Here were your votes-
36 weeks
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0
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37 weeks
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1
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38 weeks
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4
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39 weeks
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3
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40 weeks
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5
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Girl
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13
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Boy
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11
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Here's my birth story-
I had a restless night of sleep and woke often with some cramping.
On the morning of October 5th...my birthday...I noticed it more around 5 a.m. and then awoke for the day at 6:30 when Miss A entered our room and came over and gave me a kiss. When I stood up I felt crampy and mentioned this to E. But I went ahead and got a shower and told him he could go ahead to his men's group at Wegman's that morning. After all, I definitely wanted my birthday muffin and flowers that he just might be picking up for me! ;-)
I took Miss A down for breakfast and noticed the cramping continue. I had no appetite and thus didn't eat any breakfast. I soon heard FJ wake up and call for me and didn't know how I would quite get him out of his bed and get him fed. I had started timing my contractions and they were between 3 and 6 minutes apart already. I called E at 7:30 and told him to come home from Wegman's b/c I was in labor! I also called my mom and stepdad and they both sang Happy Birthday to me immediately before I could tell them I was in labor! After I told her the news, I had a contraction and had to breathe through it. My dear mom breathed through it with me on the phone and told me I was doing a good job.
I called my doula and she hadn't even had a chance to shower yet but quickly got her things and headed our direction. When E was home, I called the midwife on call, Paula. She's the same one who delivered FJ. I told her how far apart my contractions were (3-5 minutes). She told me she would shower and then head to the hospital. Her instructions to me were this: "Don't dally...if your water breaks at home, you are screwed!" :-)
Amy, our doula, came to our home around 8:00 a.m. and quickly began rubbing my back and giving counterpressure during my contractions. She was so good at this that I actually did not feel a few of my contractions!
Miss A kept crawling between me and the birthing ball on which I was laboring and FJ was extremely clingy during this time and only wanted to be held by E. We weren't sure my mom in law, Karen, would make it in time to our house so we called our back up, Mary Ann. Karen did make it in time and I called Mary Ann during labor and let her know she could go home.
When Karen got her at 9:00, E continued to get our things together. When I had a break in contractions, we decided it was time to get going. So, at 9:30 we headed out the door. At this point, Miss A really wanted to go with us so she sat down and began putting on her flip flops while still wearing her pj's. She was crying and saying she wanted to go. This was breaking my heart.
We somehow got out the door but then I had to stop for a contraction. Then I made it to the car and I could hear Miss A at the door crying loudly saying she wanted to go with us. I felt so bad for her!
The drive to the hospital was rough. E had laid the seat all the way back for me but I was pretty much climbing the walls. Inbetween a contraction, I managed to update on facebook...crazy, I know.
We got to the hospital at 9:45 and Amy ran around the car and got me out while holding the birthing ball. We got inside and I made it to the hall outside L&D. I had a contraction and had to get on the ball.
Our birth photographer, Kristen, had met us there and was with us when the door to L&D opened. The nurse saw me and asked if I had fallen..nope...just in active labor.
They had us sit outside of triage. I use the term sit lightly as I couldn't really sit...I once again had to hit the ball in while in the hallway and stayed on it. I could see feet walking by including women in labor but I could not move. They decided...wisely...to skip triage and got my midwife. They brought a wheelchair and wheeled me to a room.
When I got in there, my midwife, Paula, met me and asked if I wanted to empty my bladder. I said yes. When I was sitting on the toilet, I felt my uterus contract and start to push! So my midwife asked if I just wanted to drop my undies and give birth in the maternity dress I had on...that sounded great to me.
We went to the bed and I was laying on my back and this was so very painful as I had not been laboring on my back at all until this point.
She asked to check me and I was again 100% completely dilated and effaced. She asked to break my water...I thought she would never ask! I whole heartedly agreed. She then asked how I wanted to labor and I said "my hands and knees". So they all helped me get up and flip over to my hands and knees. Paula then stated that she didn't think she had ever broken someone's water in that position before but she would try. Thankfully, she was successful. That's when she saw there was meconium in the fluid.
Our baby had passed meconium in utero so the cord was going to have to be quickly cut by my midwife and the baby would need to be suctioned. A neonatologist had to be called in too.
After the water was broken, my uterus took over and immediately started pushing. It took a few pushes and I even bit (lightly) my doula's arm as she had it around me. Oops!
Then, at 9:59 a.m., just 15 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, I received the best birthday present ever when Adelaide Rose came into this world after only 3 1/2 hours of labor and about 4-5 pushes.
She weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds and was 20.5 inches long. Our biggest baby!
I waited anxiously for her cry and when I heard it I was so relieved and knew that she was okay.
They cleaned her up and really checked her out and finally handed her to me to hold. In fact, it was during the time they were cleaning her that I had to ask E what the gender was of our new baby! Our doula almost let it slip but she let E tell me. I was SO surprised and excited it was a girl!!!!!!! Then he announced her name.
I held her while I was being stitched up. Yes, alas, I didn't make it through birthing a 9 pound baby without stitches. I had 2nd degree tearing.
Being stitched up is so awful. The deadening shot they use is painful and the tugging and pulling of the thread is so uncomfortable. After going through natural, unmedicated childbirth, it's just no fun to still deal with more pain that really has no fun gift at the end.
Usually, a birth story would probably end there but it doesn't...
That night, after letting the nurse take our new girl to the nursery for her assessment...the same neonatologist from earlier in the day entered our room when we were expecting to see our baby girl being pushed back into our room in her bassinet.
