Amelia's Birth Story

Hooray for a repeat!  Here's my old friend, Katie, who was sweet enough to send me Annie's birth story two years ago.  Her second daughter, Amelia, was born a couple of months after Sylvia, and now she's expecting baby girl #3!  Katie's a labor and delivery nurse, so I always love to read her perspective on childbirth.  If you want to keep up with Katie and her girls, you can check out her blog here. 

As I lay here in bed (on my belly!) with my oh so beautifully dark complected baby snoozing beside me in the bassinet I will recall the story that started out, amusingly enough, with my last post.

I guess any girl can be fooled into thinking that she has 4 more weeks of being pregnant when she feels like she can conquer the world... look out! Gods little blessing of adrenaline preparing you for when you don't get any sleep for the next 24 hours ;o)

I remember when I was a young girl my friends mom having a baby (her 5th delivery at home). I went to their house with my mom just minuets after delivery to find that she had yet to deliver the placenta. I remember standing in her bedroom and the mid-wife showing my friend and I the "tree of life" in the placental blood vessels. I remember her mother commenting to my mom that she knew it was the day because she had so much energy and felt so good... I guess these are the things that you know when its your 5th baby :o) I suppose you also don't care about the neighborhood kids being in your bedroom either :o)

You see what I forgot to mention in Wednesdays post was that I was having a contraction with every positional change. I just wrote it off to being 36 weeks and having friends like Katie N who contract regularly for 3 weeks before they deliver! It may also have something to do with the fact that I worked triage a few days before and sent multiple women home who were all complaining of pre-labor symptoms and I wanted to tell them to scoot over and we would just sit in the triage bed and share sob stories. Then I would tell them that they needed to stop wasting their time and money, go home, and don't come back until you are actually in labor!

Wednesday night was a nice evening and I schemingly suggested we take a walk to the park which is only maybe 1/4 mile away so I wasn't going for anything labor inducing. Just aiding curiosity mostly.
After bathing Annie and putting her to bed I was still noticing the occasional tightening of the abdomen but no pain at all and nothing more than 3 an hour.

I was still wired! In a time that I usually fall asleep during a tv show or movie at 8:30 its now 11:00 and I am reading a book in bed while my husband works on the laptop. Lights out followed shortly after and the next thing I know it is 1:00am and although I must have been in and out of sleep, I am simply not comfortable, not able to sleep and restless but not contracting that I know of.

By 2:30 I decided that I was too uncomfortable to sleep and tossing and turning is just unkind to the man sleeping beside me who has to work the next day. So I get up and go downstairs to find that I am contracting every 3 minuets and wait... they hurt! How was I sleeping through this?  By 3:00 I have yet to take my eyes off the stopwatch because I felt I needed justification for what I was feeling... I know I'm weird, whatever :o)

These contractions that I now couldn't really sit still through were every 2-3 min apart and I decided to call work just to find out what doc was on and whether my friend Allie was working because she is on call to do my delivery (L&D perks) I told the charge nurse that I might see her later and hung up.

I woke Joe to tell him that I was contracting and was going to get in the bath to see if they go away. He is proud of himself for asking me if my water had broken because that was how it went down with Annie :o)  The bath did nothing so I decided to make myself delivery beautiful :o) Who needs all those pictures of yourself looking like you rolled out of bed when you had a perfectly good 3 minutes between contractions to apply a little eye liner :o)

Around 4 I finally decided to call the OB hoping that she would sympathize with me and confirm that I should come in and get checked out. My call woke her up and she didn't even know who I was which I have to admit ticked me off! She told me that it was normal to have 6-7 contractions an hour at 36 weeks and its a good thing they are not painful that I should drink a lot of water. She said that if I feel I must come to triage that it was on the 9th floor of Good Samaritan hospital in Clifton! Ahhhhh I was so mad! This is one of the docs that I dont care for in my group because she doesn't slow down enough to listen to you! Who said they weren't Painful?? How about 6-7 in 10 minutes??? Crazy Doctor!  I decided at that point I had justified a call to my nurse friend Allie so that she could sympathize with me and tell me to go to triage... however she didn't answer. :o(

