The birth of Tucker Jay Jensen

I went to my non-stress test and A.F.I.(ultrasound) appointments on Friday afternoon, my fluids looked good at my A.F.I., however Tucker was not responding very well during the NST. They like to see him move and then have his heart rate jump up into the 150's, however he was not moving hardly at all, and when I stopped to think about it realized he had been moving a lot less in the last week, which can be fairly normal with the bigger the baby gets and less room to move, so I wasn't too concerned about it. At my Tuesday appointments we learned that sometime over the last weekend, he had turned breech. My nurse was concerned that he was wrapped up in the cord from moving breech, and then he had 2 drops in heart rate, down to the 90's. At this point my nurse called my doctor(who I had just had an appointment with that morning) and was told to take me to the hospital. From there everything happened pretty quickly, I was put in a wheelchair and the nurse ran me over to the hospital where I was put in a gown and back on a monitor within minutes. Tucker’s heart rate stabilized, but my O.B. was not happy with the results and thought it best to just get him out. Luckily Chris was already off work and heading my way since we were to meet up to go the temple one last time that night, he made it there in time and I was rushed into the operating room, given my spinal and prepped for surgery. The C-section went well, I had two O.B.'s do the surgery, and I felt icky, but nothing too out of the ordinary for surgery. I didn’t throw up at all during surgery, only once while they were stitching me up, yea! Tucker came out and gave a little cry, they measured him-21 inches and 9 lbs. 7oz (2 weeks early, he was a big boy!) I got to see him and kiss his cheek and then he was off with Chris while I got stitched up.

After some testing, they found that Tucker had about half his red blood cells that he should have had-he was anemic and he was jaundiced, which is normal at 2-3 days old, but not at birth . Then they found a murmur in his heart and his oxygen was way low. It was quickly decided that he needed to be transferred to the NICU at the children’s hospital for more testing and better care. He was put on a respirator and a transport team arrived. I got to hold his little hand through his plastic transfer box for about another 30 seconds before my baby was taken and transported to children’s hospital which is about 40 minutes away. That was really, really hard. I wanted to see him and hold him so badly. I HATED being so far away from him, unable to talk to him or do anything to give him comfort. I have seen Chris cry a handful of times in our marriage, but nothing like when he came back from walking Tucker out to the transfer. We both just cried and cried. Being pregnant for 10 months and then not having your baby with you is a horrible thing, those 3 days away from Tucker were some of the hardest in my life.

On checking his bilirubin level, (which is related to the jaundice), they found it to be very high, and rising.  This is dangerous, because if it gets too high neurological damage can occur.  The quickest way to get this down is to do a blood exchange, which is where they remove his blood, 10 cc’s at a time, and replace it with new blood.  This dilutes his blood and hopefully decreases the bilirubin level.  It also helps his anemia.  He had to have this done twice. All this seems to be related to my being Rh negative.  His reaction was an autoimmune one, where his body was attacking his red blood cells, which is why he was so anemic.  The bilirubin is also related to this, and the dead RBCs.

I know that it is a miracle that Tucker is still with us in this life. I know that it was no coincidence that the nurse I had for the NST was on high alarm and moved quickly. When I think about how any one little thing could have been done differently and Tucker would probably not have made it, I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for letting Tucker stay with us. He is our miracle baby. He is a fighter and so strong. I know that prayer and fasting works, I could feel the prayers and love coming from Ramona and all over the US. We had such a huge response from family and friends and we felt incredibly blessed and cared for.