Ellie’s Birth Story ~ September 22, 2014

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!