If you’ve been following this blog, I think you can agree
that nothing about this pregnancy has been “normal”. Every pregnancy is different, every baby is
different and every delivery is different.
Here is our labor and delivery story.
Note: I keep trying to get Bart to write his version as I’m sure it would
sound quite a bit different – I’ll keep working on him.
The day I went into labor (Saturday 10/4) we went to
Yorktown mall and walked around for a couple of hours. At this point I was 40 weeks and 5 days
pregnant, I was 4 cm dilated and 70% effaced, the midwives had been telling me
for about 4 weeks “any day now” and I was OVER it! I tried so hard to stay active my entire
pregnancy but this was too much – I came home and took a 3 ½ hour nap to
recover and was super uncomfortable. At
around 12:30am Sunday morning I started having contractions – this time they quickly
became about 5 ½ minutes apart. I woke
Bart up and we timed them for awhile before calling our midwife. We called in when they were about 4 minutes
apart and our midwife asked us to head into the hospital. The entire time I feared we were going to get
all the way down there and they were going to send us home. Bart wanted to run every red light and fly
down 90, I was not quite in the same hurry.
We got to the hospital and went into triage. Pretty quickly they told us we were going to
be admitted and this was the real thing… and then we sat in triage for about
2.5 hours.
I'm pretty sure I was putting on my work out of office in this picture.
I was so excited because my midwife Lia was on call that
morning – she was leaving at 8am but was there for the beginning at least. Ok so let’s talk labor. How do you know when you’re in labor? Well honestly at first it really wasn’t so
bad – the contractions themselves I can totally handle – don’t get me wrong
they SUCK but they’re bearable. The part
that was super uncomfortable for me was baby was “sunny side up” (so babies
come out face down and turn as they are born – my baby was face up), this can
cause extreme back and hip pains during labor.
We tried all different sitting, leaning, standing positions to get her
to flip on her own (which she eventually did) but the pain was completely
unbearable to me. At about 6cm dilated I
asked for my epidural. I had a strong
desire to make the labor room as fun as possible so I attempted to welcome
everyone who came in the room “to the party” and ask random questions/jokes to
try to get people to lighten up a bit.
The guy who gave me my epidural - I asked if he tested it out first to
make sure it was the good stuff. The
epidural did not hurt at all – seriously that was the easiest part of the
entire labor. They also started me on
pitosin (sometimes the epidural will slow down labor) and broke my water.
Once my water broke things started to take a couple of odd
turns. My baby’s heart rate stayed
pretty high above the 170’s getting dangerously close to 200’s for quite
awhile. I also spiked a fever up to
103.8. I couldn’t stop shivering but I
was sooooo hot. They explained once I
got a fever that my baby would be born “corio”.
When a mom has antibiotics for a fever/infection during labor – the baby
automatically has to be put on antibiotics and taken to the NICU in this
case. They didn’t want us to panic as
there would be a lot of neonatal doctors in the room because of my fever. It was time to start pushing. How do I explain this? Well basically they tell you to pull your
legs up and out to the side, lift your head, hold your breath and make a bowel
movement. Do you know how many things
that is to remember? You’re trying to
figure out what muscles to use and do all these other things… it was very hard
to stay coordinated. Of course I had to
coach myself after each push – I forgot to do this, I have to do this more,
next time I’ll work on this. The midwife
and nurse found this quite hysterical and reassured me I was doing a good job
and needed to cut myself some slack. After about an hour and half of pushing,
Carol the midwife decided things were getting a little out of her wheel house
with the fever and heart rate and brought in some other doctors. Enter Dr. McNair – picture Miranda Baley from
Gray’s Anatomy. She walks in and starts
going over the potential complications of forceps as she thinks we should use
them to get baby out NOW. While we were
discussing this, I had a contraction and had to push – she watched me push and
said NOPE – you can get this baby out on your own, you have 3 pushes to get her
out or we’re going into an emergency c section.
Oh I got that baby OUT on the third push – I’ve never pushed so hard in
my entire life.
Sophia was born not breathing on her own and was limp down
one side. They quickly took her over to
the “giraffe” bed and about 10 nurses and doctors went to work. She didn’t breathe on her own for the first 3
minutes and didn’t breathe comfortably for the first 5. I kept looking at the nurse and Bart asking
why isn’t she crying… why isn’t she crying… the nurse kept reassuring me they
were doing everything they could and she was in great hands. I kept asking Bart to go over there but he
couldn’t. Finally after what seemed like
forever, the nurse said “mom listen” I heard a little grunt, and then another
grunt and a bit later a cry. OMG that
cry – it was music to my ears and you could literally see the doctors shoulders
relax a little who were working over top of her. They let Bart come over and take her picture –
she was 9lbs and 1oz and 21 inches long.
Then they quickly whisked her away to the NICU.
