The Birth of Baby D [part 2]

Okay. Time to finish this story.

At some point that morning (probably within 3-4 hours of the C section) someone came in and asked me if I wanted to try to breastfeed the baby. I was still in quite a bit of pain at this point, and I felt like I was just barely able to stay awake because of all of the painkillers I was on, and I just couldn't imagine doing it yet. I think I asked them if it would ruin anything if they gave her a bottle and I tried for the next one, and they said of course not and went and gave her some formula.

At about 10:00 my dad, who had stayed the night at our apartment and been there when CB woke up (her reaction to his being there was a very calm, "Hi Papa,")  brought CB over to see the baby, and this was by far the best part of the day. She walked in and after saying hi to us, Eric took her over to show her the new baby sister. She immediately said, "Hold her?" So Eric pulled the baby out of the bassinet and the two of them went over to the big chair in my room to sit together and hold the baby. CB was completely delighted with her, exclaiming over her tiny body parts ("Hands! Little ones!") and giving her kisses. I kind of liked that it was very similar to the way things went down on the new baby episode of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood that we'd watched about 10 times, because I felt like she was comforted by the fact that this was kind of what she expected.

All day I felt like I was fighting to stay awake or I was just zonked out. They gave me a button to push for pain medication, and I could push it every 10 minutes when I green indicator light came on. There was a steady drip of medication, but I could push it for an extra bump of it. I remember at one point the nurse said I had pushed it 17 times.

Eventually I felt like I had enough brain function firing that I felt like I could try to nurse my baby. Luckily, although I was still pretty out of it, a little instinct from last time kicked in, and D was as good at latching as her sister was and latched on pretty quickly. She nursed several times throughout the day despite my barely being able to stay awake while I was nursing her and my extreme difficulty moving her around to get her in the right position to nurse because of the pain in my stomach and weirdly, my shoulder. (Apparently whenever they open you up some oxygen can get in and air pockets settle somewhere and cause that kind of pain. Mine was in my shoulder and my right side, which is apparently really common, and for almost the entire first two days that was the worst of my pain unless I was trying to stand up.)

The rest of the story isn't very exciting - it involves lots of keeping track of how much both the baby and I were peeing, some very tentative times getting up to go into the bathroom and to get cleaned up, then some slightly less tentative times walking around the hospital halls v-e-r-y slowly. Meanwhile, we got decent sleep at night by sending D to the nursery except when she came in to feed at midnight, 3 or 4 and 7 or 8.

By Sunday I was feeling way better than I expected to feel (especially after the first day) and although I didn't feel better, I felt like I didn't really need to be in the hospital any more. Eric gets to take at least a week off work, and at this point he can do everything I need and he's cheaper than the hospital staff. Plus that hospital bed was miserable by the end, and all I wanted to do was get out of it. On top of that, we missed CB so much and couldn't wait to be home as a family. When the doctor came in to check on me Sunday morning, we asked how long we had to stay, and he said he didn't see any reason why we couldn't go home that day. D was doing so well that the pediatrician had said he would have sent her home Saturday if I could have gone, my incision looked good, and I was walking around reasonably well. We called the nurse and started talking to her about what had happened, and once I had lunch and D got her hearing re-tested (she'd failed the first one that happened really shortly after she was born, but she passed the second with flying colors - I think the same happened with CB) we did some last minute checks, got all of our prescriptions in order, loaded up and headed home. My parents brought CB back home a couple of hours later, and it felt really good to be together as a family in our own house. We spent some time settling in and figuring out where to put the baby until she's ready to go into the room the girls will share, we had some dinner, I spent lots of time lying down, and D spent lots of time sleeping.

D woke up quite a few times that first night we were home, and so the rest of the week we worked on making sure she spent some time awake in the evening in case her days and nights were mixed up, and she's done much better, only waking up once or twice a night all week. (I'm hoping this is because she's going to be an awesome sleeper like her sister was, and not that she's getting the sleepiness from the Percocet I was on until yesterday. She's still been pretty sleepy today, although for the last two she's had some much longer awake times, so my fingers are crossed, at least for night sleep. Also, who remembered that newborns sleep that much? I really feel like CB didn't, but I honestly don't remember.)

When she is awake she makes awesome faces like this.

