Thursday, November 18, 2010

Saturday, November 6, 2010

My Halloween labor



Raelynn was finally born 5 days late on Halloween. Kind of a crazy day to have your Birthday, but its hers now.
Sorry my labor story is graphic, but having a baby is not clean and scheduled...
I had a C-section with my first pregnancy and was really hoping to have a VBAC with this second pregnancy. I found a Dr. and hospital that would do that and was really anxious to actually go through the birthing process. When I went to my past due Drs. apt. I was really sad when we had to schedule a C-section for a week later. The baby hadn't dropped and it wasn't looking like I would be able to go into labor on my own before the schedule C-section. Halloween morning we had 8:00 church and I woke up kind of feeling funky. We decided not to go to church and I layed down. Jeff told me to continue to try to see if the baby was moving and at 11:45 as I was laying in bed I felt a pop in my stomach and was shocked when blood started coming out like crazy. I yelled for Jeff and he got beach towels and put them in the front seat of the car and we went off to the hospital. The funny thing was that I quickly grabbed a robe and threw it around me because I had bled through my other clothes and took them off to see where all this blood was coming from. Jeff sped down Pecos to the Chandler hospital as I was bleeding through the beach towels. It didn't hurt, but I was shaking because I didn't know what to do. When I got to the Hospital they layed me on a table to examine and I remember blood was just poring off of it. I was completely freaked out by this point and was being stabbed with IV's and heard a nurse say that we had no time to do a spinal tap for the C-section because the baby's heart beat was getting scary. They put a gas mask over my face and then I remember waking up later. They took Raelynn out at 12:27 and she proved to be a trooper because nothing was wrong with her. 8lbs. 2 ozs. 20 inches long with a beautiful face. She got a small cut on her forehead from the scalpel as they performed the C-section, but that was it. They were worried about her oxygen levels, but they turned out fine. What a relief. I was able to see her and then taken into a room. A little while later I looked down and there was blood all over my sheets. They had to call the on call Dr. to come down and take a look at what was going on. I had internal bleeding that was coming out of my incision. They cleaned me up and bandaged me up and a few hours later I looked down and it had happened again. The Dr. came back and bandaged my stomach super tight (the worst when you have a ton of staples already). I wasn't allowed to eat and started to throw up from having an empty stomach and all the pain medication. They kept me in a room that first night where I had a nurse with me pretty much all the time and a button to push that would give me meds through my IV. I ended up not being able to eat until dinnertime the next day. That was so hard because my stomach was completely empty from throwing up and I had to just lye there thinking about food. The Dr. said that they don't know why I had bled like I did, but that it was all mixed with the amniotic fluid. I almost had to have a blood transfusion, but luckily my levels went up quickly after all of the bleeding. On day 3 I got very sick again and that night the nurse figured it was from the pain meds so I was taken off all except Motrin. Kind of a painful experience, but what made it all worth while was at night I would lay Raelynn on my chest and we would fall asleep together. I am so glad the whole experience is over and I am now left with a huge cut full of staples from one hip to the other all bruised up from the internal bleeding. Each day is getting better and we are loving our perfect little girl.