Ada Leane: A birth story

What can I say? I'm now a mother of four. Thursday, July 26th, Ada Leane made her appearance. Before I get into the gory details, here's the stats: W, 8lb 9oz; H, 21in; APGAR, 9 and 9; Time, 9:49 pm after about 5 hours at the hospital.

Like any birth story, there are some gross details. This is your warning. It's not my fault if you read something you didn't want to know past this point.

Let's start back on Monday, when I had my last checkup. At that point I was already dilated to 2cm and 70% effaced. Had I been further dilated my dr said he would have sent me right over to L&D. But alas, no such luck. He said that IF I made it to my next apt we were going to talk about induction but he doubted I would make it that far (my apt wouldn't have been until today, a week and a half later). Fast forward to Wednesday night. About 10:15 pm I had to pee. When I checked the toilet paper (as I'd gotten in the habit of doing), I noticed that the usual "pregnancy discharge" was streaked with blood. Since I hadn't had sex or an exam within the last 48 hours I started to get excited. I went into the bedroom and asked Doug how he felt about having a baby soon, and told him what had happened. I then called L&D and asked what they wanted me to do. I was told to hang out a bit longer, monitor my contractions, and come up when they were 5 minutes apart. We settled down to watch Sons of Anarchy and my contractions ranged 5-7 mins apart for the next hour but then died away, which was a trend the past several nights.

Thursday morning I got up, took a shower, and had some "grown up time" with the hubby, knowing it could be a while before we got the chance again. Shortly after, contractions started up again about 9:00. They were every 10 minutes or so for the next hour and slowly got closer. 6-10 for a few hours, and finally 4-5 for about an hour. I was still having the bloody discharge (which, surprisingly I had never experienced in any of my previous pregnancies) and was getting extremely irritated and tired. I tried to lay down for the last 45 minutes or so but by that point (about 3:15) the contractions were close enough together that we decided it was finally time to go. I called L&D to give them a heads up and we got to the hospital about 3:40 or so.

I was taken to a room for triage, where it was determined I was at about 3 cm and contractions were pretty steady at about 4 minutes apart. Since I was GBS+, as soon as I was admitted they got me started on the antibiotics (about 6:00), which needed to be in my system at least 4 hours before baby was born, and 3 before they could break my water, otherwise it would have been a much shorter process. My dr came in to say hi and let me know that he wasn't supposed to be on call that night, but since he had seen that I had come in, he would stay to deliver me. He did a check and I was at about 4 around the time we started the IV.

Since i had 3 hours to kill we watched Olympic soccer for a while and then I got in the hot tub. My contractions got really intense while in the water and when I got out they were about every minute and a half or so, and I was dilated to about 6. I got a shot of demerol/phenergan in my hip to help with the pain. 9:00 rolled around and I asked if they could break my water. Dr came in, checked me (7cm now) and broke my water, reminding me that it would probably go pretty fast at this point. Baby didn't do well with the increase in pressure and her heart rate dropped way low. They attached an internal monitor to her scalp, put me on oxygen, and had me roll onto my side, saying if her pulse didn't go back up we would have to do a c-section. Thankfully my changing position helped and her heart rate went back to normal.

It can't have been more than a few minutes when I felt like I was ready to push. The nurse checked me and said she thought she felt the cord. She had another nurse come in and check and they then called the dr. I held off on the first real "pushing" contraction while Dr was getting his gloves on to check me. Thankfully I did or this story would have a very different end. Dr did his check and turns out baby had a prolapsed cord. He called for a c-section and everything from that point went incredibly fast. The nurse got on my bed and had to hold the baby up so she wouldn't put pressure on the cord. They got me into the OR and were prepping my stomach while I was still awake. I won't lie, I was freaking out. My legs started shaking uncontrollably. Dr was yelling at everyone to move faster. I was crying as they strapped me to the table and put a mask on my face. A few seconds later I was out.

I'm told it was 5 minutes from the time they called the code until Ada was born, and less than a minute from the scalpel touching my skin to her birth. I woke up about an hour and a half after she was born. I can't even describe the amount of pain I was in. Two doses of morphine didn't even scratch the surface of the pain. Finally they gave me a different drug which made me really light headed and sleepy but took the pain away. The dr came in and told me that Ada's cord was prolapsed and wrapped twice around her neck. If my water had broken at home she would not have made it. I am so thankful that God answered that prayer with a "hell no".

I've got a new battle scar that doesn't require any stitches/staples/anything to be removed, and a beautiful tiny "Indian baby" who, with her black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin is so out of place with the rest of the kids. Thankfully Lili hasn't tried to squish her yet. We came home Monday afternoon and I'm not allowed to do anything for the next couple of weeks, as long as I'm on my pain pills. I have to keep reminding myself that I had major surgery less than a week ago so that I don't push it. My brain has reached capacity for the moment so if there's anything I forgot, I'll add it later.

Time for dinner and maybe a nap.