R a i s i n g C a n e y . c o m

According to Boolean Logic, my title is (at least partially) incorrect.  None of the content of this post relates to Needles AND Signs AND the Mid-West.  However, most of the post is about one or the other at any given moment.

Before the actual content of the post, I want to point out an awesome new feature here at RaisingCaney.com!  One of our most loyal fans (she’d be the president of our fan club if we had one) can’t see the pictures we put up on Facebook.com, but she CAN see pictures we put on Flickr.com!  SO, if you look to the top of our page (under the banner), there’s a link titled “Photos”.  The Photos page will host our photo albums that are automatically imported from our Flickr feed.  Check it often!

Needles…

My friend, Jon Copeland, has an extreme aversion to needles.  In fact, he was pretty freaked out to be in the hospital at all when Caney was on her way, mostly because of those red boxes the walls…full of needles.  Apparently, Canaan isn’t a fan of needles either.

Canaan got her shots the week before last.  She had one in each hip (ok, butt cheek) and one in each thigh.  She also got an oral vaccine.  When we got into the office, I suggested Tasha hold Canaan while she was getting her shots.  She refused, and now I know why!  When Canaan got her shots, naturally, she cried.  However, worse than that, she looked me in the eyes, quivered her lip, and gave me a heart-breaking whimper that definitely meant “Why would you let them do this to me, Daddy?”  Annnd so, I almost cried.  Ah well!  Hopefully the shots will scare away any mean, nasty illnesses that come after my daughter.

Signs…

Happy (Belated) Mother’s Day!  Tasha’s been asking for a “Baby Sign Language” book ever since she was pregnant, so for Mother’s Day I bought 4 different books, and Caney picked her 2 favorites (the 2 she seemed most interested in).  I took the others back.  I personally bought Tasha the final Twilight book that she had been begging me for for 2 weeks (she read those books in 2-3 days each…crazy).

The night before Mother’s Day, I put a Mother’s Day Card from me to Tasha and the Twilight book on the bed.  The card showed the bottom of two grown up sets of feet and one set of baby feet between us.  It read “Lately, something has come between us…”  The inside continued “…and I’m cool with that!”  When Tasha went to get ready for bed (after midnight) the gifts were waiting on the bed.  She loved it, but she assumed that was all!

The next morning, there was a gift bag waiting in front of the swing that I had put Canaan in.  Tasha looked in it and found her Baby Sign Language books (one has flash cards in it!) and a card.  The card was a nice card about her being a first time mother.  More importantly though is what Caney wrote in it… I gave her a pink crayon and held the card up to it.  In her natural swinging arm motions she scribbled on the card…  I looked at it, and it looked somewhat like a turtle, except it was missing some pieces so I drew those in with a pen.  Tasha cried when she saw her turtle drawing .

Mother’s Day at church Canaan was dedicated (as well as Sally and Chad’s kids, Biddy and Gabe) to God.  For those of you who don’t know, there are no implications of Canaan’s personal salvation in her dedication.  Dedicating our child to God is simply our commitment (along with the commitment of our church) that we will do our best to raise her in a Christian home and environment.  Further, it is our admission that we are basically just “adoptive” parents of Canaan.   She’s on loan to us.  Her REAL Father is her Creator, God.  Tasha’s sister (Aunt Sissy) and brother-in-law (Uncle Bubba) and his niece, Cheyenne came.  My Mom, Dad, Nanna, and Niece (LaTrista)  also came.

These are the pics from her dedication ceremony (also in a photo album on the new Photo tab), and of course, we’re all “pretty in pink”:

The video is pretty long (almost 10 mins), but if you want to see it, here’s the video of the dedication ceremony:

Mid-West

So, we haven’t seen “Lovey and Duke” (Tasha’s parents) or Caleb and Sidney (Tasha’s little brother and sister) since the week after Canaan was born.  We haven’t seen our good friends Brian and Amanda since this summer in DC (after our wedding and honeymoon).  They all live in the wonderful world also known as the mid-west.  Kansas to be exact.  We will be going to see them this weekend because I get a 4-day weekend because of Memorial Day.  Her parents will be moving to Oklahoma soon, so this might be the last chance we’ll get to see them before they move or before I leave for my South Africa mission trip.  This will be the longest trip Canaan has been on since she was born (8 hours).  Although, technically she’s been on a longer trip.  While Tasha was preggers we drove from Maryland to Louisiana.  We are all very very excited to see all of the wonderful people up there in the mid-west.  Hurry up, weekend!  We will be sure to post pictures (in the new Photo tab!).

