akblaze
Mommy to Snug, Cub, Storm & Pregnant with #4!
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Well I am writing my birth story a bit late! Oops! 
But here it goes!!
July 4th (33 weeks pregnant) I woke up with LOTS of sticky discharge (probably my plug?).. I changed my pad and went to run errands with DH.. When we got home I went to the bathroom and noticed a little bit of blood in it. Not much at all but I was paranoid so I called my OB and was told to go ahead and go to L&D to get checked out. I completely expected to go and be told that it's nothing and everything is fine..then leave there and feel silly for even going! Well DH and I get to L&D, I get changed and have the monitors stuck on my belly and get my cervix checked. The next thing that came out of the nurses mouth.. I WAS NOT expecting!!! She looks at me and says, "wow, your 4 cm dilated!" I went into complete shock and asked if that was normal! She said, "nope, definitely not!" Well, I was never at risk for preterm labor. Besides spotting in first trimester and having braxton hicks since 14 weeks it has been a completely normal pregnancy.
Well my OB gets called in to come see me and she begins to prepare DH and I for having our baby girl early. She has the NICU staff come in and talk to us about what to expect during the delivery and how things will go after with best and worse case scenarios. I am a complete and utter mess at this point, just bawling my eyes out!
They go ahead and give me the steroid shots to help mature her lungs but also begin giving me medication to stop my contractions. in 24 hours they try 3 different types of medication and NONE of them work at stopping my contractions. By then I was 5 cm dilated, bulging waters, and 75% effaced. Then all of a sudden, I quit making progress and stall out at 5 cm. Still having contractions but they aren't changing anything (doc says at 5cm they still aren't braxton hicks). There was some talk of just going ahead and inducing me but I was against that and asked to go home to just wait it out since nothing was helping. So home we went!
We made it to July 14! (35 weeks pregnant)
HERE IT GOES!!!
I woke up at 3 am with contractions about 5 minutes apart. Last hospital stay a hot shower helped stop the contractions so I went and took a long hot shower. While in the shower my contractions went down to 2-3 minutes apart.. I continued to wash up, shave my legs, and kept asking myself if this was really it!?
Well they weren't stopping an hour later and were pretty dang intense so I got out of the shower, did my hair and got dressed.. at about 4:30am I decided it was time to wake DH and head to the hospital. I woke him up, phoned L&D and arrived there at 5:15am. When I got there I was still 5cm (which I was pretty bummed about!). So began the oh so wonderful laboring process. The last thing I wanted to do was labor in the bed... I was dying to use the laboring tub but since she was premature I wasn't allowed to! 
laboring in bed is the most uncomfortable thing ever, so I did most of it standing up!
Well, laboring was going well.. and I progressed to 8cm, but pretty much stalled out. My contractions started slowing down so my OB decided it was time to break my waters. I was so scared, I thought it'd hurt! But nope! Just felt so weird, like I had a massive pee all over myself!
after some more time, I still wasn't progressing past a "stretchy 8cm" so my OB started me on a low dose of pitocin. I was EVEN more terrified at that point because of the horror stories I've heard! And oh boy, IT HURT! But it did the trick.
A little past 9am I was ready to push! Everyone came in and my DH got one leg and a nurse got the other (oh gosh it hurt so bad when they threw my legs up stretching everything down there!) I did everything I could to just focus on the pushes. When she began crowning my OB let me feel her head... that's when I started getting so emotional! In SIX pushes I had my baby girl out!!! (Yes, I feel accomplished!!)
Again, more stuff didn't go the way we had planned. DH didn't get to cut the cord and I didn't get to hold her right away. My OB cut the cord, showed her to us and they were off to the NICU staff.
I sent DH to get pictures and keep me updated on how she's doing. All I knew is they had my baby girl across the room and I didn't hear any crying... after some work though, they got a tiny bit of crying out of her but enough to satisfy them I guess! She was brought over to me and placed on my chest and I just fell in love!!!!
Finally an hour later after her birth we finally decided on her name!
We welcomed our beautiful Scarlett Marie Irene into our lives!
She was born on July 14 at 9:44am!
