Wow, it's been a while. Over three years since my last blog post. For those of you who know me and know my family, you know we've been going through a lot the past few years and your support means the world.
One of the big changes we experienced was my second pregnancy and the birth of our second daughter.
Now again, this is only me sharing my experience. Every woman has her own birth experience, and as I found out this time around, even every pregnancy is different and unique to the baby.
That being said, I did notice some similarities in my pregnancies. For instance, I didn't experience a lot of morning sickness with either one. That's not to say I had none. I did have my mornings (or afternoons or evenings or really any time of the day) that I got sick, but it wasn't all that often.
Some of the differences however, were that I was tired a lot more with my second pregnancy and the back pain was worse. But that was also due to the fact that my sweet little miss didn't like it when I used my support belt. She would hang out right where it would sit on my belly and just sink really low, making it uncomfortable, or she would kick at it until I took it off. Thankfully she didn't have a problem with support shorts that helped take the weight and strain off my back.
For the most part it was a fairly easy pregnancy. But like with my first, and I'm sure most mothers can attest to this, towards the end, I just really wanted her out. I wanted to hold her finally and get to know her. I wanted to see my oldest interact with her baby sister for the first time. I was ready.
One of the things I ended up being most grateful for that I went through with my first, was knowing and being able to feel the difference between Braxton-Hicks Contractions and real contractions. It made things much easier this time around.
So when I started having those braxton-hicks contractions in my third trimester, I wasn't worried, even when they started to get a bit more intense. I knew I wasn't in labor yet.
My 38 week mark came and went. I went to my weekly appointment on Wednesday and even had my 39 week appointment already scheduled for the next week. I talked with my doctor about my body's progress and baby's position. Baby was happily head down, had just made that move a little over a week prior. but I still didn't show a lot of promise in my body's progress. I was only 1cm dialated and baby hadn't dropped yet either.
So, knowing how everything happened with my first, my doctor and I talked and decided to go ahead and schedule an induction on little miss's due date ( which was only 10 days away) if she didn't arrive before then, which my doctor didn't think was likely.
Thursday came and went with more braxton-hicks contractions that were on the more intense side. But I even took my daughter to an indoor play-place where she could climb around and enjoy herself.
Friday afternoon rolled around and I got a bug in my mind to go walking. My husband was at work in the morning, so I was able to leave my oldest with him and walk to our community center gym at our apartment complex. I didn't want to walk around outside because it was ridiculously hot and Arizona fall is still like summer.
So, I was walking on the treadmill. I had a little fan with me and I was watching a show on my phone for something to keep me distracted from the pain in my back and feet. I had to stop sooner than I planned to because I started to swell a lot in my hands and feet and the heat was getting to me, even with the fan.
Right around dinner time that night, I started to feel real contractions. I started timing them and they increased in pain and frequency. There were times I had to stop what I was doing and just breathe through them. We got our oldest to bed and called my dad who lived in town to come stay with her so my husband and I could go to the hospital and we called my mom to let her know to start packing up her things and start her 2 hour drive down to meet us at the hospital.
When we got to the hospital at around 11pm that night, they got me put in triage and hooked all their stuff up. They checked my body's progress and found that baby was head down, just like she should be, and I was 3cm dialated, but things were still a little further from where they should be for baby to make her way out. So they had me walk around for about an hour to see if things progressed further.
I kept having contractions and even ones that were strong enough to stop me in my tracks, but their frequency was getting further and further apart and I was able to walk through most of my contractions during that hour.
Needless to say, they sent me home at around 2am Saturday morning (shortly after my mom got there) and told me to come back if my contractions got so bad that I wanted to throw things and were less than 10 minutes apart for an hour.
Trying to sleep that night was a serious challenge because I kept getting really strong contractions that would take my breath away, but they were just frequent enough to keep me from getting much sleep.
Saturday, the day that marked 39 weeks for me, my mom and I took my oldest to the mall to play around where it was cool and so that I could walk more. I ended up walking around the kids' play area so many times, I lost count. But I only had 3 contractions during the day that made me want to throw things and that I couldn't walk or even talk through.
