The birth of a child is sort of a strange thing… you look
forward to it for nine months, anticipating how it will be when your sweet
little one is finally here.
You try to
find a balance between educating yourself without freaking yourself out. As the
day gets closer you start pulling up articles with titles like ‘10 Signs Baby
is Coming’ or ‘The 15 Things No One Told You About Labor’.
The only thing these articles are really sure
about is that it’s different for everyone – not as helpful as you would hope.
So here is Ellie’s story – and just like all the
articles warned, our story is completely our own and nothing the articles could
have prepared me for.
On Sunday afternoon Chance and I went to dinner at my
parents home. It was a lovely evening so
Chance suggested we take a walk around the block and jokingly said it might put
me into labor. Being a week away from my due date and having the warning from
many that the first child usually comes late, we really weren’t expecting
little Ellie quite yet. But the walk did the trick. About half way through the walk I started
getting what I thought were Braxton Hicks, but it was the beginning of the end!
By the time Chance and I got home and I got ready for bed, I told Chance he
needed to go sleep in the guest room. I had experienced Braxton Hicks at night
before and they usually only lasted an hour or two, but I needed to be able to
move around to get through them. Well,
after 2 hours and then 3 and then 4 I started to get nervous. I couldn’t sleep and I was worried about how
exhausted I would be at work the next morning. After another hour I decided I
might not be going to work that morning after all, but my water hadn’t broken
yet and yes I was in pain but how do you know if this is the real thing?! I
started looking up all those not so helpful articles on my phone again and
started timing my contractions. They
were pretty regular, and my doctor had told me that labor contractions would
‘take my breath away’. That’s a nice way
of describing the pain I was experiencing every 5 to 6 minutes. I figured if I was having to brace myself for
the contraction that was a good enough reason to get checked out.
I woke Chance up and told him I wasn’t sure if
I was in labor but I felt like we needed to go to the hospital. I had him give
me a blessing and I took a warm shower to see if that slowed things down - it
didn’t. We called my mom to see what she
thought. (Don’t worry, she didn’t mind that it was 4 am.) She gave us some
helpful pointers and said to call her from the hospital. Chance was getting
excited / nervous as he ran around the house getting ready and asking me what I
needed. I attempted to put myself
together before we left but I could hardly put my makeup on and during
contractions I had to hold on to the counter and focus on breathing. I decided if this wasn’t labor I wasn’t sure
I could handle ‘the real thing’. So I gave up on makeup and told Chance we had
to go that minute.
While Chance parked the car at the hospital, I checked in at the front
desk. The nice receptionist took my name
and said something about knowing me from High School – I’m pretty sure I half
smiled and mumbled that it was nice to see her, but I have no recollection of
who she was or how we knew each other. I
actually feel quite bad about this now, but in the moment all I could think about was the next contraction.
Within minutes I was shown to a room where they put me in
bed and started hooking me up to all sorts of machines while asking a slew
questions. Chance answered most of them
while I wondered if they could already tell
I was in labor since they were going to the effort to hook me up to
everything. Pretty soon an adorable
nurse, Stacie, came in and checked everything out to see if I was in deed in
labor or just the biggest baby ever. I
was so relieved when she told me I was dilated to a 5, 80% effaced and should
probably have my epidural right away.
That was the best thing I had heard all day (yes it was only about 6:30
am, but I had been up all 6 and a half hours so it felt like we were well into
the day).
Let’s just say that the anesthesiologist has to be
everyone’s favorite person in the hospital.
Bless this man and his willingness to go to school for 20 years so he
can relive the pain of laboring mothers!
Once I had the epidural it was smooth sailing for the next
several hours. My mother showed up right
away as well as my doctor. Everything looked good and was progressing
well. My doctor told the nurse I had a
textbook pregnancy and so far a textbook labor.
