On Sunday, July 24th we went to my parent's house for brunch around 11am. I was having mild contractions that were about 10 minutes apart and my sister was helping me time them. They weren’t painful, but they definitely felt different than the Braxton Hix contractions I had been having.
Around 10:30pm, my contractions started getting stronger and closer together. Josh and I started timing them but assumed we wouldn’t have to make a trip to the hospital that night, because I was already scheduled to be induced the next day, Monday July 25th at 5pm. But Emerson had other plans...
I didn’t ever fall asleep that night, and around 2:30am, I woke Josh up and told him I thought we needed to go to the hospital since my contractions were 5 minutes apart. I assumed they would send us back home, but I wanted to go just to be sure. I took a shower and we packed a few final things in our hospital bag and headed to the hospital. It was almost a surreal feeling that we were actually headed to the hospital – after so many months of waiting and wondering what ‘the moment’ will be like – it was actually happening!
We parked and walked into the Emergency Entrance and checked in with the nurses, gave our insurance information, etc. and they hooked up monitors that monitored my contractions and the baby’s fetal heart tones. The nurse mentioned a few times that Emerson’s fetal heart tones were low, so I immediately became worried. She must have reassured me 10 times that everything was going to be fine, and said they would probably send us home in about an hour.
The next thing we knew, the nurse came in and said she had paged Dr. Duke and that he would just move my induction earlier so we didn’t have to go home just to return that night. I was admitted around 5:00am. We decided to wait to call our parents because we assumed it would be at least 12 hours until Emerson was born.
Soon after we were admitted, the nurses made it clear that the low fetal heart tones were a more serious problem, and told us they paged Dr. Duke to come to the hospital immediately. Of course, this scared us to death. We didn’t completely understand what was happening, we just knew everyone seemed concerned. They wouldn’t give me an epidural because they were concerned it would stress the baby. Dr. Duke arrived and placed several monitors on Emerson’s head and he even touched her head to see if she would respond. They put me on oxygen to try to improve Emerson’s fetal heart tones (basically, she wasn’t having any reactions to my contractions).
It was 7:30am when Dr. Duke came in and said he was going to bump his 8am scheduled c-section and that I would be having an emergency c-section at 8am. Emerson wouldn’t be able to withstand 8 hours of vaginal labor, so I had to have an emergency c-section. I immediately started bawling because I was so worried about my little girl. Josh called my parents and his mom and told them to hurry because they only had 30 minutes to get to the hospital!
Before we knew it, they were taking me into surgery, and I was crying all the way! My mother-in-law arrived at the hospital just as I went through the OR door, she kissed me on the head and I was gone! (My parents, sister, brother-in-law and nephew arrived just as Emmie was born!)
The anesthesiologist gave me a spinal block, they brought Josh into the OR, and surgery began. I was shaking like a leaf, and had a really bad pain in my right shoulder, which the anesthesiologist said this was very typical during c-sections.
After just a few minutes, Dr. Duke asked Josh if he wanted to peek over the curtain and see Emmie! All I heard Dr. Duke say was “the cord is wrapped around her neck” and I didn’t hear her cry! I was so scared. I asked Josh if everything was OK and he just looked at me with these terribly sad eyes and said “I don’t know.” After the longest 10 seconds of our lives, we heard her cry for the first time!! I once again had tears rolling down my face, but this time they were tears of joy!! Josh showed me pictures of her on our camera, and then finally brought her over to show me her sweet face!!
We later found out (when we got the bill in the mail!) that Emmie had to be resuscitated and intubated because she wasn’t breathing on her own. I read her medical records that said “the baby was limp and blue” and started bawling my eyes out. Just the thought makes me sick to my stomach. Luckily we had great doctors who were able to care for her. It only makes us realize even more what a true blessing it is to have a healthy baby girl!
She's now 11 weeks old and is the BEST baby! She has been sleeping through the night since she was 8 weeks old. Now she typically sleeps from 8:30pm - 5am, eats, and then sleeps until 8:30am. We are BLESSED!!!!
1 comment:
She is precious Andrea! So thankful she is healthy!
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