While I have a moment - my birth story

Well, it is April 1st, six days after my due date, and as I sit on the couch with my little girl asleep on my chest and snoring away, I figured I'd use the time to write a bit about my journey so far with this little girl.

Let's rewind to February 21, 2012. It was a regular Tuesday, and Matt and I had a million things to do. We had scheduled a hospital tour for that night, and I had a meeting with the holistic birthing consultant, Heidi,  in the morning. In the middle we had an appointment to interview a pediatrician's office to get ready for the baby, who was not coming until end of March, but we wanted to be ready!! Matt had randomly taken that and the next day off as an extended President's day holiday, so we got lots done. We finished the day at Moe's Southwest, a place kind of like Qdoba only better. After our hospital tour I headed to bed early - being 35 weeks pregnant is tiring!

At midnight I woke up to use the bathroom and noticed some water, but figured I could wait until morning to deal with a possible leak of fluid, I was seeing the OB the next day! However, a trikle turned to a flood and I realized that at 35 weeks 2 days, my water had officially broken.

Matt was still awake playing a game on the computer, so I put on my calmest face and said, "So, Matt? My water broke. Don't panic!" Well, he panicked. I cleaned myself up and called the doctor. Since I hadn't gotten my strep B test yet, and I was 5 weeks early, we needed to make our way to the hospital right away and get me on an IV drip to make sure everything went well. There went my holistic and all-natural birthing - no walking around allowed, no waiting at home until I was in active labor, no doing things my way. Baby had officially begun ruling the roost.

We got to the hospital around 12:45 am on the 22nd, and I wasn't feeling anything except wet. By 2am, that had changed and contractions kicked in hard and fast. I was only 2-3cm but my body had kicked into gear. Matt took a load off to get some rest in anticipation for a long day, and I settled in and tried to deal with the growing pain.

By 4am, I was in active labor, and progressing fairly fast. Unfortunately I was not prepared at all, and between the lack of being ready and the early labor being stressful and scary, my blood pressure began to increase, and I wasn't able to calm myself down. The nurses said to wait until 7am when Dr. Coven would be in to check my progress, and then consider an epidural to lessen the stress and get some rest.

So that's what I did. At 7am I was 5 cm, and we ordered some pain medicine. While we waited the two hours for the anesthesiologist, Matt called my mom and told her not to worry, but that we were in labor. I don’t know what my Mom said or how she reacted, but in a few hours I had an epidural and Matt was asleep, and I was resting with totally numb legs because they used way too much medicine. Also, I couldn’t sleep at all! But my blood pressure normalized once I was no longer in pain, and so I was assured everything would be fine and we were left alone.

By 12pm, I was starving and Matt was starving and anxious, and neither of us knew what was going on. I was scared the epidural would stop my labor, and so the nurse called the doctor to check me again, and I was at 10cm! He lowered the epidural so I could feel what was happening and stepped out the let the nurses set me up. They also called the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU – I think it is Neonatal ICU everywhere else but Valley calls it the Newborn ICU) to standby for my baby girl.We started pushing at around 1:00pm, and while the beginning was easy and everything went quickly, it was soon evident that it would be more work than we all thought.

At 2:41pm, our little girl was born, “Sunny-side up,” or with her face up. Typically Valley hospital is great about letting you hold you new baby right away. Dr. Coven put her on my chest and we got to touch her, but she was very blue and not making much noise, so the NICU nurses took her from us and went to work, warming and suctioning and wiggling her until she let out the first of many piercing cries. Unfortunately, she was in respiratory distress, and they wheeled her away to the NICU. Matt followed to take photos, and I stayed while everything was finished up. 

Of course the NICU was a long and arduous tale.... not really, she progressed well and quickly, and we were soon able to take her home – but that’s another entry for another time. What’s important is we welcomed our baby girl, Luna Clare, into the world, and we haven’t had a chance to look back.

Miss Luna Clare, born 2/22/2012, 5lb 10oz, 19 inches long. Precocious and precious.