Here's the story of how our precious little girl arrived. After three weeks of bedrest, I went in for a check on Friday, April 30th. I'd been put on bedrest for high blood pressure, and over the three weeks it just didn't get any better. During my checkup, the ultrasound showed that Madeline was estimated to weigh 6 pounds, 7 ounces so my doctor decided it was time to be induced. We left the hospital, had lunch, waited around the house and were told to call labor and delivery around 7 p.m. to see if they had bed space.
We arrived at the hospital around 9 p.m., and the induction began around 11 p.m. I slept most of the night and had small contractions during the evening. Saturday morning around 9 a.m. my pitocin drip was started. Pitocin is used to kick-start labor. Unfortunately my body was very slow to react. By 2:30 p.m. the contractions were really intense but I wasn't dilated as much as they'd like. But I was finally dilated enough to get my epidural. I managed to sleep for a few more hours but woke around 7 and realized I could feel the contractions. Something had happened with my epidural and within about 20 minutes I was in major pain because the pitocin doesn't allow for breaks in between contractions. The magical epidural man came back and put another one in, and I slept until about 11 p.m.
I woke up and felt awful. I had horrible shakes (my teeth were actually rattling together I was shaking so bad). The nurse told me it was because in that three hours I had gone from about 4 cm dilation to 9.5 cm and Madeline had "dropped" really quickly. Brian was told to call the family because push time was just around the corner. In a matter of minutes, however, Madeline's heart rate dropped and she wasn't doing well.
Before we knew it, the room was filled with medical staff and I was being wheeled away to the operating room for an emergency c-section. I have to say that the staff was amazing. They didn't delay at all when they realized she wasn't doing as well as she should. They took action and within 10 minutes (at 12:30 a.m. on May 2nd) we heard her crying, and life changed forever.
Because I already had an epidural in place, I was able to be awake throughout the procedure. Brian was in there with me, and he got to clamp off her cord and saw her within seconds of her arrival in the world. She got a 9 on the apgar test and they said she was just perfect, which of course we already knew. Once we were all in the recovery room, I got to hold her for a little bit and they took her measurements. She weighed in at 6 pounds, 1 ounce and was 19 3/4" long.
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