Saturday, March 7, 2015

Our Birth Story

We had our baby girl! It's been a little over two weeks now. It's been a lot more work than I thought it would be, so it's taken me a while to get a chance to write our birth story. Here it is...

On Tuesday the 17th of February we decided to try to slowly induce naturally to see if we could jump start anything. This was all under the guidance of my midwife. We tried taking an herbal tincture every 30 minutes for a few hours. No contractions. So the next day as soon as I woke up I drank a disgusting castor oil shake that I will never forget. It made me go to the bathroom like super crazy all day long. No contractions. 

Thursday the 19th we went in for another biophysical ultrasound and it only scored a 2 out of 10. Baby had a good heart rate and good fluid levels, but she wasn't moving the way they needed her to be. The technician wasn't too concerned with it, so we left the hospital/medical building to go meet up with my midwife. When we got there she asked why we had left and the doctor of the office we went to needed us to come back to the hospital. My midwife was very concerned that the baby was not engaging at 41w6d. She said she had never seen anything like this and was worried the baby's cord was wrapped around her body/neck or something else was wrong. She came out telling us we needed to return to the hospital and have a c-section. Obviously this was something serious as midwives aren't in the business of having their patients do c-sections. Luckily we had our bags packed in the car as we were planning to do some serious inducing that day.

We returned to the hospital and we got setup on the monitors. Baby's heart rate kept going up a little too high in waves, so they pushed the c-section up an hour earlier than the anesthesiologist normally would perform them. Our little Emily was born at 1:40pm. She came out and we heard her little cries. She was a healthy little 7lbs 8oz and 19.25 inches baby girl. 


As the doctor was leaving the surgery room, he told us that Emily had been engaging the side of my uterus instead of the cervix and we had been very close to uterine rupture. I was so relieved that we did not try to induce any more than we had, as all that inducing could have caused the uterus to rupture - a very serious thing for baby and me. The doctor later talked to us and said my uterus is positioned to make babies posterior, which makes it harder for the baby to go through the birth canal. On top of that, my hip/bone structure was angled even more than normal, so a posterior baby would unlikely be able to come out. Knowing that the second baby is bigger than the first usually, we will opt to do a c-section next time in order for everyone to be safe. I really am not one to want a c-section. I had been trying to go natural the whole time, but my body apparently isn't designed to do that. The doctor said in his 35 years of working as an OB, he had only seen 1 other patient that had a situation like me. This is so crazy to me, but it is what it is.

Emily latched on right away when I got into the recovery room. As of writing this 16 days later, we are finally doing well with breastfeeding. The first 2 weeks were painful and hard, but my midwife helped me perfect her latch and I think everything is healing. It takes a while for your nipples to toughen up. Now it's not so bad.

We were able to go home the following evening which is uncommon, but we told the doctor that I wouldn't get sleep in the hospital - and sleep allows you to heal. I hadn't slept the first night. Too much noise and commotion. I was told healing goes better when you have a c-section without inducing/laboring beforehand. I am truly happy that I didn't spend 20 painful hours in labor to only go in for a c-section and have to recover from both situations. 

Well, that is our birth story. I should add that I do not feel sad about not being able to do the natural birth I had wanted knowing now that my body wasn't very capable of doing so. I am much more thankful we are both safe and sound and healthy. That's the most important thing.