"Birth"day story

I wanted to do something special for Natalia's Birthday Blog. I of course will post more this weekend about her party and her 1 year check up at the doctor. But, today is the big day and to mark it I want to tell our birth story. It was the most amazing and special day for us and I want Natalia to be able to go back and read it when she is older. So here it is... I'm warning you it's very very long! =)

Thursday May 28, 2009. I went to my 38 week doctor appointment. The doctor did an exam and said I was 3cm dilated! Holy cow, I was already 3cm??? She also said what I already knew… Natalia was breach and we would have to turn her. Natalia really liked being breach and had been that way the majority of my pregnancy. I still say it was pay back because I was a breach baby and my poor mother delivered me butt first! YIKES! I was not about to do that, so I agreed to the procedure. So I called Charlie at work and had him come meet me at the hospital. We got checked in and the nurse inserted an IV and had anesthesia come up and give me a spinal. That was pretty painful and made me a little scared for the upcoming epidural I wanted. So the doctor came in and did the version, she turned Natalia in my belly with her hands. Charlie said it looked like she was holding a football in my belly and turning it. It was so uncomfortable but not painful, thank goodness for that spinal! Finally around 9pm that night we were released and went home.

Friday May 29, 2009. I had a migraine like no other… it was a side effect of the spinal, called a spinal headache in fact. My head was killing me anytime I moved or did anything, and my body was sore from the night before. So I basically put myself on bed rest. The only time I didn’t hurt was when I was laying down. By Friday night though my head hurt so bad that we went back to the hospital and I was checked out in the Labor and Delivery Triage. They pumped me full of fluids and gave me some meds for the headache. It still hurt if I was doing anything but lying down, but at least I could lay down and get some sleep.

Saturday and Sunday I just took it easy and stayed in bed a lot. Charlie took good care of me. Sunday I had a few contractions but nothing regular. At one point Sunday I took a shower and when I got out I noticed all these stretch marks on my belly! I had a total melt down and started crying. Charlie came into the bathroom and comforted me asking what was wrong. I said that I had managed to escape stretch marks on my belly (they were all over my butt and thighs) and all the sudden there they were. The version had changed the position of my belly so much that my skin didn’t have a chance to stretch that they just broke out everywhere. I was so sad!

Monday June 1, 2009. We made it to June!! I was determined to have a June baby, and she was determined to make that happen too. =) I woke up and felt a little bit better so I was able to do some things around the house finally. My head still hurt but not nearly as bad. I took a nap in the afternoon, and woke up around 3pm with a really painful contraction. I had had a few painful contractions in the last couple of weeks but nothing that bad. After waking up to that contraction I started getting some more. By 5pm they were really bothering me so I decided to start timing them. When Charlie got home from work at 5:30pm they were 8 minutes apart! I was so excited to think that this was finally it!! Charlie went to get us pizza for dinner since I was not up to cooking and knew we needed to eat if we really were in for a long night. So we ate and watched Twilight. Charlie put it in hoping it would take my mind off the contractions. They stayed about 8 minutes apart for a good part of the evening. We even tried going for a walk to see if we could get some progression. I was not at all reasonable though and wanted to go to the hospital. About a block away I had a really strong contraction and freaked out wanting to go home. (I can laugh at myself now for being such a wimp) So we decided to play a board game instead and I sat on my exercise ball. About 11pm, my contractions all the sudden just stopped. I didn’t know what was going on. So we decided to try to go to bed. I knew Charlie needed sleep and if he was going to have to go to work the next day he really needed to get some sleep. So we went to bed, and about 10 minutes after he fell asleep the contractions started up again! So I just laid there hoping maybe I could fall asleep too, yeah right?!?!?! I decided to start timing them and they kicked up to 7 minutes apart. So I got out of bed and went downstairs to lay on the couch. I figured if I was in labor I wanted to watch all my TV shows on the dvr because I wouldn’t have time to watch them in the next few days. Silly me. I had the lap top set up next to me with this nifty website up that I could hit the space bar when each contraction started and stopped and it would track my progress for me. So at around 2:00am they went to 6 minutes apart. At this point tears are streaming down my face and I didn’t know how much more I could take. I called down to the hospital and the sweet nurse that talked to me remembered me from Thursday and said that since I was already dilated to 3cm at my last appointment I could come and get checked by them. So I waited until 3am so Charlie could get a little more sleep and then woke him. I told him to take his time getting ready and to eat some breakfast, but that I was ready to go down to the hospital. So we were there around 3:30am. They checked and said I was still at 3cm. They called my doctor and she wanted me at at 4cm before admitting me. So they gave me the chance to walk around the halls and sit in the jetted tub to hopefully get to 4cm. We did that for about an hour and a half. That jetted tub was amazing. When the jets were going I could barely feel my contractions. They checked again and said I was almost at 4cm, but should keep trying. So for another hour and a half we walked around and got in the tub. By this time my contractions were getting stronger and the jets weren’t helping me much. The whole time I was in the tub I tried to stay as relaxed as I could and kept visualizing 4cm. I also realized if I hummed when I breathed out during the contractions it helped… weird I know. Anyway, by 6:30am the nurse came in and said her shift was almost over and introduced me to the nurse who was taking over. Her name was Richelle, I mention it now because as the day goes on she was in and out of my room a lot and she was seriously an AMAZING nurse! Anyway, Richelle checked me at 7:00am and sure enough I had finally reached 4cm!!! WOO HOO! So my doctor came in and admitted me to the hospital and said I was good to get my epidural. We got into our labor and delivery room and got settled. We made our important phone calls to our moms and dads to let them know this was it! 8:00am the anesthesiologist came in and gave me my epidural. He was quick and funny, and I barely felt anything! I was so scared of getting that big needle in my back, but it was nothing compared to the spinal. The rest of the day is a bit of a blur…

