our birth story
so we were scheduled for a c-section on wednesday, june 3, 2015 because baby was breech and refused to turn during the external version procedure two weeks before. stinker baby. on the sunday before, some friends took maternity photos for us in the park. we joked about how we had our engagement photos taken the day before our wedding in michigan and how we were having our maternity photos taken a few days before baby was born. a trend for us. little did we know it would be the night before, just like our engagement photos!
that evening we were going to bed and i had fallen asleep for probably 20 minutes and then woke to the feeling that i had ever so slightly peed or something. got up to go to the bathroom and the trickle kind of kept going... had a friend who said she knew her water had broken her first pregnancy because when she stood up from the toilet, the trickle didn't stop. and that's what happened with me. begin panic attack.
it was around 11 pm so i called the after hours emergency number for my obgyn. of course, the one time i actually have a legitimate reason to call (i'd had several stupid reasons in the previous nine months), the line wasn't working and i kept getting sent to elevator music for three minutes before the call dropped. AWESOME. david and i both started calling the number then and he finally got through. nurse called back shortly after and was like: yep time to go to the hospital, you're having a baby today! got off the phone and cried. not ready. it wasn't supposed to be until wednesday. i had work meetings to go to monday and tuesday. david was supposed to clean the house monday and tuesday. i thought i had two more days to prepare. but nope! ha.
we had had our bags packed for weeks (yes, i am a psycho planner and even more so when pregnant). so we just threw in the last minute items like pillows and toothbrush, etc. before
jumping in the car to head to the hospital. i was in my maternity pj shorts and top and put on my biggest pad and sat on a towel on the way to the hospital to avoid getting the nice trickle all over the car. got to the hospital around 11:30pm. waddled up to labor and delivery and got checked in. meanwhile my trickle filled the pad and started running down my leg. real cute. also they have carpet in labor and delivery. worst design decision ever. we got sent to triage where they confirmed by ultrasound that baby was still breech and then started prepping me for the c-section.
probably the most exciting part of that was when i got my iv in my arm. the nurse placed it
and got my vein real good, so good that it started spewing blood everywhere. around 1:30am or so i got walked over to the or to get my spinal. david couldn't be there for that part ; he
came in later. so i got to hop on this narrow operating bed and hunch forward while they stuck a needle in my back. didn't really feel much of that besides a little burning and some pressure. the spinal makes you numb from chest down. really weird feeling. i had this desire to wiggle my toes and couldn't and had to talk myself out of a panic attack. after they laid me down they put up the nice divider sheet. it ended up on my face during the process. another exercise in not panicking. i was really relieved when david got there. started feeling nauseous and got meds through iv for that.
it wasn't long after david got there that they began surgery, and within like 5 minutes the anesthesiologist said to david: you want to see your baby being born? so david stood up to look over the sheet as they were pulling sabina out of my insides. gross... then they suctioned goop out of her and we heard her cry for the first time. and i cried. she was born at 2:10am on june 1, 2015.
they brought her over to my side of the curtain all covered in yuckies from my lovely insides. i couldn't believe that i had a baby. then they carried her off to the corner of the room and david went with her to clean her up and all that fun stuff. when they were done they brought her back and stuck her by my head while the docs were stitching up my insides. it was so weird because i could feel tugging, and that moment when they pushed down on my belly to push baby's head down and out since it was way up high in my ribs. but nothing else. modern medicine is pretty amazing.
so they finished putting me back together and then wheeled us off to the observation room where we stayed for two hours post op. just to make sure i wasn't going to die or something. that's when sabina first nursed. i became slightly nauseous from the spinal. where's that nausea medication when you need it. after two hours all looked good so we were taken to the post partum area. had to close my eyes as we were wheeled to our room. no puking! and i successfully managed to avoid that.
got settled into our room around 5am monday morning. couldn't believe the little wiggler that had been inside me for 38 weeks and 5 days was finally on the outside. i could feel the actual little bony heels that had pushed themselves out on my right side for months. even though i had 9 months to prepare, i still couldn't believe that david and i actually had our own tiny human! a real one!
the rest of the hospital stay was a blur of lots of feeding, little sleeping, pain meds, painful walks a couple feet to the bathroom, etc. c-section recovery was much harder than i anticipated, but i was told i was doing really well. you don't realize how much you use your abs until they're out of commission. like omg. i should have been doing crazy upper body workouts because i had to rely on my arms to get me everywhere. everywhere being out of bed and to the bathroom and back.
i had intense burning on both sides of my incision when i tried to get up on day 2 post c-section. that's when i started getting the fun meds. as long as i kept on top of them the burning was bearable. otherwise i was just very slow moving and stiff, and walked like an old decrepit woman. i was scared to death to come home and have to try to get in and out of our bed that's kind of high and has a nice soft mattress. those hospital bed rails were life savers. also that nice rail around the toilet. missed that too. luckily our guest bath has the toilet between the tub and vanity, so i could support myself on those two things going down and getting up.
sabina has fed like a champ from day 1, and my nipples hated her for it. i had carpal tunnel that started in my 9th month of pregnancy. my ob said it would take a bit to go away afterwards. so my arms started getting achy and my hands fell asleep when i tried to hold baby in nursing position. how i wish it were my boobs that went numb instead! ha. i had several emotional meltdowns regarding nursing (lots of tears and feelings of failure).
goodness. my highs were really high and then my lows were really low when it came to that. i was either like i love this and i want to have more babies with you, david! or i quit i can't do this and no more babies ever! ha.
i can't believe how quickly i adapted to getting no sleep. used to be anything less than 6 hours and i would feel like crap. sunday night we didn't sleep at all. monday night we got two hours. tuesday and wednesday probably three. thursday night we got a whopping four! and though i did nod off during the day, i wasn't totally wrecked from lack of sleep. i guess that's the hormones doing their thing?
david was so incredibly amazingly helpful and supportive and loving. i loved watching him with sabina. he was on burping and diaper changing duty since it was too difficult for me to get up for those things. i really had to rely on him for basically everything. took my first shower post surgery on tuesday and had to have him wash my legs for me and then towel me off because i was too stiff to do it myself. he had his moments of frustration, but overall he was just really, really supportive and i could not have survived without him. going through this has made me really appreciate how blessed i am to be married to a man who loves jesus and loves me and is my teammate for life. i can't imagine trying to do this as a single mom, or with someone who is not committed to me in marriage.
we came home with our sweet girl on thursday, june 5 and i was very thankful for the time i had off from work (12 weeks) and that david managed to pass his comprehensive exams like a week before baby arrived. david was home all summer so he could be there if i got myself in a bind and needed him. it's going to be hard to go back to work! but not time to worry or think about that. too much to enjoy in the moment.
