First of all, my birth story. I was due on November 15th, but I was feeling so miserable that second to last week, my doctor and I scheduled an induction for November 12th if I hadn't gone into labor by then. Well, November 10th rolled around and Dan had to work overnight until 4:00 a.m. I didn't think I would be going into labor anytime soon, so he went to work as usual. In the early morning hours I started having really strong contractions that weren't stopping. I finally broke down and called Dan home from work at 2:00 a.m. what was now November 11. Annoyingly, by the time he got home, about a half an hour later, the contractions had stopped so I thought it was just a false alarm. It turns out it wasn't.
I went back to sleep and woke up at about 9:00 a.m. with hard contractions. This time, I knew it was for real. We called my mom at work, so she could come home to watch Ethan, while we went up to the hospital. The ride in the car to drop off Ethan and then the ride up to the hospital was the longest car ride ever! Finally, we made it up to LDS Hospital and got up to the Labor and Delivery ward. They got me into a room and had to ask me questions while I had to stop every couple of minutes to breathe through contractions. By this time, they were about every two to three minutes apart. They asked if my water had broken and I told them I wasn't sure. Apparently, it doesn't always "break" sometimes it is just "leaking." Anyway, it turned out that my water had broken. That meant not being sent home for a false alarm. You know, even though I knew I was in labor, that's always the fear, that they'll just send you home thinking you're the crazy pregnant woman who doesn't know what she's talking about. After we were sure that I was in labor and not crazy, the blessed anesthesiologist came in with my epidural. I had already endured about five hours of labor at this point, so relief was wonderful.
Anyway, the labor went on for quite a while. I progressed quickly at first and we thought I would probably have the baby before 7:00 p.m., but the hours kept ticking by and I was stalled out at 8 cm. They did some checking as to why and it turns out Sydney was "sunny side up" meaning she was head down, but facing toward the ceiling not the floor. They tried various things to get her to turn over, turning me on each side, doing an amnio infusion to give her more room to turn, etc. but nothing was working. Babies in this position often make for labor longer and harder for it to progress. I really wanted to be done by this point. I hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours and I was tired, let alone just being in labor is hard work, even with the epidural. While Dan and I were alone in the room for a few minutes, I asked him to give me a blessing. It wasn't long after that, I was ready to push, but first the doctor had to turn her. He was able to turn her face down and she was out within four minutes of me starting to push. That was a big change from the 45 minutes of pushing I had with Ethan. Sydney was born November 11, 2009 at 11:32 p.m. She was 8 lbs. 6 oz. and was 20 in. long.
After Sydney was out, they had to work on her a little to help her breathe. She had swallowed some meconium. She hadn't swallowed much, but it was still giving her troubles keeping her oxygen saturation up. They worked on her for about 25 minutes and then she was fine. Everything in the delivery room was okay and we stayed in the delivery room for a while.
Afterward, in my post partum room I had some minor complications, but the nurses were able to work on me and I was fine. Because of me being out of commission though and not being able to feed Sydney that first night, she had some blood sugar issues and had to be put on an IV. She also went to the NICU for a couple of days. She was okay, but it was hard not to have her with me the whole time I was in the hospital. The two days I was there as a patient I had to go to the NICU to see her.
Our time in the hospital was also marked by a fire. Some construction was going on between the 8th and 9th floors on the other end of the hospital and a fire was sparked inside the wall. Some of the sparks got into the ventillation system so a good portion of the hospital smelled like smoke. They had to move the NICU babies over to a part of the regular nursery because of the smell. That turned out to be a good thing because she was a lot closer.
Finally, it was time for me to go home, but Sydney couldn't come with me. My pediatrician arranged for a "hotel stay" for me so I could feed her during the night. Dan came home and stayed with Ethan while I stayed with Sydney in the hospital. It was a rough night to be away from Dan after having just given birth, but I was glad to be with Sydney. We got her discharged the next morning. Dan and Ethan got to come and get us from the hospital. It was the first time Ethan got to meet his sister because of all of the H1N1 flu restrictions on visitors. Nobody under 14 unless they were ill was to be in the hospital. They were only making exceptions in some end of life situations. Ethan was so excited to meet his sister and to have me back home. He is such a good big brother. He is so protective of his sister.
So now, here we are about eight weeks along and things seem to be going fine. There were some bumps in the road with breastfeeding because of my PCOS, but with the help of a medication and some supplementation, things seem to be improving. Now that things are further along, It shouldn't be a month between blog posts.
Until next time...
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