Tuesday June 2, 2009…
Both moms came to the hospital to keep us company. We watched a lot of TV, and I know now I should have slept some but I was just too excited. My epidural was awesome for the most part. It would wear off from time to time and I could feel the contractions in my belly while everything else was still numb. So they would call anesthesia and they would reboluse my meds, within a couple of minutes it would all be numb again. Sometime during that morning my doctor checked me and said I was at 5cm. She said she would be back to break my water around noon. At noon she came in checked and I was still a 5cm, so she broke my water. At 1pm, she came back and I was still at 5cm so she said she wanted to start pitocin to make sure I still progressed now that my water was broken. She started it at the lowest dose possible, but it worked!! By 2:30pm I could feel the pressure and so we paged the nurse. Richelle had been bumped up to Charge nurse that day, meaning she was overseeing the other nurses and the floor but wasn’t supposed to have patients. Someone had taken over her other patients, but she didn’t want to give me up because she wanted to see me through my experience. Its things like that that makes this all the more special. Richelle said it was time to prep and page the doctor! My doctor had been on call for a couple of nights already so she had to go home and sleep. They paged the new on call doctor. Dr. Agrusa. I was nervous because one, he was a male, and two I hadn’t met him yet. He was the nicest man though, and made me feel better about it right away. He told Richelle to have me do my practice pushes and he would be right back. This was about 3pm, so we did our practice pushes and she went to tell him we were ready…. Only to find out he had been paged for an emergency c-section! She came back to me and broke the news. My first response was, “Oh SH*T!!” (I know not very nice of me, but I was in pain and ready to get it over with!!) Anyway, I then proceeded to have a full blown panic attack and totally freaked out. I kept saying she’s coming out she’s coming out, and Charlie kept reminding me she can’t just slip out! So they had anesthesia come and give me one more shot of meds to numb me up again and I was finally able to calm down. FINALLY at 5pm, he was back and we were ready to get this show on the road. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed. My mom was on my right side holding my very numb leg up and Charlie’s mom as on my left side holding another very numb leg up. Charlie was up at my head, wiping my face with a cool towel, and cheering me on. So I pushed and I pushed and I pushed… About an hour into it I started just bawling. I was so numb from that extra push of meds that I was struggling to get her out. I was also EXHAUSTED from no sleep in a long long time. I had just about had it so crying seemed like the thing to do. I wasn’t in pain at all, just tired and ready to meet her. A couple of times Natalia’s heart rate went up and the doctor said if she kept it up we would have to go do a c-section. I was determined to deliver this little girl though; otherwise the version would have been for nothing! So for another 45 minutes I just bawled and bawled and kept saying I just want her to come. Everyone tried so hard to keep me in good spirits, but I was ready to give up. (I also have to mention, that Richelle's shift was supposed to end at 7pm, but she really wanted to meet our little girl so she stuck around, lukcily it wasn't too much longer) FINALLY after two hours of pushing Dr. Agrusa offered the option of the vacuum. I started crying again looked at Charlie and said I’m sorry. We had discussed not wanting to use anything like that during birth after one of our birth classes, but I was so tired I needed the extra help. So I said yes please help me to the doctor. With two more pushes and the lovely vacuum my beautiful baby girl was born at 7:11pm!! I can still hear my mom’s voice, “she’s coming she’s coming!!” Today