Jasmine arrived on November 10th, 2000 at 11:26 AM, via an emergency C-Section delivery. What Tamie and I had thought was going to be a normal pre-natal checkup turned into a very scary introduction to our new daughter.
15 minutes after we got to the doctors office (which is attached to Magee-Womens Hospital), and immediately after Tamie had gotten her blood pressure checked, we were informed that Tamie had a blood pressure of 170 over 110, and that she was suffering from preeclampsia. Worse yet, Dr. Simmonds had a very hard time locating Jasmines heart beat with the ultrasound microphone. Because of this, he informed us that he would first try to drop Tamie's blood pressure via a magnesium sulfate drip so that he could then induce labor, and hopefully avoid the need for a cesarean section operation, but one way or another, we were going to be parents this day.
Tamie was then whisked into a wheel chair and wheeled over to the Labor Delivery and Recovery (LDR) area (private rooms even!) where she was put onto the Magnesium IV drip. At this point, I was still thinking that Dr. Simmonds was going to try to induce labor, so I went off to make some phone calls, thinking that things were going to take a few hours. I told our immediate family that things were happening, but not to hurry... little did I realize at the time that everything was speeding up. When I got back to the room Dr. Simmonds was just about to wheel Tamie into the operating room to receive a spinal block, and I had to sign papers allowing Tamie to be given the necessary drugs. I was left to wait in the LDR room for about 15 minutes while this was done (it seemed more like 1-2 hours).
When I was finally let into the operating room, the cesarean operation was already well underway. I was seated beside Tamie's head near the anesthesia machine, with a big cloth screen separating our view of the operating field. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that the staff wouldn't let me watch the whole thing, but I suppose that they didn't want to have more than one patient to worry about.... *smile*
Within what seemed to be no more than 15 minutes after getting into the operating room, Jasmine was pulled from her warm and comfy home. I heard her first almost mewling cries as the nurses pulled her off to the side for weighing and her first check out. While this was going on, the surgeon was busy starting to close the wound in Tamie's belly. I finally got a chance to see the wound at this point. From my perspective, they had opened up a hole the size of a cantaloupe in her abdomen, and had by then already closed the uterus and most of the abdominal cavity.
The nurses, seeing that Jasmine was having trouble breathing immediately put her onto a O2 mask, and with a quick pause by us, rushed her down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Jasmine, about 4 hours after birth. She is hooked up to an oscillating respirator here to keep her lungs inflated.
When this picture was taken, Jasmine was pretty active, and was trying to move around a lot. Because her movement was working against the respirator, she was given a drug that pretty much paralyzed her major muscle groups until her breathing was more efficient. The safety pin that you can see holding the arm down was to keep her from pulling out the arterial monitor that was in her right arm.
You can almost see the blue of her newborn eyes in this picture.
Jasmine, and her two proud (and very scared) parents.
This is the day after Jasmines birth, and the first time that Tamie had been able to even see Jasmine. Because of the drugs and lack of eyeglasses, when the staff wheeled our daughter by us in the incubator all that she could see then was a foggy blur...