Knowing what things were like with my first pregnancy and labor and delivery experience, my mom and I figured this could go on for a whole week because I still had a week until my due date. My mom had work she couldn't take unnecessary days off from, like she could with my first, so we decided that she would stay one more night and go home in the morning.
That night I had more of the same contractions that kept me up the previous night and I thought for sure that I would be going to the hospital early in the morning. But as soon as I was up for the day, they stopped.
My husband took our oldest to church while my mom and I stayed home. I was having contractions on and off that morning still and didn't think it was wise to leave the house.
My mom ended up heading out too, after checking to see if I wanted her to wait until my husband and daughter were back. I figured they weren't really happening with much intensity or frequency anymore and it would be safe to be by myself for a couple of hours.
I soon came to regret that decision.
At around 10:30am Sunday morning, my contractions started being really intense. They were lasting a minute or more and were around 10 minutes a part for about 30 minutes before backing off and having the time in between them increase again.
I called my mom shortly after 11am and asked her what to do and what she wanted to do. She was only about an hour away at that point and every contraction was so painful I wanted to cry (I even did a few times). She ended up talking with me until my husband and daughter got home from church. She then made the decision to drive back.
My contractions ended up speeding up from there and were two minutes apart or less and were so painful, I thought my body was going to break. My mom wasn't going to get there before we had to leave for the hospital.
So I called my dad again to come and watch our daughter, but even while on the phone, we had to have him meet us at the hospital instead. He said he was going to gather some things he'd need and meet us there.
My mom got to the hospital when I was checking in at the front desk for triage at just after 2pm and she walked back to the room with me while my husband parked the car.
They got me changed and hooked up for monitoring, which took a while with all the stops while I waited out contractions. When they finally checked my body's progress they found that I was fully dialated but my water still hadn't broken.
During their check, they found something I hadn't expected. They didn't feel a head, but what felt like an arm.
I was beyond shocked and thought that they had to be wrong. Just less than two days ago my baby's head was down in the birthing position.
When they brought in an ultrasound machine to double check their findings, they realized they were right. Our little girl had angled herself so that her shoudler was where her head should have been.
They brought the doctor in and she did more tests before confirming what the ultrasound clearly stated: I was going to need to have an emergency c-section.
From there, things happened faster than I was able to process.
They had more nurses come in and start unhooking things. I was given medicine to stop my contractions because if my water had broken, my sweet baby girl would have lost an arm if not worse.
Within fifteen minutes, I was being rolled out of the triage room and down to an operating room. I didn't even get a chance to hug my daughter before being wheeled away. I had just enough time to make sure that my husband could be there before being taken away. And all before my dad could even get to the hospital.
I was so shocked by things and how fast everything went, that I had a breakdown on the way to the OR and while they were prepping me for the surgery. It took longer than it should to get the spinal tap in because I kept shaking.
Once things started, it was such a weird feeling. I was numb, but I could still feel all the pulling they did. When they finally opened me up, they found that our little miss had turned herself all the way around, was now fully breech (with her feet where her head should be, for those that don't know), and not only that, but she had taken my uterus with her and twisted it.
After entering the OR around 3pm, our baby girl was born at 3:32pm that Sunday. That sound when I heard her cry for the first time, made all of the anxiety about the emergency surgery worth it. There was so much joy in my heart, I couldn't stop smiling. And when my husband was finally able to bring her over for me to get that first look at her: my heart exploded all over again. And all I wanted to do was hold her, but I knew I had to wait until I was all sewed up.
After my husband took our baby girl out of the room, they finished putting me back together. It was almost worse then having them take her out. I got so up in my head about it that I ended up getting sick on the table and they had to stop long enough for me to be done.
When they had me all sewn up, I was informed that because our baby girl twisted my uterus, causing them to cut it differently, I would not be allowed to have any more natural births. All future babies would have to be delivered via c-section or I'd run the risk of placental abruption, which would be fatal for both me and baby.
It was scary news to receive and certainly intimidating after just having gone through an unexpected, emergency surgery. But it's definitely something I'd go through again to see our sweet baby. I wouldn't trade our story for anything. Babies make it all worth it!
Our little miss brings so much light into our lives. And it is truly a treasure to get to see our oldest be a big sister. To be able to watch as our little miss's personality comes out more and more every day. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for us.