in my head. Natalia was out and lying on my belly, my first thought, which I voiced was, “she’s so tiny!” Second was, she’s really purple. That’s when the nurse grabbed her from me and everyone ran over to the incubator and started working really hard. I didn’t know this at the time but Natalia was struggling to breath. She had a lot of fluid in her lungs and the respiratory tech was working hard to suction it all out. I was stuck back in the bed while Dr. Agrusa was fixing me back up (I’ll spare you all the gory details here he he he) and I kept asking is she ok, Is she ok??? I knew something was wrong because no one would look at me and everyone (Charlie, my mom, and Debra) were over at Natalia, they kept saying yes, but they wouldn’t say anything else. Finally I heard the screams I needed to hear and I breathed a big sigh of relief. They got her cleaned up and weighed her. That little stinker was 7lbs 11oz! (Born at 7:11 and weighed 7:11!!) She had a 14in head (which made for my difficult delivery) and was 21in long. Charlie brought her over to me and I was crying yet again. My beautiful ladybug had finally made her entrance. I finally got to hold that little tiny thing. I just stared at her and kept thinking how much she looked like Charlie. My mom and Debra went to work and made all the phone calls. Once I was all cleaned up and the room had cleaned up they let us have visitors. So my brother, his wife, and our nephew Oliver came to visit us. (It was then that they reminded us that this was the very same room that Oliver was born in too! How cool is that?) As did Charlie’s sisters, our brother in law, and our nephew Adam. The epidural had worn off by then and I was in a lot of pain!! Around 9pm or so, everyone went home. They took Natalia to get her bath and get her tests done,and like we had decided before she was born, Charlie went with her to stay with her. A nurse helped me get out of bed and get changed to a fresh gown and get everything loaded up to be moved to our post partum room. It was a much smaller room then the delivery room and were we stayed for the next couple of days. Around midnight I finally got to eat something! Charlie was sound asleep, and Natalia was next to me in bed all snuggled up. Then the nurse came in and said they needed to do the hearing test on Natalia then and it would be a good chance for me to get a couple hours of sleep. So finally I did. It was more of a nap though. He he he. The next day we had a lot of visitors and got the chance to snuggle with our new little one. Finally Thursday morning we were released from the hospital and brought her home.

I still can’t believe that was all a year ago. This has been the most amazing year of my life. I knew I always wanted to be a Mommy, I just now know that I was MEANT to be a mommy. I love her so very much. She is my world. I’m so thankful to Charlie for giving me this precious gift and for working so hard so that I can be home with her every day. I tear up every time that I think about that day last year, and every time I would think about today. She will soon no longer be considered a baby, but rather a toddler. I know I shouldn’t be sad, because we have so much to look forward to. I just can’t help but be sad, but at least it’s a good sad. =) She is such an amazing little person, full of so much personality. I love her snuggles, and in fact her nickname that started out as the ladybug, has now turned into snuggle bug. She is my snuggle bug. It’s so cute when she wants to snuggle she comes up and lays her head on my leg or shoulder and says Ahhh. She gives lots of kisses and loves to be held. She’s learning new things all the time, and trying so hard to be independent but at the same time stay attached to my arms. He he he. I’m excited for her to start talking and to let me know what’s going on in that little head of hers. I’m also ready for that little stinker to sleep through the night!

Happy First Birthday my dear sweet Snuggle Bug!! We love you very much!!