Abby is here-birth story

If you haven't heard/read my birth story, here it is. It has personal details that I'm fine sharing, but some might not want to read ie nursing. That's your warning. :) But, I want it all typed so I have it for the future...

Short story: Abigayle Claire was born Sunday, August 29, 2010 at 8:54pm. After 27+hours of labor, I was still not past a 5 (as far as I got with the other two). Apparently... the u/s at 36 weeks that predicted her to be 7lbs 4oz at the time, allowing for a VBA2C, was WAAAAAAAY off. Her Abbyness, as Jon likes to call her already, was 11 pounds 14 ounces and 21.5 inches long!!! Her brother was born at 36w5d, her sister at 37w5d, and she decided to come at 38w5d. Everyone in our family now shares a 20-something birthday, Jon and Hannah the 21st, me the 24th, Zach the 28th, Abby the 29th, and our wedding anniversary is the 27th. So, that's kind of cool too. She is just beautiful and CHUNKY heeheee. She has curly brownish hair with blonde highlights, atm, but has not been bathed yet :) :) :) :) She is nursing so incredible, even after being separated for 3 hrs to begin. And I'm just so happy with EVERYTHING. Thank you everyone.

Whole birth story: I started losing some of my mucus plus on Fri morning with pretty regular contractions about 10 min apart. We went to the commissary and walked/grocery shopped for 3 hours. When we left, they were 5 min apart. We got home, and they slowed to 6min apart. By the time I went to bed, they were incredibly inconsistent and not doing anything. I woke up in the middle of the night, about 3am, with the SAME type of contractions as Hannah and Zach and had them both that night/early the next morning. So I thought, this is it. Today's going to be the day and was super stoked, until I got up, and they were barely there, no pattern, not strong, etc.

I decided to go to walmart to walk, about the only place in our small town. After a while, they were consistently 4 min apart (about 6-8 of them), and i thought "I'd better hurry home, finish packing and get to the hospital since we're an hr away!" No joke, I got in the car, and they slowed to 10 min and soon after I got home, weren't there anymore. By dinner time, they were pretty consistently 6-7 min apart. I likely would have waited, but we packed the rest of our stuff, put the kids to bed about 8:30 and left for the hospital at 9, to take us 55 min without traffic, so I was glad we left when we did.

We got checked in and I was having contractions 4min apart and at a 4 and 60% effaced! The cervix was very posterior, but that didnt bother us at the time. We were pretty excited. However, the doc came in. Not mine, just one in the clinic. I LOVED her immediately. She said she was super crunchy, as crunchy as they get, and she proved to be right. However, she felt VERY uncomfortable with the VBA2C situation, even though my doc, her colleage had said it was ok. She also knew the admitting doc prob wasnt going to go for it, and she was going ot have to call mine and talk politics. Before she called though, she was wonderful and laid out all the options, and that my risk increased with a vbac after 2, and her huge concern about shoulder distocia but said it was still up to me if she could talk politics.. I hadn't had it all laid out like that, and was very thankful. She tried doing an u/s and the machine was crap, so she tried using another one, and it said she was 12lbs, which she said no way, she didnt think that and we didnt either (Look at us laughing now!!!!!)

So, I was able to send Jon a message to call me through google phone (Love that btw!) and we talked about it and spent some time crying together over the phone. I could tell, he wanted me to go ahead with the c/s. Doc came back in and said "Well, by some fluke, we have no surgery tech tonight, so.... we're going to admit you, let you labor, and at about 10am, we're going to have all the docs have a huge discussion about you." We took that as a sign from God!

10am came and went, and we never heard about this huge meeting, what happened, what took place. I didnt sleep much, contractions were all over the place. I had to be connected to a monitor at all times. Morning crew came on though, and because she had dropped down about 2in in belly, they said we didnt have to monitor her anymore, only me, so that was nice. At some point, I think about 1pm, they checked me, and I had made absolutely no progress. My doc said he thought i needed to go ahead with the c/s. I asked for time to talk with mom and my doula. They reminded me that I had said I'd liek to try other things before rushing to a c/s, like breaking water or a small amount of pit or maybe a folley bulb. (TMI warning...Then mom asked the doula why they never did enemas anymore, as I had been complaining all day I needed to poop, and maybe that was blocking the way.... I hadnt had a good BM in about a month) Doula said she didnt know, we could ask. So, we asked about all of these. Fulley bulb wasnt an option, as I was too dialated. The doc had also already said no to Pit, but they were totally willing to try an enema and water breaking.

