Cole's Story

Well, I have finally decided to start a blog so family and friends can follow Cole's progress through life.

The easiest way for me to tell you 'Cole's Story' is to copy the letter I sent out to everyone when I mailed out his birth announcements. You will see this below.

Obviously, this was previous to even having a clue about Cerebral Palsy! We were told that he has CP when he was 9 mos old. Somehow, I knew before then but didn't have a name to put to it....just that mother's intuition that 'something' was wrong.

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you enjoy these pictures of our beautiful new baby, Cole! I thought I would include this letter to explain his entrance into this world, for those of you that may not already know the story. He had a very rough start but is doing great now – thank God! I apologize to any of you men that may think this is too graphic… so be warned now! ;0)

Well, I guess I will just start from the beginning. We were scheduled to have a C-section (along with tubes getting tied and just a little cosmetic surgery on the previous C-section scar I already had) on February 23^rd.

Luckily, Mom and John had come to stay the night on the 22^nd so they could bring Brett and Shane up to the hospital the next day, right before the surgery.

Well, around 2:30 in the morning I felt what I thought was a really strong kick and had to go use the bathroom. So, I get up and was closing the bathroom door when I thought I was peeing on myself. I yelled at Joe (waking him up) that I thought my water had broke but changed my mind thinking it was just pee when it stopped. You have to understand that my water never broke with the other two so this was a whole new experience and I didn’t have a clue.

Joe decided to do research on the Internet (he helped me this way with any questions I had throughout my whole pregnancy). In the meantime, since I felt nasty, I decided to take a shower.

While washing my hair I have a major contraction. I breathe through it and start putting conditioner in my hair when I have another contraction. Joe comes in and tells me I better get out of the shower because that was only one minute between contractions. I was hoping to shave my legs but that didn’t happen! Gross!

Joe goes up and wakes up Mom and she has to help me get dressed since my contractions were so bad and close that I couldn’t bend down to put my pants on. I am so thankful that I already had all the bags packed and was ready to go.

In the meantime, Joe had called the hospital to tell them we were on the way. The nurse could not believe that my contractions were so close already and thought we had waited on purpose… so not the case!

We went out the door around 2:45 and got to the hospital about 3:15. I thought I was going to deliver in the car on the way there! I even made Joe run some red lights on the way (if you know Joe, this about killed him).

So, we get there and they are hooking up the IV and checking everything and tell me I am 90% effaced. In other words, the baby was NOT waiting! I just kept telling them that I was supposed to have a c-section and have my tubes tied. They started wheeling me back to the surgery room and after I changed tables I told them the baby was not waiting for the surgery and I would have to deliver him.

Just in time, the doctor shows up and I start pushing. Only 2 pushes for the head and 1 for the rest and he was out at 4:01 am.

I realized I couldn’t hear him crying and started asking why. They told me he was having trouble breathing and I could see them carry him over to the bed where they take the babies. I could see the anesthesiologist sticking a tube down his throat and pumping the big bulb on the end (just like you see on ER on TV).

Joe could see Cole better and said he was very purple when he was born but was a normal color just as soon as they got him breathing again. From that point things are a little blurry for me since I was upset.

Apparently, I had developed pre-eclampsia (pregnancy induced high blood pressure), which was a total shock since I was just fine through my whole pregnancy – even just the week before. At some point my placenta had torn away from the uterine wall and they didn’t know how long Cole had been without oxygen.

I was taken to my room and, at a later time, Cole was brought into the room to tell us bye before the ambulance took him to a different hospital that has the best NICU (neonatal intensive care unit).

I had to stay an extra day to get my blood pressure under control and Joe had to push me in a wheel chair for a week after I was released. Poor Joe had to make all the phone calls and travel back and forth between the two hospitals, worrying about both of us. I can never express how much I appreciated the kindness and help of so many of our friends that came to visit, expressed their concern, and even brought us food during the 21 long days that Cole had to stay in the hospital.

It was so heartbreaking having to leave everyday without our baby in our arms but it helped to know we had so many people giving us support and praying for us. The doctors were watching Cole for seizures (he had tremors but no seizures) and for neurological problems. Throughout his stay he had tubes and monitors attached to him and they ran EEG’s, EKG’s and CAT scans. On the EEG’s they saw irritability but no seizure activity and each one was improved from the one before. This was a very good sign. They were giving him Phenobarbital (an anti-seizure medication) to help him. The EKG showed he had a shadow or small hole on one of the ventricles to his heart. They said this was not an extremely big deal as it was common and should close on its own. Cole was having some trouble sucking on a bottle to eat, as he had always been fed through a tube, so I started finger feeding him until we finally got him to eat like he was supposed to.

When he was released from the hospital they seemed to still be concerned about developmental problems and we had to set up some follow up appointments. Since then the neurologist has released Cole saying he will be just fine and we are weaning him off the Phenobarbital. The cardiologist said he couldn’t hear a hole in his heart and thinks it has closed up. We will be taking him back for and EKG when he is 6 months old just to make sure.

His pediatrician says he is just like the other two “Keathley” boys; he just caused us a few extra gray hairs in the beginning. So, other than the colic from 9:30 to midnight every night, all is well in the Keathley household.

Again, I want to thank everyone for everything they did to help us get through everything!

Leanna