Thanks to many prayers and a few miracles, we are now a healthy, happy family of 4! Baby Zachary Allen Young was born on Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 at 2:39 p.m. He weighed 6lbs and 9 oz. and was 19 inches long. We couldn't be more in love with our new little man!
This story is truly miraculous, so I have to share. We were scheduled to be induced on Tuesday morning (because our insurance starts over with the new year), so we showed up bright and early and as excited as two parents can be! The labor was going normally - albeit rather slowly - and we were just waiting for the arrival of our new baby boy. We were planning to name him Miles Alexander, and that's what we'd been calling him for 4 months.
Suddenly it hit me that he might not end up looking like a Miles, and something just felt wrong about the name. I turned to Paul and told him I thought we might need to reconsider. He agreed and we both thought that the name Zachary had a good ring to it. We couldn't find a name book at the time so we weren't sure what it meant, but we thought it sounded good.
Fast-forward about 15 minutes. Everything was still going great, and I was dilated to a 5. I had asked for a priesthood blessing, so Paul called our brother-in-law Ben and they gave me one. Paul blessed us that the doctors would know what to do when the time came, and that we would both be fine and healthy. I remember being concerned with the "when the time comes" phrase, but I hoped it didn't mean there would be any problems.
About 15 minutes after that, we did start having problems. Every time I had a contraction, the baby's heart rate would drop more and more. The lowest we saw it was at a 48 (his normal heart rate hovers around 140). Everyone was becoming more and more concerned, until finally the doctor came in and said we were going to do an emergency C-section because something was obviously wrong.
That was at 2:20. They wheeled me out of the room at 2:30, and we heard the first cry of our baby at 2:39. The cord was wrapped around his neck and he was completely blue. When they showed him to me, they said,"Congratulations, you had a smurf!" He pinked up very quickly thanks to Aunt Amanda, our amazing NICU nurse!
Part of the miracle of this story was how scared I wasn't during this whole procedure. I had received a wonderful blessing and I knew deep down that everything was going to be okay. I kept crying on the c-section table because I knew the blessing was working.
We heard later on that if we had waited 15 or 20 more minutes, our Zachary could have strangled. It is truly a miracle that we have our baby boy with us. Paul brought him over to me and we decided that his name was definitely Zachary, and we decided to use Allen for a middle name after Paul's dad. It wasn't until a few days later that I discovered what the name Zachary means - "God has remembered." He did remember us that day, and I know He loves our little Zachary just as much as we do!
