Hannah Marie Blanchard

What a whirlwind the past 36 hours have been. There have been many highs and a few lows, but the end result is wonderful. Our baby girl, Hannah Marie, has finally joined our family.

Our journey started yesterday, when I went to the doctor and found out I was only dilated to 2 cm. This wasn't exactly what I had been hoping to hear, but couldn't really do anything about it. He did a few "maneuvers" to try and help get things started, said he would probably be delivering my baby in the next few days, and scheduled me for an induction next Monday, just in case I was still pregnant.

Once I got home, the back pain I had been having since late Sunday night, suddenly intensified. I was experiencing pain that I couldn't describe and had never felt before in my life. After a few conversations with Jeremy, I relented and called my doctor who told me it was time to go to the hospital. Yikes! We were about to become parents. The reality hit us like a ton of bricks.

When we got to the hospital, we spent about 2 hours in triage, where they concluded that yes, I was in labor and began the process of admitting me. They quickly gave me my epidural (sweet relief) and we began our hospital stay. Things moved along very quickly, and before I knew it, I was dilated to 9 cm.

Around 10:15am this morning (Tuesday), my doctor declared me ready to start pushing and so push I did. Surprisingly, I only pushed for about a half an hour before Hannah decided to join us. That's where our story takes a scary twist.

The entire time, they had of course been monitoring me and monitoring Hannah's heartbeat, which was perfectly fine. She delivered smoothly and with zero complications, until they took her to weigh and measure her and realized that she wasn't breathing. She was looking around and moving, but she wasn't breathing.

I can't begin to tell you how scary that was for us. They quickly began working on her, trying to clear her airway, and hoping to get her to breathe. They called down the neo-natal team, who joined our room and joined in on working on Hannah. All Jeremy and I could do was watch, hope, pray, and cry from my bed. They quickly determined that she had an unusual amount of "gunk" in her lungs and air passages and worked as hard as they could to get her to breathe on her own. They weren't as successful as they would have liked and ended up having to stick a tube down her throat and hook her up to the vent. I truly don't think I have ever been so scared in my life.

About 15 minutes in, they were able to get her stable enough, that Jeremy and I could hold her for just a minute or two before they whisked her away to the NICU. We were told we probably wouldn't be able to see her for about two hours -- the longest two hours ever.

When we were finally able to join her in the NICU, she was doing better, but still didn't seem to have the right oxygen levels. They had her underneath an "oxygen hood" that was supplying her with the right amounts of oxygen. This meant we couldn't hold our baby girl, which was really hard. We could take pictures though.
They told us that Hannah would probably stay in the NICU for 24 hours, then be moved to the NIM (neo-natal intermediate unit), then, if she was doing better, we could probably take her home sometime around the end of the week. The end of the week? That was tough to swallow, but we know these doctors are the best, so we accepted the news and began praying that she would heal quickly.

Around 4pm, we were told that she had been out of her oxygen hood for two hours and was holding her own, so they transferred her to the NIM tonight. Not tomorrow, like they thought, tonight! We are ecstatic about this. It means our prayers were answered. They also told us that if she continued to improve, she could probably be moved to my room/the regular nursery tomorrow, and go home with me on Thursday. We were blown away when they told us that.

We went down to the NIM, where we were finally, 7.5 hours later, allowed to hold our sweet, little girl. We were able to kiss her, hug her, and hold her close. We are so thrilled to finally meet her and of course, we think she's absolutely perfect.

Please enjoy these photos! We'll keep you posted on Hannah's progress and covet your prayers.