SORRY THAT THIS HAS TAKEN ALMOST 7 WEEKS! Apparently having a baby, buying a new house, moving to a new city, and starting a new job are pretty time consuming. I’ll get to all that later. I’ll start at the beginning.  As a warning, this is a bit long-winded.
On Saturday, 21 March we had our final baby shower for Canaan at our church in Benton. It was wonderful. Over 40 people attended, and we got some amazing gifts for our princess (our car was LOADED down).
As most of you may know by now, Tasha has had problems with gestational diabetes and pregnancy-induced hypertension (high blood-pressure) since she got pregnant. She was hospitalized twice, she was constantly feeling very weak, and she was eventually put on strict bed rest requiring her to withdraw from classes this quarter.
We knew she had some problems, but when we went to her Dr. appointment on 23 February we did not expect to hear him tell us that he would need to induce labor the next day. It was shocking. Tasha was pretty upset at first because she wanted her Mom to be able to come to the hospital, and she wouldn’t be able to on such short notice.
Eventually though, the pending excitement and the imminent arrival of our princess took over. We had Canaan-fever!
That night we made sure we had everything we would need packed and ready to go. The next morning we went to Target and picked up some last minute things that we would need for her arrival (including an awesome stroller/car seat/car seat base travel system).
We went to the hospital at 4pm on 23 February, and they began the process of preparing Tasha for labor induction.
The labor was anything but ideal. Tasha’s epidural fell out, causing her intense pain. They put it back in, but a little while later, while dilated to a 7 Tasha started feeling excruciating pain… They called the anesthesiologist back in, but he argued with Tasha for 30 minutes, telling her she wasn’t in pain… He was telling her it was just pressure, not pain. 30 minutes into her screaming to the guy that she wasn’t lying…her sister, Stormi, pointed out that the epidural drip was EMPTY. Hrm… The epidural fell out on other time, and had to be replaced again.
Canaan decided to come out brow presentation, meaning she shoved her head back and tried to push out forehead first. This isn’t ideal, and so…Tasha got stuck dilated at an 8. After almost 24 hours into the ordeal, they decided to do an emergency C-section.
During the C-Section, I was behind a curtain, but I could see around the edge of it a bit. I could hear them drilling or cutting what sounded like bone, and it smelled like the smell of the tooth dust when a cavity is getting drilled. Tasha starts yelling that she can feel them cutting, and they tell her she can’t feel it. She tells them once again, as they used a scalpel that she can feel them cutting her right then, and so they decide to put her to sleep for the operation. I hear the doctor ask for the vacuum. I can hear the light suction… the doctor tells them to turn the suction up. The nurses tell him it is up. He starts yelling at them that it’s not working right, he can’t get suction on the baby. The idea was to make a small incision, attach the vacuum to Caney’s head, and pull her out. The vacuum malfunction complicated matters worse… He gave up the vacuum and cut her open even wider so he could reach in and grab the baby.
The baby comes out, the someone yells “10:22pm”! They try aspirating her, she isn’t crying, she isn’t screaming…she isn’t breathing. They run out of the room with her. I scream, “WHERE DO I GO?!” The doctor said to stay, the anesthesiologist told me to follow the baby. I ran after my baby. They had her in a side room with a nurse blocking the door. She wouldn’t let me in… The nurses were slapping her belly, flipping her, slapping her tummy…working frantically. No crying. I am screaming, begging the nurse to tell me what’s wrong with my baby, asking if she’s ok. She won’t tell me anything except warn me that she’d kick me out if I didn’t calm down…
Our family and friends are all gathered outside the doors, hoping to catch a glimpse, they send someone running after a respiratory specialist… As the doors open for the nurse to find the specialist, our family and friends see me crying and I just scream “PRAY! PRAY!” …and the doors swing closed.
Finally, a gasp, a whimper, and then…the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, a cry.
Despite being without breathing for what seemed like an eternity, her oxygen level was great…she was jaundiced, but she was otherwise healthy and doing great. She almost didn’t make it…
All that I could think was…I cannot EVER go through this again…EVER… Despite Tasha and I wanting to have several kids, all that I could think was that this experience was too horrifying, too depressing, too emotional to experience again.
And then that beautiful little girl…her screaming face…so beautiful…she had a bruise on her forehead and a bloody bruise on her nose from pushing against Tasha’s cervix with her brow/nose for over 24 hours, but she was perfect.

So, you might think that the nightmarish experience was over.  Well, perhaps the worst of it was, but there was plenty more to come.

