So I know a lot of people have been wondering what exactly has been going on with our new little baby, Ryder, so hopefully i can explain a little bit. We had him on May 20th at 10:08. He is the most amazing little guy! I cannot even express how much i LOVE that baby! He has been in the NICU for 5 days and we dont know when he will come home, but he is slowly making some progress. I want to make sure he is completely safe to come home so that i wont be freakin out with worry that he is ok... but i know i will anyways haha. The last week has been an emotional rollar coaster and by far the hardest thing i have ever been through. I knew the love of a parent for their child was stronger than anything, but i guess i never anticipated just how INTENSE it would be. I would easily do anything and give up my life for him if it meant he would be ok. I just cant wait to get little Ryder home and cuddle him in my arms!
I definitely dont have the time or energy to write everything that has been going on, but Kevin wrote an email to my brother Logan on his mission to explain everything. It doesn't have all the details, but i figured i would just post it since it has the general story. I know a lot of people are praying for our sweet little guy and it seriously makes us break down and cry when we think about all the support we have. Thank you to everyone and their kind thoughts and words. We hope it wont be too much longer, we will just have to see. love you all!!
"Hey Logan This is a joint email from Amy and I. I think your mom was going to contact your mission president to see if they could pass on the news of your new little nephew being born, but if you didn't get the news...your new little nephew was born!!!!! haha.
It all started Tuesday night last week when Amy went in for a regular pregnancy check up. The doctor took her blood pressure and saw that it was a little bit high, which can cause some major complications if it gets too high, so the doc sent her down to get hooked up to the monitors to make sure baby boy was alright, and that nothing serous was going on with Amy. They kept taking her blood pressure and kept her on the monitors for several hours, and everything looked alright overall. Baby boy gave us a little scare by dropping his heart rate way down for a little while, but brought it back up and seemed to be fine the rest of the night. They decided to have us come back in the next morning (wed) to check back and make sure he was still doing okay.
So we came back in Wednesday and Amy got back on the monitors for a couple more hours. Her blood pressure was great, but baby boy's heart rate was apparently kind of confusing the nurse that was checking it. So she decided to send Amy up to talk to a doctor to go over stuff with him. We talked to him, and he said that nothing looked seriously wrong with out baby, but that at this point, there was no reason to really leave him in there much longer, cause things could only start getting worse from there. So he wanted us to come back that night for Amy to be induced.
We showed up to the hospital that night at about 8:15, hooked Amy up to more monitors for a couple more hours, then finally gave her the drug to induce her at 10:30 PM. They hardly had to give her any of the drug, because she basically started labor on her own. She labored all through the night, got an epidural, then when it got closer to time to push, baby boy's heart rate would drop every time she would have a contraction. The doctor was kinda worried that when Amy started to push, his heart rate would drop too low. They had the NICU (newborn intensive care unit) team there waiting to check the baby once he came out to make sure everything was good with him.
They had to use a vacuum on his head to pull him out as quick as possible because of the heart rate stuff, and after about 30 minutes of pushing, he was born at 10:08 AM, weighing 5 lb 6 oz. The NICU team checked him out and said he looked really healthy, and we got to hang out with the little guy for a little while after that. They took him up to the nursery to check a couple more things, and they were worried about his blood sugar being way too low. They tried feeding him some formula to get it back up, but it didn't help much. They tried feeding him more, and he didn't want it. We got to have him back in our room with us for only about an hour before they came back and said they needed to send him down to the NICU to get stuff under control. We were freakin bummed about that cause we didn't really get a chance to chill with our baby, but realized that it was necessary to get him better. It sucks cause they made it sound like it was something that would only take about a day, and we would get him back the next night. Well, the next day came around, and we found out that they hooked him up to some antibiotics that he would have to stay on for at least 3 days! We were freakin pissed that they couldn't have just told us that up front! They also had him on an IV feeding him sugar water to get his blood sugar up, and wouldn't be able to come off of that until he was eating on his own. This sucked, because he hated the formula they were giving him and only wanted the real deal (ya know, the boob), and apparently your milk takes a few days to come in after you deliver, so he was basically starving himself at first, which definitely didn't help things!
It also sucked, because he had jaundice (where his skin turns yellow from getting toxins from the poop in his intenstines) because he wasn't pooping, and he wasn't pooping because he wasn't eating, and because he wasn't eating, his blood sugar issue wasn't getting any better. So basically everything hinged on whether or not we could get him to eat.
Luckily, Amy's milk came in late saturday night-ish, and we have a breast pump that she can pump her milk with and feed him that. The first time we took some down to him, he freakin downed it in like .5 seconds, which usually took them like 15 minutes to feed him the same amount of formula. We've been pumping butt loads of milk and taking it down, and he's started eating more and more each time. He's been doubling the amount he's been eating today, and doing way good, so they turned down the amount of stuff they're feeding him through the IV. As he keeps eating more, they'll keep turning down the IV until he's completely off it. Once he's off the IV, they'll probably keep him for a couple more days just to make sure he can keep it up with food alone, and then we can FINALLY bring him home! (he also has to be able to maintain his temperature for 48 hours in an open crib, and gain weight for 48 hours before we can bring him home)
We were able to stay at the hospital with him (by the way, we named him Ryder Andrew Briggs) until yesterday when they kicked us out. Leaving him beind really sucked, coming out to the car with his car seat all ready to take him home in but no baby to put in it really sucked, coming home to the awesome baby room we fixed up with no baby to put in it definitely sucked...yeah it's been pretty rough having to leave him there, but at least he's making a lot of progress. We go and visit and feed him a few times a day, but they only let us take him out of his incubator thing 2 times a day, so that's the most we actually get to hold him.
We're not really planning on getting him home before this weekend, if not later, but we'll see. We're just freakin exhausted from stressing over him and not sleeping at nights and all that fun stuff, so hopefully time flies and we get him home ASAP!
Anyway, Ryder is freakin AWESOME. Having a baby is freaking amazing, but we definitely never realized how hard it could be. We'll try to get some pictures of him uploaded soon and sent off to you, but I think your mom may have sent a couple off already. We'll keep you posted on how he's doing, but please keep him in your prayers. Hope everything there is still going good for you. Hit us up when you get a chance, and we'll catch ya on the flip side. Love ya! Kevin, Amy, and Ryder (yeah Ryder actually typed most of this)"
