Before we left for the hospital, I had Mike take a few last photos of my baby belly. Here I am at 37.5 weeks pregnant (but measuring 12 weeks further along....I don't miss that belly.) We have some bare belly shots, but Mike forbid me to put them on here ;)We checked into the hospital at 7a.m. and Dr. Bartels arrived around 8:30a.m. to get the show on the road. Everything went smoothly with him breaking my water. He put a tiny hole in my amniotic sac with a long needle so the fluid would slowly leak out. It took about ten minutes for him to do it and it was a long uncomfortable ten minutes. The nurse started me on pitocin to start me contracting and instructed me to go ahead and start walking the halls. First she put a grown-up diaper on me to try and contain all of the excessive amniotic fluid that was coming out. After a few laps through the halls, I was banned to my hospital room after I started leaving puddles all through the halls that the nurses had to mop up. I don't know how many "diapers" and socks I went through, but the amount of fluid that came out was quite amazing and comical. I left puddles and puddles of fluid every where that I moved. You could literally watch my stomach get smaller and smaller throughout the day. My doctor did rupture my sac a little later in the day after he felt like it was safe, you wouldn't believe how much fluid was still in there.
The first half of the day went pretty smoothly and Kendall's heart sounded good and her heart showed no more signs of the irregular heart beat. I got my epidural a few hours into the induction when I was tired of being in pain. I was glad that I got my epidural when I did, because not much later did I start having double and triple contractions right on top of each other. Kendall did not care for this and her heart rate began dropping into the 80's and sometimes lower with each contraction. They don't like to see a baby have a heart rate lower than the 120's. This was around 3p.m. and I got to where a lovely oxygen mask for the next 7 hours to try and give extra oxygen to Kendall. I was constantly having to be moved around from one side to another trying to keep Kendall's heart happy. I hated hearing her heart rate get too slow because I was worried it would stay too low and that they would have to do an emergency c-section. Sometime around 4p.m. Dr. Bartels discovered when he was checking to see how dilated I was, that Kendall's head was starting to get a cap on it (I was only 4cm dilated at this point.) I knew this wasn't a good sign. A cap is different than a cone head. A cap is when the baby's head is stuck and is swelling up. Dr. Bartels seemed a little confused as to why this was occurring since I had already delivered three baby's without trouble. He told me he wanted to give me more time to see if I would dilate more and maybe her head would rotate into a better position.
Around 7 p.m. my epidural started to wear off and it didn't feel good at all. Dr. Bartels checked me again and I was 7-8cm's dilated. Kendall's head still hadn't moved. The nurse called and asked to have a extra dose of medicine for my epidural. The only problem was that it took over an hour for the doctor to get there. By then I don't even know how much relief I was getting...not much. The doctor topped me off, but it only took the pain away in my abdomen. I had so much pain in my bottom that it felt like Kendall was going to make her appearance out of the wrong exit. I had to continue laying on my right side at this point to keep her heart rate happy. All I could do was breathe, grip the side of the bed and mumble the same thing at the peak of every contraction...."Holy crap that hurts." My tail bone still isn't the same....
Around 8:30p.m. my doctor came in and I had made no changes and Kendall's head hadn't come down at all. So I was told that that I had to have a c-section. It took about one hour and 45 minutes before they could do the c-section because we were waiting on the anesthesiologist. I was in so much pain and so exhausted by this time that I was falling asleep in between contractions on the operating table. I was so happy to finally get the spinal, which I had to get since the epidural wasn't working. After getting the spinal the pain went away quickly, but I was pretty sure I was going to be sick to my stomach; which they gave me some medicine in my i.v. for. C-sections are strange because you can feel the sensation of everything that they are doing to you. The initial cut feels like someone is unzipping your stomach. There is a lot of pressure when they pull the baby out, but that wasn't bad. I could even tell when they were putting my uterus back inside of me, which was uncomfortable. I'm not sure why they pull it out, to inspect it or sew it up? I even asked the doctor if that is what he was doing and he said yes. At some point things started to hurt and my spinal wasn't quite working, just like the epidural. So they had to give me some really good drugs. Those drugs kept making me fall asleep and not breathe very well, but I don't remember that part. Mike told me they kept telling me to wake up and breathe. When my doctor pulled Kendall out, he explained to me that there was no way that she would have ever been able to be born vaginally. Her head was turned up, instead of her having her head and chin tucked down.
Kendall came out screaming at 10:25p.m. and got a 9/9 for her apgars. I think the first thing that I asked was what color hair she had, to which someone in the room said red. Mike could see her well and told me she looked perfect. The NICU team was in the room to access her and I could see them trying to stick a tube down her throat to check her esophagus to see if she had a fistula. They told us right away that everything appeared normal and she was healthy.
The whole thing felt like a strange dream. I think there was this part of me that was just really expecting that something was going to be wrong with her after all the unknowns with the sonograms. Instead the doctors were busy talking about what beautiful lips they thought Kendall had and how healthy she looked.
Kendall in all her naked glory weighing in at 7lbs. 9ozs.
A very relieved and happy mom and dad.......
First bath....
Getting to hold her after her bath.
The kids came with my mom early the next morning before school so they could meet their new little sister.
Snoozing away in her mom's arms....
All packed up and ready to go home....
This pregnancy was a wild ride, all the way up until delivery. In some ways it's hard to believe that it's all over and that everything turned out fine in the end. C-sections pretty much stink, but every bit of pain was so worth this sweet little girl. I look at her and just can't imagine her having to have any type of surgery, I'm so thankful for the good health that she was blessed with. Everything about her is just a blessing....she is a little piece of heaven.
