January 12, 2012

Here’s the story, of a girl named Kelly

Posted in babies, family, friends, Goobers, Kelly Sue, Posts, Seattle tagged baby, birth story, csection, Swedish hospital at 12:29 pm by samuelfamily

OK, here it is, the loooong post telling the tale of how little Kelly Sue arrived into the world, complete with plenty of pictures. Grab a cup of coffee, people, because this entry is a doozy!

I had a miserable pregnancy, and was eager to have it over with– I truly hate being pregnant. That’s a really hard thing to admit, as it seems taboo to say, but seriously, I hate it. I know pregnancy is worth it, duh, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it! Not only was I nauseous the entire time, but at the end I was swollen, uncomfortable, and exhausted. I kept telling people I thought she would arrive early, because she felt so heavy and I could tell she was growing frequently in weight and length. I know all first time moms probably say that, but I had a gut feeling she wouldn’t wait until her due date, so I must admit I am quite smug over the fact that she arrived early, was full term size, and had a good sized head (one of the reasons I opted for a csection).

Conveniently, Andy had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, so we spent the week getting tons of last minute baby prep things done. The last thing he *had* to get done was get the car seat installed and inspected, which happened to be completed the morning of the day she was born. I had also gotten a haircut and an eyebrow wax that week. This baby girl knows how to time things! YES! I had been to the doctor that week and everything seemed fine, except I had high blood pressure, so they told me to come back Friday for another check. THANK YOU GOD they made me do that, or I would have been the lady whose water breaks and out pops the baby! Yikes! So at the Friday appointment, my blood pressure was still high and they put me on the fetal monitor. Kelly was doing great, but they noticed I was having inconsistent but frequent contractions. I wasn’t really feeling them and they weren’t painful, but I figured out that the sensation that I thought was her pressing her butt into my ribs was in fact contractions, and that I had been having them all week!

They decided to check me, and the entire time Andy and I  expected nothing, to be simply sent on our merry way to go and get lunch. Instead, the doctor announced that I was 4 cm dilated and 40% effaced! So instead of lunch, we drove around the block to park at the hospital and go for a long walk to see if anything would happen. We all expected, the doctor included, that I was simply in early labor that could last for weeks and that I would be sent home. But just in case, they told me not to eat or drink anything. I did sneak a bit of water, though, since I was, of course, still nauseous. We didn’t want to get our hopes up, or the hopes of anyone else, so we only called our neighbors Brooke and Adam to put them on alert that they may need to take Goobers to doggie day care and bring us the one thing that wasn’t in our go bags, our phone chargers.

Andy and I spent about an hour walking around the hills of the Seattle University campus, chatting and trying not to get excited. I did look at him once and say “This could be our last walk as just the two of us. We could be parents soon!” Andy proceeded to list some of the favorite places we have walked together, such as the Washington coast, Venice, Paris, etc., which was very sweet and made me all teary eyed, until I felt something WEIRD and told Andy we should head back to the hospital. I still don’t know what the weird feeling was, but perhaps it was instinct.

We arrived at Swedish First Hill maternity triage and they started monitoring me, which ended up being very painful and boring. I was so swollen that two nurse failed at an IV and anesthesia took three tries before finding a vein on the underside of my wrist, which is a totally painful and gross place for an IV. I was, by this time, having contractions that were bordering on going from extremely uncomfortable to downright painful, which makes being poked by a needle extra fun! I kept complaining to Andy that this was stupid, since they would just take the IV out in a few hours and send us home and I would have to be repoked in two weeks at our scheduled Csection. (hee hee hee)

The triage nurse Cheryl was a great nurse, very funny and practical, but her internal exam will go down in history as one of the most painful experiences of my life. Poor Andy was nearly in tears, I WAS in tears, and even though the medical staff was still encouraging me to proceed with natural labor and delivery, that moment sealed the deal for me– Csection! They still weren’t sure if I had progressed or if the nurse simply measured differently than my doctor, so we spent another hour roaming the halls of the maternity ward, me with my sexy IV pole. It felt so cliche, something I had heard about from my parent friends and seen in countless movies and TV shows (Hello, TLC’s A Baby Story), and here I was, walking the hospital with my husband, a giant belly, and a IV pole. WEIRD.

