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The story of what happened and Why we made the decision we made:

On Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 I woke up normally. Nothing seemed amiss. Then I noticed a trickle. I didn’t realized what it could be. I casually called my doctor to see if I should worry. They asked me to go to the hospital. I still didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation. I woke up Jeff and off we went. Thinking I might be there a while I grabbed my phone charger and headphone. This now seems like the stupidest thing to do, but in my denial or naivety I brought it along. It would be my connection with the outside world. When we got to the hospital and I walked into the labor and delivery area, I knew everything was about to change. My water broke dramatically and the nurses hurried to help me. They sent Jeff off to fill out paper work. It was then that I thought William was gone. I couldn’t look at the nurse, but then, we heard a strong heartbeat on the monitor. It was a happy moment, but I didn’t know what would be next. It seemed like an eternity before Jeff came back. The on call doctor came to do an exam. They wanted to see if perhaps it wasn’t amniotic fluid. As the people coming in and out increased and the doctor said she saw pooling, all signs pointed to a large rupture. By the time the ultrasound technician came in, I had no detectable amniotic fluid. My heart sunk. All I could do was look up at Jeff and tell him how sorry I was. Tears streamed for a long time. Then came the doctor with more bad news. Since my due date had been readjusted on my first visit to my OB to a week further out than what my last cycle had put me at, the records showed William was 22 weeks and 6 days. Babies aren’t “viable” until at least 23 weeks. We also weren’t in a hospital with a NICU capable of handling a baby that young. The doctor had terrible statistics for us. She left us numb. I knew William was older than the 22 weeks and 6 days, especially since the sonogram measurements were coming back with about 24 weeks. Even so the odds were bad. We did have hope though. We had friends who a few years ago had a little girl at 23 weeks and 2 days. Her name is Annabell. She is now a beautiful little girl. We knew the problems her parents had gone through with Annabell, and that she still has a few things to deal with, but we also knew that she’d made it. You can read her blog and her story here: annabellferrell.com. So we had to give our little boy a chance. This meant having to tell the doctor we wanted to transfer to the larger hospital downtown that had an equipped NICU for William. It wasn’t a hard decision, we just knew we had to give him his chance. The doctor was reluctant, but did call in the transfer. I was transferred late that evening and by that point I had gotten very sick. Along with the sharp pains in my back came a terrible headache and nausea. Once at the hospital they checked William’s heartbeat, it was still strong. Then they asked if I wanted something for the pain. They gave me staydol, which knocked me out completely.

Sometime during the night I started contracting. I can barely remember anything from the contractions. I was falling right back to sleep after each one. I do remember that no nurses or doctors were in the room with me most of the night. Jeff, my mom and my cousin Veronica were the only ones there. The contractions got really close and my mom sent out my cousin to get a nurse. Still when William began to crown, there weren’t any medical personnel there. I know they arrived quickly to deliver him, but I’ll never forget the fear of delivering William with noone there to take care of him. He was born at 4:54am. He was 1 pound and 6 ounces at officially 23 weeks. At first he didn’t take the medicine to open his airways and they couldn’t get him to breathe. The doctor came over to tell us he had tried, but his lungs didn’t open to take the medicine. We both nodded and thought it was our time to say goodbye, but suddenly the doctor walked back to William. He’d apparently tried to take a breath. The doctor tried the medicine again and this time it went through. I don’t remember the emotions at that point. Shock maybe. They brought William by before they took him to the NICU so I could see him. I touched him through the portholes. He was so small. I remember crying, but it’s all become a blur now. The nurses asked if we had a name for him. We hadn’t agreed on one yet, but soon came up with William Alejandro. He’s named after his grandfathers. A nice strong name we thought. We found out later it’s meaning, protector and defender. After they left with William I couldn’t sleep.

They moved us to a maternity recovery room. I remember talking to family and friends. Jeff and I went up to see William that morning.  He was in the incubator in the NICU.  They were giving him transfusions and he was on a ventilator.  The doctors told us that he was doing better and his blood oxygen levels had come up.  We stayed with him for a while and eventually Jeff went home to get a few hours sleep.  More friends and family came by that evening, we visited with William in the NICU and we spent another night in the maternity recovery room. We started thinking about what it was going to be like to spend everyday at the hospital while William got better.

In the middle of the night we decided to go visit William and the nurse told us that he was having a hard night.  Our hearts dropped.  They did a sonogram of his brain to check for bleeding and sent it off for analysis.  We waited.  In the morning we met with the doctor and he told us he had bad news.  He said that there was critical bleeding in both sides of William’s brain and he was having seizures.  The bleeding on one side of his brain was a 4, as bad as it can get, and the other side was a 3 and going to become a 4.  The blood was getting into his brain tissues, and while he might hold on for a few days, he was in pain and there was no chance for recovery.  His lungs were not developed enough, so the blood wasn’t able to travel through them and was backing up in his brain.  They told us that they would give him some medicine for the pain but the arm movements and wiggling that wouldn’t stop earlier were likely a side effect of the seizures.  We didn’t want him to be in any more pain so we decided that we would remove him from the ventilator that night.  We were able to gather a lot of family and some friends and the hospital priest baptized him in his incubator.  We spent time with him until the evening.  Finally when it was time they moved his incubator to a private spot and we all got to hold him while he was still on the ventilator.  Then they disconnected the ventilator and we took him into a private room where Jeff and I had some time with him, singing him lullaby’s and being a family.  Then our friends and family came in and spent time with us.  His heart finally stopped beating at 8:30pm.  Eventually we gave him back to the nurse, spent some time with some other family and friends and went to bed.  In the morning they brought him in a wicker basket and we were able to say some more goodbyes.  I was discharged from the hospital that day and we started planning the funeral.  Jeff’s parents flew down from Oregon so we scheduled the funeral for Friday.  We had a viewing at Weed, Corley, Fish and a lot of our friends and family were able to come.  The next Tuesday we had another few moments with him and then he was cremated.

We have an angel now. We will never forget our little William.