5lb 140z and 19 inches long!
Here starts the problems...
the first 24 hours Scarlett was in the room with us. She was so quiet and mellow. I hadn't heard her really cry at all.. we began trying to breast feed within 2 hours of her birth. She'd latch on great but fall asleep after not much sucking. so we began hand expressing and spoon feeding. We then noticed during her routine temp checks that she was cold. often below the 97.7 degree F requirement. The Pediatrician decided to put her under the heat lamp for the night so off she went to the nursery. The next morning she was back in our room.. but again, her temp dropped and she still wasn't eating. At that point, her only other option was to be placed in an Isolet in the NICU to help keep her temperature up. We got the normal talk, that she'd be home by her due date.. the placed in a feeding tube so she'd quit losing so much weight and had her on a strict schedule of how often she could be out of her isolet with us. Heart breaking because all I wanted to do was hug my baby girl!
the next two weeks was the same exact thing of being in the hospital 24/7 praying that that day would be a better day than the last and she'd show improvement and many days I'd go home in tears because she wasn't doing any better. They kept telling me one day, it would be like a switch flipped and she'd start acting like a newborn!
sure enough, they were right! 15 days after her due date she was eating all of her bottles of pumped breast milk and keeping her temperature up! So they sent us home!!
I'm so thankful for the steroid shots because she had no problems with her lungs! Also, so thankful that there weren't more serious things wrong with her. This little girl has already made me the proudest mommy in the world with how much she's gone through!
Now, she is 5 1/2 weeks old. Still getting exclusively pumped breast milk and is the cutest thing ever!! She's still not a fussy baby, only cries at night when she's hungry and (occasionally) during a diaper change.
As of August 10th she was up to 8lb 4oz!!!
And at her check up on August 1st her pediatrician said she is now a perfectly healthy full term newborn!
all in all, my labor/deliver was NOTHING like I had hoped for or planned. Preterm labor came out of no where!! But in the end it doesn't matter how she came into the world, only that she arrived safe and is now a healthy little girl.
I do want to thank all the ladies that have helped me since finding out I was pregnant. You have all been wonderful!!!
xx!
But here it goes!!July 4th (33 weeks pregnant) I woke up with LOTS of sticky discharge (probably my plug?).. I changed my pad and went to run errands with DH.. When we got home I went to the bathroom and noticed a little bit of blood in it. Not much at all but I was paranoid so I called my OB and was told to go ahead and go to L&D to get checked out. I completely expected to go and be told that it's nothing and everything is fine..then leave there and feel silly for even going! Well DH and I get to L&D, I get changed and have the monitors stuck on my belly and get my cervix checked. The next thing that came out of the nurses mouth.. I WAS NOT expecting!!! She looks at me and says, "wow, your 4 cm dilated!" I went into complete shock and asked if that was normal! She said, "nope, definitely not!" Well, I was never at risk for preterm labor. Besides spotting in first trimester and having braxton hicks since 14 weeks it has been a completely normal pregnancy.
Well my OB gets called in to come see me and she begins to prepare DH and I for having our baby girl early. She has the NICU staff come in and talk to us about what to expect during the delivery and how things will go after with best and worse case scenarios. I am a complete and utter mess at this point, just bawling my eyes out!
They go ahead and give me the steroid shots to help mature her lungs but also begin giving me medication to stop my contractions. in 24 hours they try 3 different types of medication and NONE of them work at stopping my contractions. By then I was 5 cm dilated, bulging waters, and 75% effaced. Then all of a sudden, I quit making progress and stall out at 5 cm. Still having contractions but they aren't changing anything (doc says at 5cm they still aren't braxton hicks). There was some talk of just going ahead and inducing me but I was against that and asked to go home to just wait it out since nothing was helping. So home we went!
We made it to July 14! (35 weeks pregnant)
HERE IT GOES!!!
I woke up at 3 am with contractions about 5 minutes apart. Last hospital stay a hot shower helped stop the contractions so I went and took a long hot shower. While in the shower my contractions went down to 2-3 minutes apart.. I continued to wash up, shave my legs, and kept asking myself if this was really it!?