It's been a good first week. D has been a piece of cake, and CB has really been good, although I can feel that she's a little more stressed out than usual. She's been a great helper, and very sweet to me and the baby. She loves to get the diapers when we're changing her, and when the baby cries she says, "Oh no! Crying! Milk! Change diaper!" We've taught her that babies cry to tell us something, so she likes to guess what the baby is trying to tell us, and since it's one of about three things at this point, she's usually right. The other night she was crying while we were putting CB to bed, and Eric went to take her out so I could finish CB's routine. CB ran to him and said, "Milk! Mommy!" as if to say, "Daddy, what on earth are you doing taking the crying baby away from Mommy?" On the other hand, she's having a rough time with the fact that I can't pick her up yet, and I'm just starting to get some inklings of jealousy. (Tonight I was going to nurse the baby instead of helping her with her jammies and she got a little upset - then after I helped her and went to nurse, she was sad again, so finally we talked her into climbing up by me in the glider while I nursed and she seemed okay. She's needing some extra comfort and reassurance right now, even though she's been remarkably amiable and sweet about the changes.)

I'm a little terrified about Eric going back to work next week, but I love my new little girl, and I'm so proud of my CB for being such a good big sister and for trying so hard even though she isn't sure she's okay with all of the changes going on. Our family feels more complete now, and we'll figure out the rest as we go. Welcome to the family, baby D!

And now, more pictures from the hospital, etc. 

The Unexpected Birth of Baby D [part1]

Well folks, just when I thought pregnancy was never going to end, our baby came - in a ridiculously dramatic and unexpected way. Fair warning: this is a birth story. If you don't like birth stories, don't read it. I personally love them and know I have friends who love them, so that's why I'm writing it here. Don't blame me if you are traumatized.

A couple of things first to provide context. First, you may recall that I mentioned a couple of times on this blog reasons I would consider having our next baby somewhere other than a hospital. After a lot of thought and research and prayer, we had decided to have our baby at a birthing center not too far from here, and we had done all of our prenatal care there. We loved the midwives, Clara loved going to listen to baby sister's heartbeat, and I was feeling mostly pretty calm about having a natural birth. (I had the occasional freak outs and wasn't really enjoying Hypnobabies, but overall I felt very calm about it and like it was a good decision for us.) We were considered good candidates for an out of hospital birth, we'd had an ultrasound at the hospital, the midwives were keeping a close eye on things like my blood pressure and urine and other things that indicate problems. The baby was head down and sitting low, and at 39 weeks I fully expected that we'd be having a baby at the birthing center any day. My main concern was making sure I got there in time, because CB's birth was very quick for a first time birth, and once the doctor broke my water I was ready to push in about two hours and she was out in three (which would have been sooner if I hadn't been waiting for the doctor to not get there in time to catch the head).

The other thing of note that had happened with this pregnancy (which had been really normal otherwise) was that sometime toward the end of July I started having this weird attacks that seemed like they might be gall bladder attacks or at least very severe intestinal distress. The first couple lasted for about 15 minutes and then subsided and were gone, but at the beginning of August, I had several back to back attacks, and they just wouldn't stop. I had horrible pain just under my sternum and my ribs that radiated around to my back. It was so bad it made me throw up (which actually made it feel better temporarily, but then the pain came back). We had called the midwives about this pain the first time it had happened, and they didn't have anything to tell us. Luckily, it had gone away about the time we called them, so we just didn't worry about it. This time we just went ahead and went to the hospital, and after some tests and poking and such, they gave me what they called a GI Cocktail (basically Maalox and Lidocaine) and said if that helped it was probably just some kind of intestinal inflammation. I felt better almost immediately, and although my tests had some slightly elevated numbers that indicated maybe gallbladder could be a thing, it wasn't bad enough for them to keep me there. They sent me home with instructions to avoid fried foods and to come back for a follow up test in two weeks. That test was totally normal, so we stopped worrying about it. The midwives recommended taking Magnesium, and that seemed to help the small episodes I'd still been having stop the rest of the way, so we were feeling good about everything.

This episode did make me freak out slightly about the birthing center (mostly because of the amount of pain I'd been in) but after talking to them and getting the test results back, I felt calm and decided to go ahead with my plans to have the baby there.

Fast forward to last Thursday night. I was more than 39 weeks pregnant and very ready to be done with pregnancy. We'd gone to dinner with my parents and my aunt, and at some point during the meal I began to wonder if the somewhat greasy Chinese food had been a mistake, because I was starting to have the stomach pain again after 3 weeks without it. It continued to get worse as we went home, and for the first time in a long time Eric put CB to bed without me while I sat very still and felt miserable. The pain wasn't going away, and when I called the midwives they said I should probably just go to the hospital and ask for the GI cocktail again and then have my gallbladder looked at after I had the baby. The one thing that was very clear to me was that I definitely did NOT want to be in labor while that pain was going on, and in fact I had a few Braxton-Hicks contractions which were EXCRUCIATING because everything in my stomach already felt horribly tight, and taking deep breaths was almost unbearable.