By 5 I was mentally exhausted from over thinking this and needed Joe to talk out loud to. I went to wake him up and realized that I couldn't be quiet through them anymore either. He quickly jumped up and we were packed and ready to go about 30 min later.  Leaving Annie at the house with Good Old Aunt Kelly we headed to the hospital in the beautiful early morning sunrise.  My contractions still were the same and I was very wiggly through them. Joe exceeded the speed limit however we did not get pulled over this time :o)  In triage my colleagues hooked me up to the monitor and their eyes widened when they found that I was contracting like crazy and was already 6-7 cm with a "bulging bag"!!

I was SHOCKED! I couldn't believe that it was time! I was happy that I was so far along and surprised at how it still didn't hurt like I thought it should.  I was SO glad that I stayed home as long as I did. I knew they wouldn't keep me or break my water at 36 weeks if I wasn't far along.  I marched myself to my labor room remembering the awful feeling of having to sit in a wheelchair through contractions with Annie. After getting my IV started I decided to wait a while for the epidural which I hated the process of getting and also the feeling of being numb the last time.

Allie arrived and after chatting with her and a few other of my friends for a while I hand picked my anesthetist and summed up the courage for the epi process. Dont get me wrong, I wanted the epi more than I wanted the labor pain, I just really really wasn't looking forward to the creepy feeling it gives me! The process went MUCH better than last time and mid way through I got really excited about the rest of my labor process being pain free and happy fun time could begin!

My epi was perfect, I could feel my legs and some strong contractions, I could move my legs and even my body all by myself without the pain! Now THAT is what an epi should be!  The Doctor that took over at 8am is one of my very favorite people in the world. Picture an Oriental Jayne Barnett as your doc and there you have her!  She checked me and wanted to break my water however her head was still not engaged in my pelvis, to which I was not surprised because I knew I had not felt it down there yet!

So she left me to progress a little farther and I hung out in the room with Mom, Kara, Joe, Gerri, and Kelly even brought Annie up to visit for a while. Although she was not impressed by us all sitting in a room staring at me in bed and she took her to take a nap at Aunt Char's house. After Dr Choi attempted do a circumcision on post partum and getting called to another delivery she came back 2 hours later to break my water. I was 8 cm and when she left I started feeling my contractions very strongly and I could feel her dropping into my pelvis! We immediately called her back into the room and 10 min later Amelia had arrived!

I only pushed 3 times and it hurt! I admitted to Joe that if I were to ever go natural I would be a yeller because it was really hard to be quiet!  She was tiny and pink and I felt all the emotions that I was weirded out that I didnt feel last time. I was crying and excited and in love!

She had to spend some time under the warmer to keep her temperature up and she was grunting and retracting which is typical of 36week babies however a big red flag for lung problems so the NICU came to assess her. After spending some time doing "kangaroo care" she quieted down and everything was good!

She weighed 5lb 6oz and was 18.5 inches long. She has my dimple in her left cheek (her face cheek that is :o) We think she looks like Annie trough the eyes and nose however the dark hair throws everything off!

We wanted to go home after 24 hours however the pediatrician wanted to keep her for 48 hours just because of being early. She also detected a heart murmur and diagnosed her with a VSD. We are going to follow up with a cardiologist tomorrow so I will update you all more on what that is after that. Basically though its a hole in her ventricle that they are guessing is very small and typically either closes up in the first few years or just stays so small it never causes any problems.

Sweet Amelia was checked out by the doctors for a VSD and it was determined to be a very small hole which was likely to close up on its own.  Judging by the adorable pictures I've seen in the last two years, I assume all is well!  Thanks for sharing, Katie.  Your family just keeps getting sweeter!