HUGE TMI warning regarding the enema. Enema is one of the greatest inventions for laboring in my new opinion! For one, it helped take care of the constipation from the last few months of my pg. For two, it forced me to sit on the toilet and labor (and get to be off the monitor) And for me, it totally brought on the contractions, and hard. I think after this, I was finally in active labor. About 2 hrs later, they checked me, and I was at 5 and 80% effaced and VERY posterior cervix still-they had a hard time checking me because it was so posterior. I figured the enema hadnt had a chance yet, and broke my water around 5pm.

I got in a huge pattern. HARD contractions very close together, lasting over a minute long, 3 min apart. We swore I was in transition. I was soooo tired and exhausted and could barely handle the contractions as all, as I'd essentially been awake since Sat morning and this was Sun night. At 7pm, she came to check me again. It hurt soooooo bad bc I was so postior and I was still 5 and 80%. She didnt even finish saying and I broke down crying and said, no, we're done, I want the c/s. I want the epidural yesterday. I can't do this anymore. They got moving quickly, but I swear it took way to long to me to get the epidural. The contractions were right on top of each other and I just could not breathe through them anymore and had lost all control. It was awful, however, it was the only bad thing out of all of it.

My mom and doula voiced all my concerns for me, thankfully. Well, actually, my mom got in a scuttle with the pediatrician for what I wanted, but at that point, I didnt care and yelled at them to both stop it. I had all kinds of people coming in to talk to me, and I just could NOT talk. Thank God mom and doula knew what I wanted. But, overall, they were very accommodating to my desires. I finally got to the OR. The epidural still took longer than I wanted to get placed, but a lot of it was me shaking from anxiety (I get BAD shakes in cases like this) plus the contractions and having to somehow manage to breathe through them, without moving and in a bad position. I got the epidural and completely passed out from sheer exhaustion.

I was sorta awake for them cutting, heard them say "get her mom", at one pt I thought the epidural was going too high like with Hannah, but i figured I'd just go to sleep and not worry about it haha. It didnt seem to bother me at that point. I remember mom coming in and saying something about hi and she's here. Then I kinda heard the time announced of 8:54pm and how she's huge. I didnt believe them. Figured they meant she was like 8 or 9lbs. Then I heard my mom fight them bc they she wanted to come over and get pics of them wiping her off like they had agreed we could do, but they didnt want to let her bc it was a sterile environment... She was like umm, isn't the whole OR? And the nurse finally said yes I assumed bc she was no longer by me, and I went back to sleep. Then I heard mom exclaim "Holy cow!" along with a bunch of others, and they were yelling out through the OR that she was 11lbs 14oz. I didnt believe them. They came over, showed her to me, I got to pick my arm up and hug her, and we got some pics (I THINK! lol...). THen I passed back out. Then I woke up with my eyes itching, assumed it was bc I'd had contacts in so long. Nope, the drugs in the epidural caused me to itch all.night.long. But it's ok. Then the anesthesiologist asked if I was doing ok and I said I felt nauseous. Then a few seconds later, I said I was going to throw up and did on the OR table. Then I kind of started waking up from my complete daze and was taken to recovery. I got the shakes SUPER SUPER bad and could see why she couldnt be in recovery with me.

Mom went with her, but they dont let any one in the nursery- dumbest rule in the world that no one could explain. My mom was ticked. So she watched through the windows, and they didnt bath her like I asked. In fact, I got to give her her first bath, in my room, about 24 hrs after she was born with my mom and best friend there. It was so special to me. Her sugars were great. What took the longest for us to meet up was my shakes and getting stitched. I was in my room at midnight and Jon got my message to call, so we talked for a few minutes, Abby was in my room and nursing at 12:15. Shes nursing INCREDIBLY.

Apparently word spread around the hospital of the big baby born and people were coming to look at her during the 3 hrs she was in the nursery. Mom got asked 3 times if she was my sister or if she was the mother haha. She loved that!

At two weeks old, she was up to 14 lbs even. Like I said, nursing great. I was suprised because my other big babies leveled out, but she just keeps growing. I've gotten lots of rude comments that bother me and wish people would shut up or at least think before they speak, but I'm learning to defend her and I better. (Ie Did you just eat a lot while pregnant? or saying "GAWD! That's huge!" literally 1o times while I'm talking to the person.) In the WONDERFUL words of my mother "She's just the size God wanted her to be" and she's right! She is. She's just perfect and healthy and beautiful in every way and we are so incredibly blessed.