Conner's Dramatic Beginnings, Part 1

I, Carter Kirkbride, would like to make a little blogging announcement.  As you may know, I am now very busy with my new role in life as a big brother.  Because of this, I am not able to honor my commitment to keep this blog up and running.  Today I am going to officially turn over the writing responsibilities to my mom.  I just hope she is able to keep the attention of all my loyal followers!

Hi, Brenda here!  I thought I would fill everybody in on our little Conner's dramatic start to life.  As some of you know, I was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus when I was 22.  This is a chronic disorder of the immune system that causes inflammation of various parts of the body.  After the initial diagnosis was solved and a treatment plan was put into place, having lupus didn't really affect my everyday life.  It was discovered that I was positive for the Anti-Ro antibody when I became pregnant with Carter.  The doctors told us this meant we needed to be monitored closer than a normal pregnancy would be.  So I went to all of my doctors appointments and extra check ups, but nothing ever came of it.  We just had our baby and moved on.

Two years later, we became pregnant with Conner and went through the same process, however, we didn't get as lucky this time around.  When I was 20 weeks pregnant I was at yet another check up for Conner and it was discovered that his heart rate had slowed down dramatically.  They said that it was important that we head over to the Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital the next day and get a more complex ultrasound, known as an echo cardiogram done to check on his heart and find out what was making the rate so slow.  Of course after a sleepless night, Josh and I headed over to the hospital the next day.

The ultrasound seemed to take forever, it is one in which they check the baby as a whole very quickly and then focus on the heart the remainder of the time.  His heart rate had decreased from between 140-150 beats per minute to 45-50 beats per minute.  This seemed to throw everybody for a loop because there were at least 3 different people that came in to test his heart rate because they didn't believe it possible.  When the test was finally over we were sent over to the High Risk Maternity department where the doctor there told us that Conner has developed full congenital heart block.  This means that the "electrical" portion of his heart doesn't function at all.  While the top portion of his heart, the atria, was still beating at the normal rate, the electrical currents from this portion of his heart were not being sent to the bottom portion of his heart.  His ventricles were beating at their own rate of only 50ish beats per minute. 

The doctor told us that there was a rather large chance that Conner wouldn't be able to survive at all with this low of a heart rate.  A few days later we met with a team of people from Beaumont including the high risk maternity department and their pediatric cardiology department.  The cardiologist agreed that it would be hard for Conner to survive at all with this low of a heart rate, but if he was able to hang in there for long enough, it was possible he could be treated with a pacemaker.  However, they did not have the ability to do this at their hospital.  They recommended we transfer our care to either Children's Hospital in Detroit or to UofM Hospital in Ann Arbor.

We decided to transfer our care to the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital at UofM.  My care for the lupus was already handled here, so it made sense that we would come here for Conner's care as well.  Also, we read that their pediatric cardiology department was ranked number 3 in the nation, so it was an easy decision for us.

At our first visit we spent the whole day there and met with what seemed like 100 different doctors, but in the end we felt better about our situation.  While they said it would be a long, hard road; they have seen many cases like this that have ended with happy, healthy babies. 

It was a long, hard road as they had predicted.  We made the 1 1/2 hour journey over to UofM every one to two weeks for checks ups.  Over the next 4 months all of the doctors became more and more confident with Conner's condition.  While his heart rate never improved, he seemed to be coping with the slower rate very well.  At first everybody was hoping that we would be able to hold off until Halloween before we needed to deliver Conner, but that goal was pushed back week after week.  In the end they wanted us to get as close to our Christmas Eve due date as possible.  While they never said for sure, they expect that he will need to have a pacemaker put in to help speed up his heart rate.  It seemed to be a question of if he will need one immediately, or if he would be able to hold off for a day or so.

After a few appointments of "will we have our baby today", our c-section was scheduled for December 12, 2011 and we welcomed Conner to the world that day.