Well they weren't stopping an hour later and were pretty dang intense so I got out of the shower, did my hair and got dressed.. at about 4:30am I decided it was time to wake DH and head to the hospital. I woke him up, phoned L&D and arrived there at 5:15am. When I got there I was still 5cm (which I was pretty bummed about!). So began the oh so wonderful laboring process. The last thing I wanted to do was labor in the bed... I was dying to use the laboring tub but since she was premature I wasn't allowed to! laboring in bed is the most uncomfortable thing ever, so I did most of it standing up! Well, laboring was going well.. and I progressed to 8cm, but pretty much stalled out. My contractions started slowing down so my OB decided it was time to break my waters. I was so scared, I thought it'd hurt! But nope! Just felt so weird, like I had a massive pee all over myself!
after some more time, I still wasn't progressing past a "stretchy 8cm" so my OB started me on a low dose of pitocin. I was EVEN more terrified at that point because of the horror stories I've heard! And oh boy, IT HURT! But it did the trick. A little past 9am I was ready to push! Everyone came in and my DH got one leg and a nurse got the other (oh gosh it hurt so bad when they threw my legs up stretching everything down there!) I did everything I could to just focus on the pushes. When she began crowning my OB let me feel her head... that's when I started getting so emotional! In SIX pushes I had my baby girl out!!! (Yes, I feel accomplished!!)
Again, more stuff didn't go the way we had planned. DH didn't get to cut the cord and I didn't get to hold her right away. My OB cut the cord, showed her to us and they were off to the NICU staff.
I sent DH to get pictures and keep me updated on how she's doing. All I knew is they had my baby girl across the room and I didn't hear any crying... after some work though, they got a tiny bit of crying out of her but enough to satisfy them I guess! She was brought over to me and placed on my chest and I just fell in love!!!!
Finally an hour later after her birth we finally decided on her name!
We welcomed our beautiful Scarlett Marie Irene into our lives!
She was born on July 14 at 9:44am!
5lb 140z and 19 inches long!
Here starts the problems...
the first 24 hours Scarlett was in the room with us. She was so quiet and mellow. I hadn't heard her really cry at all.. we began trying to breast feed within 2 hours of her birth. She'd latch on great but fall asleep after not much sucking. so we began hand expressing and spoon feeding. We then noticed during her routine temp checks that she was cold. often below the 97.7 degree F requirement. The Pediatrician decided to put her under the heat lamp for the night so off she went to the nursery. The next morning she was back in our room.. but again, her temp dropped and she still wasn't eating. At that point, her only other option was to be placed in an Isolet in the NICU to help keep her temperature up. We got the normal talk, that she'd be home by her due date.. the placed in a feeding tube so she'd quit losing so much weight and had her on a strict schedule of how often she could be out of her isolet with us. Heart breaking because all I wanted to do was hug my baby girl!
the next two weeks was the same exact thing of being in the hospital 24/7 praying that that day would be a better day than the last and she'd show improvement and many days I'd go home in tears because she wasn't doing any better. They kept telling me one day, it would be like a switch flipped and she'd start acting like a newborn!
sure enough, they were right! 15 days after her due date she was eating all of her bottles of pumped breast milk and keeping her temperature up! So they sent us home!!
I'm so thankful for the steroid shots because she had no problems with her lungs! Also, so thankful that there weren't more serious things wrong with her. This little girl has already made me the proudest mommy in the world with how much she's gone through!
Now, she is 5 1/2 weeks old. Still getting exclusively pumped breast milk and is the cutest thing ever!! She's still not a fussy baby, only cries at night when she's hungry and (occasionally) during a diaper change.
As of August 10th she was up to 8lb 4oz!!!
And at her check up on August 1st her pediatrician said she is now a perfectly healthy full term newborn!
all in all, my labor/deliver was NOTHING like I had hoped for or planned. Preterm labor came out of no where!! But in the end it doesn't matter how she came into the world, only that she arrived safe and is now a healthy little girl.
I do want to thank all the ladies that have helped me since finding out I was pregnant. You have all been wonderful!!!
xx!