At about 10:30, we called our upstairs neighbors and asked if Brother Keeler would come down and help Eric give me a priesthood blessing. I was hoping it would just making the pain go away and I could just carry out my pregnancy in peace, but at one point in the blessing I was told that I would be blessed for the pain I experienced for my children (or something to that effect), and that the pain would be healed (but in a way that didn't sound like that meant immediately). I had told Eric that I just really didn't want to go to the hospital if I didn't have to, so before the blessing he said we should put a time limit on it and told me that in 20 minutes we would go. I was not in favor of this time limit, but about five minutes after the blessing I started directing him to things we needed and started preparing myself to go to the hospital. I told him I thought we should take the hospital bag just in case there was a reason we ended up having the baby that night, but not really expecting to. I just felt like the pain wasn't going to go away on it's own and like the hospital was the right decision.

So at about 11:15 we arrived at the hospital, where the same nurse was on the desk who had been there when we had gone in a month ago. She remembered us and got us set up with a nurse. They drew blood again and did some tests, but they also gave me the GI cocktail and told me as long as I wasn't super dilated I could probably just go home if the GI cocktail worked. I felt much better after I had it (although not quite as good as I'd felt the first time - after a few minutes I could feel some pain still there) and the nurse said I was only dilated to a three, so I could definitely go back home as soon as they got my labs back.

Then they got my labs back.

When I'd been to the hospital before, my liver enzyme numbers weren't supposed to be higher than a 40, and they were at a 48. Not a huge deal, but something they were keeping an eye on. They'd gone back to normal when I went in for the second test, so they'd decided I was fine. This time, they were at a 93. My platelet levels were also lower than they were supposed to be, meaning I had two out of the three symptoms for HELLP syndrome, a form of preeclampsia. (The third symptom is high blood pressure, which is also the most common symptom of preeclampsia, along with protein in the urine. I'd had fantastic blood pressure throughout the pregnancy and still did that night, so no one had really suspected that could be the problem.) HELLP syndrome can turn into something really serious in a hurry, and the cure for it is delivering the baby, so they told me that they needed to deliver the baby right away and they were going to induce that night.

So that was the first crazy thing that happened.

We made some phone calls - first one to my dad to ask him to come and stay with Clara and be there in the morning (our upstairs neighbors had the baby monitor and were listening for her so she could sleep, since we didn't anticipate we'd be gone more than a couple of hours and she almost never wakes up at night), then one to the midwives to tell them what was going on and ask them to send over my prenatal information from all of my checkups.

Next they took us to labor and delivery, where they got me on a pitocin drip and told us to get some rest. They would up the dose every half an hour, I could get an epidural whenever if I decided I wanted one, and when I was ready we'd have a baby. They also said the doctor would probably come and break my water at some point, and I told them about how that sent me into hard labor pretty quickly with Clara and I would probably want an epidural shortly after they broke my water if they went that route.

Me all ready to go

Me being not panicky

It turned out the doctor didn't want to wait that long at all for that part, so he came in to break my water about 20 minutes after I went on the pitocin drip. This was probably at about 1:45 am, which is important, because what happened next seemed very long to me but all happened very fast. The doctor broke my water, and it was uncomfortable, which I remembered from last time, but then he just kept messing around in there and it kept being really uncomfortable, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. At first I thought maybe it hadn't broken as much as he wanted it to and he was still trying to get it to break more, but then I heard him say something about the baby's hand and the cord, and how the cord was coming out and so was the hand and they were trying to push the cord back in, and meanwhile it felt like there was just a fist jamming into parts of my body that had already been quite sore for several weeks because of the pressure of walking around with a baby pressing down ready to be born. After what seemed like about 5 minutes of agony but which Eric says was more like a minute, the doctor said, "The cord is coming out first and we can't get it back in. There is only one safe way for this baby to be born now, and that's an emergency C section. We're going to go in there right now, and Dad, we're going to put her under general anesthesia, so you need to stay here." I honestly can't remember whether Eric and I said anything to each other at that point - I think we just said I love you to each other and he told me it would be okay. I also remember asking the doctor if the baby was okay, and he said she was fine but she needed to be born immediately.