The next day, Tasha was supposed to be on an all liquid diet, and we had been told this.  So we were surprised when a woman in scrubs comes in with a lunch full of solids the next day.  I tell her “we were told she’s on a liquid diet, are you sure she can eat solids?!”  She said “Oh, yeah, she can have solids, this is what they ordered for her.”  So Tasha dug in…  the nurse comes in and says “Why are you eating solids?!  You’re on a liquid diet!”  Ah…terrific.  So later that day the same nurse comes in to hook up Tasha’s new saline drip.  Tasha starts feeling extreme stomache cramps.  She complains to the nurse who is at a loss as to why…  A different nurse comes in, and notices Tasha is hooked up to Pitocin, the medicine they used to induce labor.  The bag was still on the pole, and the other nurse hooked up the wrong medicine bag.  So she was having contractions/spasms because the woman gave her the wrong medicine!  So, finally, the next day, they tell Tasha she can take her first shower…the shower is broke.  They had to call in maintenance to fix it.  The room, by the way, was TINY.  It’s definitely not the recovery room they showed us when we toured the birthing center.  The experience was all so terrifying.  Finally, we got released to go home 5 days after we got there.  Nightmare over?!  Wrong…

Tasha went for her 2 week follow-up appointment with her doctor.  He asked if she was having any problems.  She told him her sutures were starting to hurt a LOT and that she thought they might be getting infected.  He asks to take a look.  He’s SHOCKED.  His jaw drops, and he asks “WHY ARE YOUR STAPLES STILL IN?!”  He continues, “Who was your nurse that discharged you?!  They had specific orders not to release you without removing your staples first!  That’s why you’re in so much discomfort!  They were in for 2 weeks longer than they should have been…”  So he removed them, but the scarring is considerably worse because of the incompetence of the hospital staff.

So, my beautiful princess made her grand arrival with plenty of drama, but everyone insisted (and still does) that she’s the prettiest baby ever.  I couldn’t agree more.  Here are the pictures from when she was born (it’s a lot!)…

That’s all for this post, but I promise many many more to come!  We love you all…

-Cy

Yesterday began with Tasha and I fighting off sleep at 7am and getting ready for her to get some lab work done. Tasha couldn’t eat or drink after midnight the night before because she would be doing a blood glucose check for gestational diabetes. When she got there she had to drink a cup of some really sweet liquid and wait an hour before they drew blood. We had some spare time so while we were there we pre-registered for her to have Canaan there, and we went and scheduled her next appointment with our baby doctor for Friday.

Tasha had been complaining about swelling in her feet, but that’s fairly normal in pregnancy. The nurse who drew her blood when we got back noticed that her hand was very, very swollen too (around her wedding ring) and told us to make sure to keep an eye on her blood pressure. Tasha had also been complaining of her tummy and head hurting yesterday, and when she went to get her new drivers license yesterday, she had a hard time seeing out of her right eye (blurry vision). We went to Wal-Mart, and while we were there we checked her blood pressure. It was in prehypertension according to her chart, but it wasn’t too too high. To be safe, we called her doctor who told us to be cautious but that it was likely nothing too serious.

Well, we had our first baby shower last night with the Chi Alpha girls (thank you, ladies!) which I’ll discuss in my next post. After her shower, her feet were swelling so much that her ankles began to hurt, and her fingers were tingling…

My Mom warned us of preeclampsia this weekend. Tasha’s friend, Sally, warned us of preeclampsia this weekend. Tasha’s Mom wisely suggested we go to the hospital last night…just in case. So we went to the ER. When we went to check in they asked how many weeks pregnant she was (34), and then told us to come on to the back. They quickly took us up to the Women’s Health Clinic (same place where babies are delivered).

When we got to the Women’s Health Clinic, they tested Tasha for elevated protein levels (preeclampsia indicator), and they were negative…so that’s good. They decided to monitor her heart rate and blood pressure for a while, so they hooked her up to a machine that monitored her pulse, Canaan’s pulse, and took her blood pressure every 14 minutes. The readings went back and forth from very high to just a slight bit high over and over again. The diastolic number was the one they said they were most concerned with, and it kept going fairly high. Also, she was having minor contractions 7 minutes apart during this process (not actually in labor or anything though).

So, they aren’t sure what was causing it, but after a while, it leveled out in that same prehyperstension range we saw earlier that day. They let us come home but told us to be careful and to come back if necessary. They wrote her an excuse for school today so that she could rest and prop up her feet.

Tasha’s doctor called us today, and they told us that Tasha’s glucose test came back “abnormal.” So they need us to come in again tomorrow for more tests. They will be doing multiple glucose tests an hour apart to verify for sure whether she has gestational diabetes or not. If she does…then it will be a very strict diet for the remainder of the pregnancy.

So yesterday was very long and emotional.  It’s terrifying… Tasha was scared, and I was scared too.  I couldn’t act scared though because that would scare her even more (possibly making her blood pressure raise even more).

Things are okay, and we’re trusting that God will take care of everything.  We believe in the power of prayer, so please keep us in your prayers!