Our little miracle Emma Bridget was born October 29, 2011 at 10:01 p.m.
So the last two weeks have been a complete whirlwind. I’ve been meaning to post a blog about Emma’s birth, but today is the first time I have time for it. All of the essentials—feeding her, napping, keeping up with my Regis work, feeding her, buying better nursing bras, napping—are finally done…for now.
From the beginning, everything about this little girl has been a miracle. It’s crazy to think how she came to be…not your traditional conception by any stretch of the imagination. My mom woke up incredibly early on an unexpected snowy Saturday morning in February to accompany me to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville, IL. The lab technicians unthawed the sperm Mark had stored a year prior, while Mark was living in a trailer in Camp Taji Iraq. An Air Force doctor (ironically of Middle Eastern descent) inserted his sperm into me in the hospital while my mom went to Mass at the Catholic Church across the street and prayed that a miracle would happen.
Little did I know that her conception was just the beginning of God’s amazing work protecting our little girl. The day of her birth was my dude date, but I hadn’t really been experiencing any contractions or anything. I had so wanted her to be born on my Grandma Ohls’ birthday, but I had completely given up hope. I had just been having minor Braxton Hicks type contractions. I knew from my doctor’s appointment on Oct. 28 that my cervix was softening, but I wasn’t dilating at all.
I was so crabby because when we went to my doctor appointment on Friday, my blood pressure was high…just a bit over the 140/90 limit my nurse practitioner wanted to see. And my pulse was a bit high. (Starting mid-September, we started worrying that I may be a candidate for pre-eclampsia. My sister Colleen had it with both of her children, and my mom had it with Colleen. Both of my parents had high blood pressure, and throughout the pregnancy, my blood pressure had been a bit high off and on. When the docs tested my bloodwork and 24-hour urine collection for pre-eclampsia, I came back OK so I thought I was out of the woods…not so). Because it as high again, my nurse practitioner wanted me to be tested again; I was really not happy about having to do a 24-hour urine collection at nine months pregnant. To top it off, I really was mad that my body wasn’t working and that I wasn’t going to have Emma on time.
So, Saturday October 29 came. Mark and I finally got out of the house around 1 p.m., and we were on our way to drop of my lovely urine collection and to get my blood pressure and Emma’s heartbeat checked at labor and delivery.
We waited for about an hour to be seen, and then we were basically told that they wanted to induce me. They were going to diagnose me with pregnancy-induced hypertension, but that it had the potential to turn into pre-eclampsia. Normally, they induce patients with hypertension or pre-eclampsia at 39 weeks. I was at 40…so we went to drop off a urine sample and get my blood pressure checked and stayed to have a baby.
It definitely didn’t go with my birth plan…they were going to start thee induction process, but then when they did an ultrasound, they saw she was breech. And because I was full term, I didn’t have enough amniotic fluid to turn her (which only works apparently 15% of the time according to the docs). This girl was a flipper because just the week before when they checked she was head down. 🙂
So, I opted to have the procedure that was cause the least amount of stress to her…I could have started induction to have a vaginal birth, but if she didn’t flip they were going to have to do an emergency c-section…so I just said fine, let’s do a c-section. Knowing that we were going to wait for forever since I wasn’t a high risk, Mark and I grabbed Chik-fil-A for lunch on the way to the hospital.
Just as we thought, we got there and waited. And waited. Finally, after an hour or two of waiting, we are escorted back in the labor and delivery ward. The nurse who took us back there forewarned us that the doctors probably would want to induce me. They were classifying me with pregnancy-induced hypertension, and because it could turn into pre-eclampsia and it was my due date, they wanted to start the labor process. Apparently, they liked to induce patients like me at 39 weeks…but my blood pressure had been normal at the last few appointments, so I wasn’t flagged earlier.
So instead of checking my blood pressure, I had a nurse putting an IV in on me. The docs described everything they could do to start the induction process. It was go time. Mark and I didn’t really have time to think.
One of the first steps was an ultrasound…and that changed the plan yet again. We confirmed again that we had an Emma but not a Jake, but since my nurse practitioner had last checked, Emma had flipped and was breech. Because I was at 40 weeks, my amniotic fluid was lower, and they didn’t want to try and flip her (which apparently is only successful 15% of the time). So, we went from trying to induce a natural birth to have a scheduled c-section. The only glitch was that Mark and I ate around 1:30/2 p.m., so I had to wait eight hours before the anesthesiologist felt comfortable doing the c-section. He wanted the food out of my system. So we killed time by watching The Incredibles while doctors and nurses came in and out of my room monitoring me and Emma. (At one point, the offered to let us go home and come back for the c-section on Sunday. My IV was in, I had a room…we politely declined. Do you think we would have been able to sleep?)
So, everything went exceptionally smoothly with the c-section. I hated my one nurse, but I loved everyone else. (This was the same nurse that couldn’t believe Mark and I were watching CARTOONS and who thought she knew more than every doctor that came in. I tried explaining to her how Pixar films really are for adults…she didn’t get it.)
Hours after Emma was delivered, we learned her umbilical cord was around her neck. Had we tried a natural birth like I wanted, we probably would have had to have an emergency c-section. We felt incredibly lucky that she was born on Grandma’s birthday, healthy without any complications. I learned that it’s great to have a birth plan, but it’s essential to be flexible and go with the changes. I listened to my doctors, and I made my decision based on her: I wanted the least amount of fetal stress caused to my little girl.
So, life is pretty fantastic. She’s adorable. We’re having lots of fun watching her grow. I feel like she has changed looks a ton in the last 24 hours. We’re very in love. 🙂 Moral of the story: we are very thankful of our little miracle.