What I found out later was that when they broke my water, my cervix went from a 3 to fully dilated in about 10 seconds. The water was gushing out, the baby's hand fell out and created an opening that allowed the cord to prolapse, and everything was gushing out so fast that they couldn't get the cord back in. The doctor said that if the cord hadn't prolapsed, he probably would have delivered the baby in about five minutes with little to no pushing on my part, and he said he had never seen anything like it in his life.

So the next thing we knew Eric was being left alone in the labor and delivery room where we expected to have the baby, and I was being rushed into a cold room with florescent lights (which, oddly enough, someone explained to me would be the case as they were pushing me down the hall, so apparently the bright lights are really scary and disorienting and they like to warn people about them). The doctor stopped trying to push the cord back in and was replaced by a nurse who was pushing the baby's head back in, which hurt SO BADLY. I was terrified, but mostly I just wanted the anesthesia to kick in so they would stop pushing so hard. Someone put oxygen over my mouth and nose and told me to try to breathe slowly, and it felt like it was taking forever for that part to end, but really it was only a couple of minutes, because Eric told me that in about five minutes they came to tell him to put on scrubs and go be with the baby. He said he got to see me for a minute and I was totally out and open, but the baby was screaming and purple. It was 2:04 am. While they spent the next 45 minutes sewing me up and cleaning me up and all of that good stuff, Eric went with the baby while she was weighed and immunized and washed and given all of those things they give babies when they're born (that gunk in their eyes, apgar scoring, etc. etc.) They even gave her a tiny IV so they could give her a bolus of fluids, and Eric said she went from kind of purple to totally pink and healthy-looking almost immediately.

Purple baby

Pink baby

Baby with an IV

So keep in mind that I hadn't ever had an epidural or any kind of pain relief before I went under general anesthesia. When I came to 45 minutes later, I still didn't have any kind of pain relief, and I could feel my incision in a really intense, burning, searing sort of way. Eric was there and was trying to distract me from the pain by showing me pictures of the baby he'd taken on his phone. Meanwhile, they were putting me on medicines that hadn't kicked in yet, and someone kept pushing on my stomach for reasons I still don't totally understand. Eric asked me later if I remembered what I'd said when they asked me how bad my pain was, and apparently I said 6. They put down 8, because I was clearly too out of it to be reliable. (I was sobbing, which is not what the little picture on the 6 on that pain scale chart looks like. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure it was more like a 10.) On the bright side, while the part before the surgery seemed insanely long, the part after, which Eric said took about an hour, seemed fairly short to me. I was awake, but still very out of it (I think my brain was shutting off periodically throughout the day because of the medications, but especially after that part) and although I remember some of it, it's already feeling fuzzy. I remember getting on an elevator to be transferred down to our room, and I remember at some point someone put baby D on the bed next to me so I could see her, but I can't remember when any of those things happened or what happened when we got to the room. Eric says they brought the baby in and let me hold her for a bit, then took her back to the nursery so I could sleep, but that I was awake until about 5 am.

My first time meeting this sweetie. 

And now this is getting WAY too long, so I think I'll write about the recovery and add pictures in a separate post and go to bed. One final note for this part of the post: everyone at the hospital kept saying things like, "Well, aren't you glad you weren't in the birthing center?" It was like the biggest I told you so ever, and while yes, I am totally glad that things worked out so we were in the hospital when the prolapsed cord happened, and yes, the reason for induction was a really good one (HELLP syndrome) when they kept saying that the doctor had saved the baby's life by delivering her I was kind of like, "Yes, but the doctor also broke my water, which is probably why I ended up with the prolapsed cord in the first place . . ." So I'm not sorry that anything worked out the way it did, and because I'm now higher risk I probably won't try the birthing center again. However, I never felt like the midwives were incompetent or putting me in danger, and I felt very calm about my decision throughout most of my pregnancy. The midwives were actually the ones who told me to go to the hospital, and when I called them to tell them what was happening they didn't try to make me feel sad about the loss of the natural birth - they said, "I know this isn't what you expected, but this is your story and your birth, and it will be okay. I think if I hadn't had HELLP and if I hadn't had to be induced, it probably would have been a beautiful experience in the birthing center, and I really feel grateful that I got to know the midwives I worked with during my pregnancy. They were wonderful, knowledgeable people.  I truly believe we were protected and that things happened so we ended up where we were supposed to be, and I'm grateful for the priesthood and the spirit that I believe helped us to know what decisions we were supposed to make to get us where we needed to be.

More about the recovery and the babe herself coming later!