We headed back for the final check , with the expectation that I would be sent home, and I was so ready to go because I was tired, uncomfortable, thirsty, and starving. I kept telling Andy how much I wanted a bowl of pho and how much I was dreading trying to sleep that night with the fear that I would go into active labor at any moment. Andy was very tired too, and was such a trooper putting up with my whining, crying, and somewhat gross medical procedures. He even held my IV bag above my head in the bathroom while I peed! What a guy.

The doctor checked again to see if I was sure about the Csection, since everything appeared medically fine for a regular delivery. Andy and I confirmed that I was entirely too anxious (stupid pregnancy hormones plagued me with uncontrollable anxiety the whole nine months) and tired to go through with regular delivery and that with my previous ovarian surgery, I felt like I knew what I was getting myself into with a Csection recovery. I know most people are anti the Csection and I totally get it, but I also firmly believe that I should have a say in what happens to my own body and for a variety of personal and medical reasons, I just really preferred Kelly being “harvested” rather than pushed out. (Thanks Ivy for the term harvested! Hee hee.)

The doctor checked me again, and in a moment that I will NEVER forget, looked at me and calmly said “You’ve dilated to 6 cm in the last hour. You are in active labor and we have to rush to get the baby out via Csection or you will be pushing her out whether you want to or not. We’re having this baby.” Then she rushed out of the room to get things started and I just turned and stared at Andy. And then, slowly and silently, I reached up my hand to his and we fist bumped. Romantic and dramatic, no?

I was so relieved to know that I only had to be pregnant for about 2 more hours, that I wasn’t going to be sent home in early labor, and that soon I would be able to eat and drink, that I never really got nervous. I’m so glad, since my anxiety levels were so high anyway. After excitedly telling Andy that I wasn’t going to be pregnant another day, I suddenly snapped into Go Mode and Andy raced down to the waiting room (no cell phones in triage) to call Brooke and Adam to Initiate Emergency Goobers Protocol, call my parents, and inhale a granola bar (I kept telling him to eat, because if he passed out in the OR, I would tell everyone that story for the rest of his life). He didn’t have time to call his parents or even get our go bags from the car! He literally returned to my triage room in time to put on his Hazmat-esque suit and walk with me into the OR! I panicked briefly because I realized that our camera and our Cord Blood Donation paperwork were in the car. Thankfully, Andy has an iPhone, but there was nothing we could do about the cord blood banking. Boo! Maybe next time.

There is a part of me, despite the elective Csection, that likes knowing that my body is apparently good at quick labor, just in case things happen differently with baby number 2. My water never broke, but I was moving along quickly enough that I would have been the lady who had her baby in the car, which is the lady I NEVER want to be. So with #2 I may just loiter outside the hospital for the last few weeks of pregnancy!

Everyone in the OR was awesome– I met a lot of nurses and doctors and I had the same anesthesiologist who had put in my IV. He was very nice and gave me more drugs every time I said I was nauseous (which I said like 4 different times. Ugh.). I managed to keep down this awful acid reducer that they made me chug and that apparently makes people barf. They kept trying to give it to me in triage and I refused to take it until the anesthesiologist put Zofran in my IV when I was already in the OR and I think that really made the difference. They asked if I wanted to know what was happening on the other side of the curtain and I said no. I warned them that I had this uncontrollable, illogical anxiety (Hey, at least I am self aware, even if I can’t do anything about it!), and one of the doctors came over and held my hand and chatted with me. She also said she wouldn’t tell me why she was there, so I assume she was there in case something went seriously wrong (maybe she was a NICU doctor?). They asked Andy what he did for a living and one of the nurses cheered when he said he worked for Seattle Pacific University, because she graduated from there. It was comforting to know that nurse was there. I also met a medical resident, who was super polite and came over to shake my hand and introduce himself, which gave me the giggles, since at that exact moment on the other side of the curtain, they were shaving my pubic hair. It was just so hilariously odd to have a formal handshake occurring while something so personal was happening nearby. I did ask the nurse to continue shaving since I hadn’t shaved my legs and she said that is the second most common request from pregnant women, after asking for a tummy tuck! So, all in all, a lovely, lovely staff at Swedish who were efficient, safe, and funny. What could be better?

