Lucy's here!

Little Lucy is finally here! My due date of July 27^th came and went and I was so ready to not be pregnant anymore. For the week leading up to the due date I kept hoping she’d come early, but no luck. On the 30^th, I went to the doctor and I was dialated to a 4, and they said the baby’s head had started to engage. It made me wonder why I was still going about my normal activities and wasn’t in the hospital yet!

Around 12:30 am I woke up and realized that what woke me up was that I was having contractions. I stayed in bed, but with my cell phone I started timing them. They weren’t too painful, definitely bearable, but strong enough that I couldn’t sleep through them and they hurt more lying down. So I went downstairs and did crossword puzzles, looked at facebook, and read conference talks. Ryan woke up around 4 and realized I wasn’t in bed and came down looking for me. My contractions were getting stronger and closer together, but I still was handling them just fine. I told him we were going to the hospital that night, so we got dressed and pulled together the last items we needed for the hospital bag.

I was admitted to the hospital just before 5 am. I was doing fine with the contractions at that point and didn’t really want to be confined to bed quite yet, so I held off for a while on the epidural. Ryan was exhausted, so I told him I was fine and to nap for a while on the couch. He was a little reluctant, but finally agreed and I’m glad he did. I needed him to be awake and ready to help me later on. Finally around 7:30 or so I told them I was ready for the epidural. We sent Ryan to the cafeteria for breakfast so he wouldn’t have to watch. I’m glad I didn’t see anything either. The epidural was surprisingly more painful than I expected it to be. But I’m definitely glad I got it. While the earlier contractions were not a problem for me as long as I just took a deep breath, I could tell as I got closer to delivery that the contractions were way stronger than anything I’d actually felt. I could feel the tightness of the contraction, but there was no pain. It gave me a chance to rest for a little while before delivery.

Around 9:30 they came in and broke my water and from there contractions started to get stronger in preparation for delivery. Around noon they said I was ready to start pushing and delivery commenced. While labor was much easier than I expected, delivery pretty much met my expectations in terms of pain and difficulty. To that point it was probably the most intense thing I’d ever experienced. With every push they were telling me they could see the baby’s head and that I was making progress, but to me it didn’t feel like it. Ryan was the best support I could have asked for helping to count out how long to push and when to breathe and push again. Most of the birth I just fixed my eyes on him and he helped me get through it one push at a time.

The pushing lasted 45 minutes and toward the end I just felt like giving up. I didn’t feel any closer to having the child than I had 30 minutes earlier, except that my whole body felt like it was ripping apart. With tears streaming down my face I could hear Ryan’s voice faltering just a bit too and could tell he was close to tears as well. When at last they held up our sweet little girl and placed her on my bare chest she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and Ryan just held on to both of us. It was an incredible feeling as I was both exhausted and overcome with love for this little one and for my wonderful husband who supported me through the painful process of bringing her into the world. Our little baby was just absolutely perfect to me.

Baby girl weighed 7 lb. 3 oz., and measured 20.5 inches

Ryan is a proud Dad!

And I'm an exhausted new mom!

Ryan and I cuddled and loved all over the baby as they got me stitched up and ready to move to my recovery room. I was glad that the worst was over, or so I thought. I got settled into my room and tried to nap. As I adjusted a little bit for a better position to breastfeed Lucy (who wasn’t named at this point, by the way) I felt a large blood clot leave my body. I figured that was probably normal, but called the nurse because I didn’t want to be sitting in it. They got things cleaned up and said that if I could walk again, I should use the restroom because my bladder was really full. It’s funny how now that I didn’t have a baby sitting on it, I had no sensation of needing to go! One leg had regained feeling pretty well, but the other was still pretty dead, so I asked to eat lunch first to give it a little more time before putting weight on it.

When I was ready to go, I called the nurse to help me since I still didn’t have full strength in my legs. As I sat down to go I felt a sensation of several large clots of blood leaving my body. It felt like losing about 2 pints of blood all at once. I told the nurse I just lost a lot of blood and was getting dizzy and light headed. Then I pretty well blacked out, sitting right there on the toilet. Next thing I knew, there were about 5 nurses in the bathroom with me and they were holding some sort of ammonia smelling stuff to my nose to bring me around. Which it did, but the smell also made me feel like I couldn’t breathe or was being poisoned. I couldn’t remember exactly where I was for the moment, and was really confused about how all these people I didn’t know got there. My mind filled with panic and my heart began to race, which combined with the asphyxiating smell, made it difficult for me to breathe.

As they carried my weak, limp body back to bed, I searched the room for Ryan, but couldn’t seem to find him or focus on him. He was there of course, but was holding Lucy and had stepped out of the way of all the nurses, but I needed him with me. He put Lucy back in the bassinet and like and angel she was perfectly quiet (although since I was having problems, I immediately thought Lucy was in danger too, especially since I couldn’t hear her or see her since she was behind me.) My whole body had plunged into shock with the loss of blood and I was only taking short shallow breaths so they inserted an oxygen tube in my nose. I was so terrified. They immediately began administering Pitocin to me in my IV to help the uterus contract. They also had to drain my bladder because it was so full that it was putting pressure on the uterus and aggravating the hemorrhaging problem. They inserted a catheter into my bladder, which may have been the most painful part of my whole childbirth experience. It’s the only time I remember actually screaming in pain, but at this point, all the pain medication from the epidural had worn off, and everything was bruised, stretched, torn, stitched, and swollen.

Ryan was at my side and I think I squeezed every bit of blood out of his hand. The experience was so intense that I had to just focus on his eyes as he told me things would be ok and he helped me breath in and out, trying to slow my heart rate and regulate my breathing by calming me down. It’s hard for me to describe how much Ryan helped me through this. It was probably the most intense experience of my life and I know that feeling Ryan there with me, holding my hand, looking into his eyes and focusing on his voice was the only thing that kept me from total hysterics.  It was terrifying.

I had known what to expect in delivery, so the pain there was not unexpected or alarming. But I knew this wasn’t how recovery was supposed to me, which made it really scary because the hemorrhaging wasn’t something I was prepared for. The nurses would press on my stomach and I’d feel yet another blood clot leave my body, and I’d want to panic again. Even after they got the immediate problem in hand, I was so scared to do anything. I was scared to move because I felt like I’d lose more blood. I was scared to go to the bathroom because I feared the same experience happening all over again. So the next morning the nurse asked me if I’d gone and I told her no because I was scared to go. Going to the restroom was something I dreaded. It was a relief when I was able to go without losing another blood clot.

In all of this, I’ve come to love Ryan even more than before for all the care, support, and help he gave to me during this. I honestly don’t feel like I could have gone through this experience without him at my side. He’s the one who helped me keep pushing when I wanted to give up. I think I would have blacked out again if he hadn’t been there with me through my recovery challenges. Seeing the emotion in his face, and hearing his voice falter while I was in pain was really bonding and I felt how difficult it was for him to watch me suffer and know there was nothing he could do except hold me and encourage me. 

Now that it's been a month (I wrote this a couple weeks ago) it's easier to block out the pain and it becomes just a memory. We love our little girl so much and are so happy to have her here with us.