Avery Jean McCandless

Although it's only Thursday this week has been absolutely crazy. Full of tears and lots of blessings from our Heavenly Father.  On Monday I was over  40 weeks pregnant when I went to my Dr's appointment. He checked the baby and said that everything looked pretty good but that he felt like she needed to come out and that we should get her out asap. He sent me over to Mountain View an hour later to be started on cervadil ( a cervix softening agent). I had the cervadil inserted at about 6:30p.m. and was having contractions by about 8:00. Normally people don't dilate on cervadil but by the next morning I had dilated to a 4. They then decided  to start me on pitocin to keep things rolling at 7:30 and by 10:00 my contracitons were about 3 minutes apart but completely do-able. At 11:00 my doctor came in and said it was time to break my water so that this baby could come now. Up until this point labor had been intense but I had been handling it really well and was still planning on having an unmedicated birth but as soon as my water was broken I was having contractions that were a minute apart with no breaks and was still not dilating past a 4 because my body was so tense. That's when I asked for some meds in my IV just to take the edge off. Whatever they gave me made me feel loopy and I didn't like it at all. So after a little while longer I opted for an epidural. When I recieved the epidural they decided just to give me a test dose just to see how my body would react. As soon as I got the test dose I was numb from my mouth down. I had been having such intense back labor that the pressure in my back pushed the epidural up and made my entire body numb. I couldn't swallow, they had to put a tube down my throat to suction me out so that I didn't choke, Avery's heart stopped, and my blood pressure crashed. It was extremely scary but thankfully Heavenly Father blessed us with some amazing nurses that were able to take care of everything in about a minute and a half. Not long after everything was settled it was then time to push. My nurse Bonnie was absolutely amazing and did everything she could to make sure that our birth plan was followed as closely as possible. Avery Jean McCandless was born at 2:21 on July 24th weighing 8lbs 8oz and she was 21 1/2 inches long.

 When she was born she wasn't making any sounds and hand asperated on meconium. She was quickly rushed away to the NICU where she had an amazing team of respritory therapists and nurses. It was really hard for Wyatt and I to see her taken away without being able to hold her or touch her. She was then transported to EIRMC around 9:00 that night because she needed to be put on a special drug to help her lungs open and her heart not have to work as hard to pump blood through her body called Nitric. She also has to have an echocardiogram and xray every 6 hours because they found that she has fluid surrounding the outside of her lungs so they need to see if the fluid levels are going up or down. They think that she may have gotten sick before she was born

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The past 2 days have been extremely rough. There have been lots of tears and we've worried a lot about our sweet little baby. Today has been a really good day though. They saw from her xray today that the fluid around her lungs is starting to go away, They were able to decrease the amount of Nitric and Oxygen that she needs, and she has been able to go 8 hours without being sedated. She has such a sweet spirit about her and I've loved the time I've had to just sit with her and hold her hand.

 When we talk to her, her oxygen level goes up 99 to 100% which is really exciting and she loves to hear her daddy talk. She gets really excited and starts moving around and her oxygen levels automatically shoot up.  She is so beautiful and has a good head of hair. It's been hard to not hold her or feed her or love on her but we know that those times will come soon. Right now we're just grateful to see her small improvements and to know that what we're going through now is just a small moment in time.  We've been blessed with amazing nurses over here that have been taking excellent care of her and every 3 hours we're able to get into the incubator and change her diaper and help them take her stats which has been fun. Hopefully sometime in the next couple days her oxygen levels will be stable enough for us to be able to hold her and she'll be able to start eating on her own. Right now we're just greatful for baby steps and the opportunity we've been given to call her ours.

Feeling incredibly blessed
The McCandless Family