While all this was going on I was completely oblivious to
what was going on with me. I remember
getting really sick and throwing up and I finally turned my head from my baby
to look at myself and realized it was a bit like a scene from Grays
Anatomy. I had 3 doctors working on my
insides, I had nurses running around like crazy getting me another IV in my
other hand and giving me constant shots in my thighs – they told me they were
trying to clot my blood. There were 4 anesthesia
guys hovering over me asking random questions about my pain level – apparently they
were trying to determine if they should put me under or if the epidural was
sufficient. Apparently I had hemorrhaged
and lost about 2 liters of blood, they were trying to determine where the
bleeding was coming from and ended up inserting a balloon into my uterus to get
the bleeding to stop. This meant that I was going to be staying in
the same room (essentially a Labor ICU) and would not be going to the NICU to
see my baby until the bleeding stopped.
My levels were all over the place, they couldn’t get my fever to come
down and all in all I was kind of a mess.
Poor Bart – I wanted him to be with Sophia so bad and the guy was torn –
wife, baby, both not doing so great. I
looked at him and said call mom NOW and tell her to get here ASAP. I needed someone with my baby and I knew my
wonderful husband would never leave my side.
My mom and Joe heard “monica is hemorrhaging” and immediately jumped in
the car to drive to Chicago, leaving the oven on and power tools lying in the
lawn. It was one of those moments where
I truly didn’t know what was going to happen with the way people were rushing
around and the sense of urgency around both of us – as dramatic as it sounds
there was a brief moment where I thought to myself “am I going to make it? Is this serious?”
I spent 30 hours in that ICU before I could see my
baby. Bart and my parents were able to
go up and see the baby in the NICU and send lots of pictures. Bart was very clear that NOONE got to hold
the baby before me. I honestly wanted
him to pick her up and snuggle her and tell her how much we love her and need
her to stay strong but I appreciated that he wanted that moment for us
all.
First time Bart met Sophia
First time the family was all together
First moment seeing my beautiful girl... all hooked up to machines just wanting to be held.
Finally, after 40 weeks, 5 days and 30 hours in ICU I got to hold my baby.
When she moved from her giraffe bed to her "crib"
The orange tube is a feeding tube - this little stinker pulled it out twice! The nurses were completely in awe of her strength!
Seeing your baby hooked up to a
bunch of machines is something I don’t know any mom is ready for. She had a ventilator, oxygen, a feeding tube,
an IV with fluids and antibiotics and tons of monitors all over. She was beautiful even with all her tubes
everywhere. We were so lucky that she
came late and was big and strong and fully developed to fight everything. In the first 48 hours she had so many tests
including a spinal tap to check for meningitis, several xrays and blood
draws. Each day she was able to shed
something – one day is was the ventilator then it was the oxygen then she was
breathing 100% on her own. Then the
feeding tube and finally the IV. She had
to stay in the NICU for a total of 10 days to finish her antibiotics. On the 8th day they did tests and
her levels were way down indicating it was safe for us to take her home after
the 10 day treatment. It sucked being in
the NICU – going home without your baby is so hard! We had some really good friends reach out and
help us through it and the other parents in the NICU offered up encouragement. In the end we were lucky it was 10 days –
there were so many babies in there for 10 weeks!! But for us it was rough. We’d leave at 7:30am to get there for 9am
rounds, stay all day in a tiny room with no TV, no sounds, no nothing except 1
recliner and 1 like folding chair. Then
we’d head home around 7:30pm, getting home around 8:30 and eat something then I
would get up and pump every 3 hours to get enough supply to last her through
the next night. I seriously think the
only thing that saved our sanity was the food that our friends brought by – I refused
to leave my baby in the NICU by herself to go grocery shopping so we asked some
very good friends to help out. THANK YOU
SO MUCH Tammy, Jenn, Cristie, Antoinette and the Warters for the food!
Proud daddy! The love that man has for his baby is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. He's already the best dad and I can't wait to see how much this little girl continues to wrap him around her finger!
Pose GIRL!
Nana and Papa with the new family.
Bart's parents also came to meet Sophia in the hospital.
Mom came up to help us when we took the baby home and with
not being home for 10 days, she helped so much!! She ran a ton of errands for us and went
grocery shopping and helped us with the baby.
There is a comfort level of having someone who has done it before with
you as you try to figure it all out. I
cannot thank mom enough for everything she did for us!
I also need to give a huge thank you to my bestie Crissy! Bart had a bachelor party the first weekend we were home and Crissy came and stayed with me and Sophia - she stayed up all night with us and helped us nurse and changed diapers and walked around bouncing and singing to Sophia for hours! I wish I could have kept her for hire for the first 6 weeks of Sophia's homecoming!!!
Having a newborn is so much harder than I could have ever
imagined. Breast feeding is so much
harder than I could have ever imagined.
Having a colicky baby with reflux who has been through more in her short
life than most of us go through in years is harder than I ever imagined. I’m so lucky to have Bart at home with me –
hats off to all those moms who do it on their own! The doctors say it will take about 30 days to
recoup my blood since I ended up not having a transfusion so I should be in tip
top shape soon. Every day gets a little
easier and we get to know and be better parents to our sweet healthy baby girl.
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