They broke my water mid-morning and my doctor said she would be back on
her lunch break and we would likely deliver then. And that is where our story took a sharp
turn…
Around 1 o’clock Stacie came in to check on me. Everything
was going great, she checked my cervix and said I was at about an 8 and it
wouldn’t be too much longer before I could start pushing. While she was standing there next to my bed
we lost the babies heartbeat. She began
moving the monitor around on my stomach, slowly at first and then I could tell
something was wrong as she started speeding up.
She quickly put a glove on and put her one hand back in me while pushing
her panic button on her lanyard with the other.
Another nurse came running in and asked what was wrong. Stacie said, “we have a prolapsed cord.” To which the other nurse said, “oh you’ve got
to be kidding me” and ran out of the room.
I looked over at Chance as people started running into the room
unplugging cords, plugging me into other machines, pulling the rails up on my
bed… he said it was all ok, but I could see in his eyes he was panicking! Stacie climbed up on the bed with me as they
rushed me out of my room and down the hall.
I looked her in the eyes and said just tell me what’s going on, what
happens next? She told me that the baby's cord had slid down and that the baby’s
head was pushing against it cutting off the circulation. She was holding the head up off of the cord
right now so that the baby could breath and she would keep doing that while the
doctors did an emergency C-section.
When we got to the OR I started hearing how rushed everyone
was. “How numb is she?” one person
called out as they put up a curtain so I couldn’t see past my chest. Then I heard my Doctor come running in. “Everything is going to be just fine
Starlee,” she said as she came up to the table – “hand me the knife”. This was the point where I sort of started to
panic. I wasn’t sure where Chance went
and I was getting worried about the baby, but then the anesthesiologist started
talking to me. He got right down in my
face and started talking me through everything.
He told me I would feel some strange pulling and tugging but that I
would be ok. He did a great job of
keeping me focused on him so I couldn’t hear the organized chaos on the other
side of the curtain.
Pretty soon Chance came in and sat by my head. It seemed like a lifetime, but within a
minute we heard little Ellie’s scream.
Such an amazing, wonderful, beautiful sound. Chance was able to go watch them weigh and
measure her. 8 pounds and 5 ounces and
22 inches long. A very big very healthy
little girl.
{I found out later that they didn’t let my mom come in, but
as soon as they had Ellie out, my doctor told one of the nurses to run back and
let Grandma know that we were both fine.
When the nurse went in my mom was kneeling on the hospital floor where
my bed had been praying for us.
Anyone
who knows my mom won’t be surprised by this, but it brings tears to my eyes to
imagine this prayer of a mother over her daughter and new granddaughter.}
The problem with a C-section (well, one of them) is that you
don’t get to hold your baby right away. Chance held her by my head so I could
see her while I was being stitched up, but we still had a long way to go before
I could hold her. For as quick as they
got her out, it took a long time to get me all put together again.
Once Ellie was out and we knew she was fine, Chance came and
sat by me again.
He held my arm as I was
shaking uncontrollably at this point from the shock.
The anesthesiologist had warned that it might
get hard to breath, and at this point I was having a hard time and my teeth
were chattering like crazy.
At one point
I closed my eyes, mostly just because I was tired.
Chance grabbed my arm and frantically said my
name.
I opened my eyes and he told me I’m
not allowed to close my eyes or go to sleep.
I found out later he was watching my blood pressure drop at an alarming
rate and was still worried about me making it out of surgery ok.
Long story short (I know, it’s a little too
late for that) we both made it out just fine thanks to a quick reacting nurse, an amazing doctor and an outstanding team in the OR that all performed their jobs perfectly. To give you an idea of what a whirlwind this was - we lost Ellie's heartbeat at 1:10 and she was born at 1:13.
When they finally put her in my arms it was surreal. She was so alert and just stared back at me as we studied each other. I was overwhelmed with how quickly I could love someone and especially with how deep that love felt. One of my moms friends described it perfectly for me, she said having a child deepens your soul. I agree completely - Ellie has blessed our lives so much already in her short time on earth. I feel so blessed to be her mother!
