Anabelle's arrival was not in any shape or form the way I had planned or expected it. She was born Friday, August 17 at 9:20pm through an emergency Cesarean delivery.
For those of you interested in the LONG version of my labor and delivery continue reading! For those of you not interested scroll down for pictures!
Thursday EARLY Morning: I woke up around 1am because I was having contractions and finally they were painful. I'd been having braxton hicks contractions all the time for months so I was SOOO happy when they were finally painful. I started timing them and they were about 8-9 minutes apart. I got really excited because I was sure that this meant she was coming soon...but to my dismay the contractions only prevented me from falling asleep until they went away around 6am. Needless to say I got a terrible nights sleep and I felt really silly for thinking I was going into labor.
Thursday Day: I went to 7 peaks with Tiff and the kids from about 9am to 1pm which was really fun until the very end when I started to get EXTREMELY tired and started to have this pain all over my belly. For about a week the top of my belly would be painful to the touch for a few hours here and there. It was weird but they're are a lot of weird things about pregnancy so I didn't think much about it. Not to much longer after I got home from 7 peaks my contractions started again. They were painful but bearable.So the rest of that day and night I continued to have this pain all over my belly and I was having painful contractions. But they weren't close enough together so I couldn't to go to the hospital.
Friday EARLY Morning: So I just suffered through it but around 2 in the morning I was in so much pain from the contractions and from the aching/painful to the touch pain in and on my stomach. So John called the hospital and they suggested we come in and get checked. We did, I was only dilated to a 1 and my contractions weren't even consistent. At this point I REALLY felt like an idiot for going into the hospital when I wasn't even in or NEAR real labor. But I did have a slight fever of 99.8ish and the babies heart rate was also slightly elevated. They started an IV (for my very first one I got poked THREE times, needless to say I hate IV's). They took some blood and urine to check and make sure I didn't have an infection. They kept us there until Friday morning around 8am, the tests they ran only showed I had a slightly elevated white blood cell count which could mean a lot of things. So they sent me home after giving me a morphine shot in my bum to put me to sleep for a few hours. The Doctor said to call if the pain in my stomach was the same or worse when I woke up.
Friday: Morphine is AWESOME! I slept the most peaceful 4 hours in a long LONG time. I woke up at 1pm feeling better but only for about an hour. At that point the pain in my stomach came back just as bad as before and I started to shiver. At first I though I was cold so John put me in a nice warm tub to warm me up and relax me. As soon as I got in the chills got worse and I started violently shaking. I have never shook like that before in my life, it scared me cause I couldn't control it I was just shaking so bad. So John got be back in bed and covered me in lots of blankets, opened the windows and turned off the AC in our apartment to warm the place up. I eventually fell asleep and the chills went away. I woke up and hour or so later and John came to check on me. When he did he noticed my face was bright red and he felt me and said I was burning up. He took my fever and it was 103.9. Just a little high!!! Called the doctor and he said go back to the hospital.
We went to the hospital and they took my fever to be 102.9 and the babies heart beat was 210 bpm which is REALLY high and unhealthy for the baby. Their heart rate should be around 150. They admitted me to the hospital and told me I wasn't leaving until I had the baby. They took more blood to run cultures to find what it was that was causing the pain on my belly and my fever. Shortly after they started my IV my fever started to break and I started sweating like I have NEVER sweat before. Seriously I was dripping!!! Down my face, down my back, on my arms. I kept apologizing to all the nurses who had to touch my gross arms to do things.
Dr. Young said he wanted to induce me so they broke my water and my contractions became a lot stronger than before. It was about 6pm at this point and the Doctor said we'd probably have a baby by midnight. John decided I had another 6 hours so he was going to go home eat and get his computer to work on secondaries. What was I thinking letting him leave?! I called him twenty minutes after he left and demanded that he get back ASAP because I was in pain and all alone and I wanted to get an epidural. He got there right as the anesthesiologist got there to give me my epidural. Epidural was a cake walk compared to the contractions. I was like seriously this is what everyone is scared about?
Then not even 5 minutes after I had gotten my epidural Dr. Young walks back in and tells me that the babies heart rate is dropping significantly with every contraction and has been for too long. He was worried about the baby because she had been under stress for so long and he suggested we do a c-section to get her out safe. He asked me what I thought about that. Talk about the moment I NEVER thought I would be facing. I took a deep breath and told him that that was not what I wanted but if he thought that was best then the baby was most important and I wanted her out safe. He looked at me and John and said alright, you're going to have a baby in the next 45 minutes.
They rolled me into the OR, where they gave me more meds to numb my whole lower body. Then once I was numb they cut me open and took the baby out. Not an experience I would ever want to repeat. I couldn't feel pain but I could feel them pulling and ripping and pushing and I could smell my flesh being cauterized and cut. I don't remember much but I most definitely remember John saying, "Now when I say I love your guts I really mean it because I've seen them." Then as soon as the baby was out the anesthesiologist knocked me out with morphine so I don't remember anything until they were rolling me out of the OR and back into my room.
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| In surgery, yup they are cutting open my stomach right now! |
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| Getting cleaned up |
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| The first time I ever held Anabelle |
I didn't think that I would cry when I first saw her but as soon as John put her in my arms the tears just came because I felt so overwhelmed with love and awe for this tiny miracle.
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| Our Family! |
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| Johnny really is just a big softy at heart! |
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| My bestie Berlin coming to visit! |
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| Skin to skin time |
Her temperature was low a few times so they told me I had two options. Let the nurses take her to the nursery and put her in the warmer to get warm or put her just in her diaper on my skin to warm him up. So we spent a couple hours with her just sleeping on my chest. Talk about precious. It made me feel so special to be the one to hold my baby so close and to warm her little body up.
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| John's first diaper change |
This experience is most definitely a story for another post. Needless to say it was hilarious!
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| Sleeping with Daddy, this picture is so precious to me! |
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| We couldn't stop taking pictures of her! Seriously! |
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| Katie and Tina came to visit me! Love you both! |
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| We are Outta here! |
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| All set and ready to go home!!! |
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| Our new apartment |
So not only did I have a C-section the night before Daniel and Janessa got married but I also was staying in the hospital when we had to move out of apartment and into our new one. But we couldn't move our stuff into the whole apartment because the carpets were getting cleaning and couldn't be walked on for 24 hours so John and family and friends helped stuff everything we own into the kitchen and bathroom to let the carpet continue to dry! So this pretty picture is what we came home to.
