Maid-N-Meadows: Fall Update 2019

  Fall sure has been a doozy! I don't know about anyone else, but the heat combined with no rain turned our pastures into dust! Our cows suffered and so did our milk production! But that wasn't our biggest challenge of the season. As soon as we started to experience a cool down and a bit of rain, we got hit with a family crisis.....one that would take a month to recover from.

                                

Baby Elora on CPAP, under a heat lamp. She was 18 inches long and weighed 4lbs 10oz.

   

   As many of you know, we were expecting a new baby in November. But at thirty weeks, trouble surfaced. We began struggling with unexplained hemorrhages with a trip to the hospital to access baby's health. Baby was great! Breach, but by all other counts, healthy. During this time we found out we were having a baby girl! What fun...except it wasn't. Every week I would wake up to heavy bleeding that lasted a few hours and then would dissipate to nothing.

        Except the effects were adding up. My hemoglobin dropped to 7.8 and I began having major signs of anemia. My heart was racing, I could hardly eat, and I was sometimes out of breath even lying in bed. I was exhausted all the time. 

       We had some help and we were working on improving the situation with diet and supplements, but I kept hemorrhaging. I was like a leaky bucket. All the efforts we were making were just flowing right back out.

      At 35 weeks gestation, my water broke. Normally we have our babies in the comfort of our home, but this time, with baby's prematurity and my low hemoglobin, we headed to the hospital. I have never been to the hospital for myself, and I was terrified. 

     After as much consideration as possible, it was decided that the only option was a c-section. Baby was way up in my ribs and the placenta was peeling away in what is called an "abruption". I could hear her little heart beat race to 180 beats per minute and then dip down below 100. She was in distress and I was hemorrhaging again. After it was decided to head toward the operating room, I passed a clot the size of a grapefruit and the bleeding came uncontrolled.

     And that was the beginning of a two week hospital stay! By the time I woke up from surgery, the hospital was bombarding us for a name on the birth certificate. We really had to scramble there. We thought we had 5 more weeks! Early the next morning we agreed upon "Elora Sky Showalter".

    "Elora" means "God is my light" and of course "Sky" was chosen because of the beauty of the heavens. It was 3 days before I ever got to see her. My hemoglobin dropped to 5.6 and I could barely lift my arms. 

     At home, first my mother, then my sister-n-law, cared for one year old, Beulah. Jacob took over the day to day running of the farm, which is pretty impressive for a 16 year old. My father came and helped with the other little boys, a little later. And the local community brought heaps and heaps of food. And I MEAN HEAPS AND HEAPS! Clothes for the baby came in and boxes of healing food flowed through the mail box. We never felt so loved and it couldn't have come at a better time!

     Meanwhile, Elora was fighting a blood infection and she struggled with apnea of prematurity. That is just a fancy way of saying she would stop breathing and needed to be stimulated to restart. But it was a scary time for us. Day by day, her condition improved and we began to look forward to the conditions of her release. 

Exhausted parents!

Baby is out of the incubator!

           Before she could be released, she had to be able to breath on her own, maintain her body temperature, and eat without help from her stomach tube.

  We were fortunate enough to get a room at a place connected to the hospital called the Hospitality House. It is much like a Ronald McDonald house, where families can be close to loved ones in the hospital. My milk was terribly slow coming in. So Daniel ran the milk to the NICU around the clock. Sometimes we built up enough extra that he could skip the 3 AM feeding and get more than an hour and a half of sleep at a time, but mostly we all went around extremely sleep deprived. Baby Elora slowly improved. Two steps forward....one step back....

   

Here, the rainbow ends in the hospital. Daniel said the pot of gold was baby Elora….

     We were reaching the point of complete exhaustion and Elora was not able to maintain her temperature and still have the energy to eat from a bottle. Dr's mentioned that in third world countries, without incubators, they used "kangaroo care". This meant skin to skin transmission of heat, from the mother to the baby. We thought, "What if we did the temperature part for Elora? Then she could just manage the eating part!"

Kangaroo care was commenced around the clock. We called in someone dear to manage a stretch that would allow us some sleep and suddenly Elora was taking her bottle and then some!

   At four pounds and thirteen ounces, baby Elora was finally given the all clear to head home! I can tell you, it was a week before we caught up on sleep!  We are so relieved to be home and ever thankful for all the support we received. 
             

     Winter has set in! Cheese is winding down for the season! We have a few more events to go and then we head into the winter break! Praying for a warm and peaceful winter for all. Lord willing, we will see y'all in the spring!