He came in to tell us that she had developed a fever of 100.8 and had some retraction and grunting with her breathing. He said they were starting her on IV antibiotics and was now in the NICU and would be on antibiotics for 7 days!! I was so upset and began crying. This was not at all what I expected. How could our 9 pound baby end up in the NICU?
Their guess was that because I was GBS positive and hadn't had time to get the IV antibiotics, she had gotten sick from the GBS in my system. She wasn't exposed to the GBS very long but long enough for them to think that she could have been exposed.
I had been beating myself up for not getting to the hospital sooner to get those antibiotics for the GBS. (You know the whole..."I'm a terrible mother" moment complete with tears.) But my midwife later told me not to and that it was extremely rare for a baby to get GBS over intact membranes. She said that some moms may get hours of it and their babies still get GBS.
Later another Neonatologist doctor made me feel badly about not getting there in time for the antibiotics but later asked if anyone in my family had been sick. I said yes that the children had fevers and runny noses and Miss A had thrown up the night I had the baby. She asked if I had felt sick and I said no. She said that I could have been sick and just not had any symptoms or noticed because the pregnancy had me so tired and that the baby could have gotten the infection while in utero...thus not being GBS.
Thursday was a rough day as I went back and forth to the NICU nursery to nurse our baby girl. It was so hard seeing other babies wheeled into their mommy's rooms and to not have ours in our room with us. This was a day of lots of tears for me.
The next day, E had to go home because his mom had seen floaters in her vision. Feeling that this was an emergency, she felt she needed to go and see her eye doctor that day. Therefore, she could not continue to watch A and F at home. E had to go home to watch them temporarily. We were told we could stay till midnight that night and didn't need to feel rushed to be discharged that day.
While sitting alone in my hospital room with E gone home, another doctor came in to tell me that h our baby girl's white blood cell count and CRP ( a protein) had not gone down but gotten a little worse. They were going to retest but if they didn't get better, they were going to have to do a lumbar puncture (a spinal tap)!
I was a total mess of tears when I received this news. The doctor walked out and left me all alone. I thought of running out to find a nurse to talk to or to hug. I'm not sure why I didn't call my nurse on the phone. I called E to tell him the news and I got more bad news. He told me that he was at the towing company getting his mom's car out! Our HOA had towed it because it didn't have a visitor's tag on it. E was so upset when I told him about the spinal tap and he said he would come back to the hospital immediately. After that I only tried calling one other person during that moment and she didn't answer so I decided not to keep trying to call people. Instead, I dropped down on my knees and prayed that God would spare her from having to have a spinal tap. I cried out to God and pleaded with Him to spare her from that procedure. This is the most alone I have probably ever felt in my life and I knew that I needed that God was showing me something through this moment. He was surely teaching me that in this life, we are not guaranteed we are always going to have a human by our side and that we have to continue to reach out to Him. He should be the one I turn to first not when there's no one else.
To continue her story, her blood levels didn't change and they had to do the lumbar puncture.
After the procedure we were allowed in to see her. They had moved the IV that had been in her foot to her head. It was so hard to see that and to hold her head while nursing her. I was so tearful when I saw her and just wanted to hold her for hours.
We were told we would have to wait 24 hours for the first culture. They were testing for meningitis and if it came back positive, she would have to be on 14 days of antibiotics.
I nursed her throughout the day that day and she actually pulled out her IV from her head while I was resting in my room so they moved it to her hand.
That night, we had to come home without our new baby. That was an extremely hard night for me...the nurses let us stay late. We didn't leave till around 8 p.m. but would have stayed later if E's mom could have stayed longer with A and F.
The next few days were filled with me traveling back and forth to the hospital 3 times a day to nurse her and setting my alarm at night to pump twice the in middle of the night.
I didn't want to be awakened to nurse by an alarm clock...I wanted to be awakened by a crying baby. That was the weirdest feeling in the middle of the night to be pumping with my baby in the hospital.
Thankfully, the cultures started coming back negative! Each day they came back negative and finally on Sunday we knew for sure she didn't have meningitis, she hadn't had fever since that first night and her other blood tests were coming back well too.
We got more great news on Monday when we were told that her last antibiotic dose could be moved up from 2 a.m. on Wednesday to Tuesday night at 10 p.m. and that we would be able to take her home right after that!!!!
During her stay in the NICU, I would drive to the hospital three times a day. The first day, E was able to go with me to one of the feedings but most days he watched our children or my mom in law or a friend did. E was also having to travel to NIH to figure out why he was having such bad reactions to a medication he was on. This was also extremely hard to deal with along with our baby girl being in the NICU.
It was especially difficult leaving my family at home and then turning around and leaving my baby in the NICU. I felt so torn as if I had two families. As soon as I would get home, I would have an hour and a half before I would need to leave to return to the hospital to nurse again. E was struggling with me being gone so much too and needed me as well as A and F.
I truly do not wish for anyone to have to deal with their brand new baby being in the NICU. I have such a new found respect and understanding for NICU mommies.
Our baby girl's final diagnosis was sepsis (infection). So, on Tuesday night, October 11th, we brought our baby girl home and we have been rejoicing each day since then to have our family of 5 under one roof. It has put so much into perspective for us and has made us so grateful for so many things.
Labor pictures at home-
Miss A during breakfast during my labor-
I don't have my dress on in these photos because as soon as I pushed her out, I couldn't stand to have any clothing on for some reason. So strange.
Our fabulous doula, Amy
