for a while she thought we were hiding things from her when we assured her that she was doing well. But today’s she slated to finally be transferred out of ICU and into “step down” – sort of the transition from post-op ICU to the rehab unit. It’s going to be a long and difficult road to recovery, but she’s alive and getting better and once she’s recovered, Virginia’s going to feel better than she has in a long, long while.
Meanwhile, the baby went breech and so the last few days on that front have been about getting our new niece to flip back over. That’s going to be a stubborn, willful kid: despite warm baths and tummy-flashlight-shining and several days of patience, she’s still wrong side down. So today she’s going to be delivered c-section and brought out into the world.
My Turn
We try to take turns updating the blog and it’s been my turn for the better part of the week. But with everything that’s been going on, I just haven’t had the energy or time to think about it.
Grandma is awake but still in ICU until tomorrow when they will move her to the step-down unit she was in most of last week. She’s really looped on morphine and not making a lot of sense but she’s there. They got her up to walk around a little today and she ate some pudding.
It’s been stressful, scary, terrifying and too real. Life is so fragile.
Our new niece has yet to arrive. She’s stubbornly breech for the time being and tomorrow the doctor will attempt to turn her with medication. If she won’t turn, then it’ll be c-section time for my sister. I’m relieved she didn’t go into labor while my grandma was so critical because my mom has spent virtually the entire week at the hospital. Right now, we’re hoping for a quick and safe delivery.
I’m ready for vacation next week. We’ve had little sleep this weekend and we need to recharge.
The Heart of Virginia
update 4:00pm PST: They’ve woken her up, but she’s still on a breathing tube (so she can’t talk) and the surgeon hasn’t removed the arterial balloon yet. That should be coming up in about an hour. She’s still stable and I haven’t heard of any complications.
2/6/09 update, 10:31am PST: Latest news is that she’s made it through the night and is stable. She’s out of anesthesia but still heavily sedated. The important thing though is that she’s stable and didn’t encounter any serious complications overnight. So no news continues to be great news. Will update as we hear more.
Virginia (Kristi’s grandmother) is out of surgery. For those of you who didn’t know, Virginia had a heart episode of some kind last Thursday night and was admitted to Memorial Medical Center here in Modesto early Friday morning. She’s been needing a heart value replacement for several years now, things finally went from bad to critical, and so circumstances made the decision for her: today she finally got the new valve.
We got home a couple hours ago, after spending the day in the cardiac waiting room. She’s still out; she won’t wake up until sometime late Friday afternoon. According to the surgeon, the valve went in smoothly, but due to some thickening in the heart walls (due to living with the valve condition for a long time) they had some difficulty getting her off the bypass unit. Her advanced age adds an extra layer of risk. But Virginia got through the four-hour open heart surgery and she is now stable and in post-op recovery.
The surgery is half the battle; most of the other half is the first 24 hours. If something goes wrong, it’ll likely go wrong late tonight. But if she can get through the first day and night, odds are she’ll have a long and difficult recovery but that she will recover. The doctors say that this new valve will last her over twenty years.
We’ll update as we know anything. In the meantime, please keep her in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks.