Dylan Joseph Best

Wednesday morning I woke up at 3:00 AM with intense contractions less then 10 minutes apart, as the pain starting getting extreme and closer together I woke Jake up and told him it was time to call his mom to come watch Jacob. I called the Maple Grove Hospital to let them know I was on the way and was told they were full and needed to call my doctor's office to find out where they wanted me to go. I was directed to Fairview Southdale in Edina. We arrived at 5:30 AM and I was dilated to a 7. They quickly moved me to the delivery room and thankfully I was still able to get a pain med. Dylan dropped fast and was pushing to come out, because he was low they had to put a heart monitor on his head while he was still inside. They noticed his heart rate was dropping and told me they needed to get him out as soon as possible. So after 10 minutes of pushing we were pleased to introduce Dylan Joseph Best born on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 6:40 am. He weighed 7 lbs 1 oz. and was 20 inches long.

They got him cleaned up and checked his vitals and handed him off to Jake. With the speed of the birth I was a little light headed after he was born and my blood pressure had dropped a little, so they wouldn't let me hold Dylan until I was feeling better. Finally I was able to hold him for about 30 minutes. I was able to nurse him and then noticed his lips were starting to turn blue. I notified the nurse and she took him right a way and they brought him down to NICU. This was the longest moment of my life! Jake had gone with them and I sat there scared and nervous. Finally they got me cleaned up and brought me down to Dylan. After X-rays to look at his lungs and heart they determined he has Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn and further testing today also showed he swallowed some liquid during delivery and it went to his lungs. He has pneumonia and is Jaundice. PPHN is a restriction of the blood flow to the lungs, so his oxygen level is low. They are keeping him in NICU and administrating oxygen through a tube in his belly button, is getting treated antibiotics for the pneumonia, and is getting fed through an IV. The percentage of oxygen he was getting yesterday was in the 90 percentile and they have been slowly trying to reduce it. For a while every time they tried to lower it he had a hard time but as of today at 1:00 PM he is at 41%. The goal is to get him down to 21%. He is very sensitive to sound, light, and touch so we are not able to hold or touch him. We have been limiting our time with him so he can recover better with out stress. With the pneumonia he will be in the hospital for at least 5 days and in the mean time hopefully his oxygen level will get better. When he is stronger they will try to let me nurse him but it may be a couple of days. The doctors are very hope full and say he is strong. They do not believe he will have any long term effects. It has been very tough watching him go through this and not being able to touch and hold him but we are hanging in there. Here are a little pictures of our little guy before and after he got sick.