They kept telling me I would feel tugging and pressure, but I didn’t feel a darn thing, except this incredible pressure in my chest (yucky and scary) right as they were pulling her out, because they had to shove all my organs up to my lungs. I knew she was about to come out, because the pediatric people were suddenly very still and sort of ready to pounce. The staff were all nervous because she was three weeks early (she was 37 weeks and 0 days! If she had been one day sooner, they would have tried to stop my labor. I tell you, this girl has good timing.), but I felt extreme calm. I knew in my heart of hearts that she was big and healthy and ready to make her way into the world. The doctor suddenly announced “She’s got a big noggin!” and I said “I knew it!”, which is the first thing Kelly ever heard her mother say outside the womb. I hope she doesn’t think I am a know-it-all. She was crying before she was all the way out and proceeded to scream her healthy little lungs out for the next several minutes. The staff called over from the bassinet “She’s doing great! She just pooped and peed all over us!” Hee hee hee. I recall saying “I told you so! I knew she was fine! I knew she was big.” (Again, with the smugness, I know, but it made me feel justified for opting for a Csection and for complaining about how heavy she was there at the end of my pregnancy).

I told Andy to go over and see her and whatever he did, to NOT look over the other side of the curtain, because they had my organs sitting on my stomach. EW. I was so proud of Andy because he decided in that moment to cut the umbilical cord, which he previously had been uninterested in doing. They checked Kelly out and she was 8 pounds, 9.8 ounces and 19 inches long, easily the size of a full term baby. Good job, little girl! They brought her over so I could see her and when I said “Hi, Baby” she immediately turned her head towards me. Aaaaw!

Here is our first family portrait:

I am so happy in this picture. The baby is fine, I was right about her size and health (I DO enjoy being right, people), I wasn’t bleeding to death, and I was no longer pregnant. I knew I still had to go into recovery and that the first few hours would suck (and boy, did they), but at this moment I was totally numb and coked out on pain meds and all I could think about was the baby, that I wasn’t pregnant, and that this first picture was really important and damn it, I better not have a double chin in this shot. Isn’t that lovely? It’s really a terrible, selfish thought, but I’m being honest here!

I don’t really remember being wheeled to recovery, other than hearing a squeal in the hallway, which I knew meant that we had passed by Brooke and Adam (they just happened to be there at the right moment, isn’t that cool?). Andy spent my recovery time bouncing from Kelly on one side of the room to me, in what must be the world’s longest room, or at least it seemed so to me, as he seemed so far away! He was such a trooper, wanting to hold her whenever the nurse wasn’t checking her, trying to comfort me in my misery, and make phone calls. It was fun hearing him announce her name to our family, especially his mom, since Kelly Sue is named after his mom Sue! Kelly had some blood sugar issues and needed some formula supplementing, but stabilized in about 36 hours and hasn’t needed formula since. They said the blood sugar issues were typical in an early baby, and I was way too sick to try nursing her yet anyway, so it worked out. Our awesome recovery nurse Cresseta kept saying how cute and sweet Kelly was, because she was this happy little papoose who only cried when she needed something.

I was in recovery a long time because I was in a lot of pain, and Cresseta said she was going to try her secret weapon, liquid tylenol in my IV. GOD BLESS that woman, it did the trick! She also announced that things had happened so fast with my delivery that my admitting paperwork hadn’t been finished, so I laid there, in pain and nauseous, trying to tell her the pertinent info they needed for me to be “checked in”. Despite how awful I felt, it was pretty funny. I even had to sign anesthesia paperwork when I was on the OR table because things had happened so fast! Nothing like signing a consent for something that had already happened!

Brooke and Adam were able to visit for a few minutes and brought us not only our phone chargers, but a water bottle and sandwich for Andy, which I made him eat in the hall so I didn’t have to hear him chew. I was aware enough to be concerned about him eating and being ok, but also nauseous enough to not want to witness him eating. Right before they rolled my bed out of the room, my anxiety and therefore nausea sky rocketed, because I had been really sick during transfer after my ovarian cyst surgery. I did proceed to puke one last time, which really stinks with a huge incision on your abs, by the way. I do recall thinking “This is the last time I will be throwing up due to this pregnancy”, which was a nice thought. I then apologized to the guy moving my bed, who had politely stepped out of the room, and then we were off to the maternity ward for a few days.

Whew! There you go. The next post will be way less words and lots more pictures of Kelly and the rest of us at the hospital. Thanks for hanging in there through a long blog post!

Permalink 6 Comments