As most of you know, on Monday morning we found out that Eleanor was breech for the third time in 4 weeks, and we scheduled a c-section for the next day. That night, I had a brilliant idea to do the “little things” in my house that still needed to be done – toss the expired salad dressing in the fridge, scour out the sink, clean the grime from toaster oven, etc. I don’t know if it was a nesting instinct or if I was trying to distract myself from the fact that I was really nervous about having an operation for the first time in my life, but I didn’t get to bed until 1:15am.
The morning of her arrival was pretty uneventful, but the nervousness had subsided somewhat and I was pretty much just excited. We were going to meet our baby today! On the way to the hospital, Tim and I sang the song “Two Of Us” by The Beatles. It’s just a simple song, but it was fitting considering it’s just been the two of us for the last 12 years: “You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead…”
I am getting teary eyed as I write that. HORMONES!
So anyway, we arrive at St. Nick’s, and I’m in a great mood. We’re shown our room, and I’m given a gown to change in to. I hop in to the bed and the nurse asks me all sorts of questions, starts an IV and begins to give me fluids, draws my blood. I’m smiling, cracking jokes. We meet the anesthesiologist; he leaves. Tim turns to me, fear in his eyes, and says “Krissy, I’m really nervous.” I smile at him and say “Oh I know, honey, but we’ll be fine. C-sections happen all of the time, right?”
So our nurse, Joyce, comes back in and says “Okay, we’re about ready to go to the OR now”, and starts wheeling my bed. She pushed it all of two inches when I started to freak out. I burst in to tears, began to hyperventilate and I felt like I was going to pass out. (I can’t remember what I was saying at the time so I just asked Tim, and he says I said “I can’t do this! I can’t do this! I want to go home! I need more time!”)
Joyce, who was an absolute angel my entire stay, told me she’d give me a minute and left the room. Tim suggested we say a prayer, and once we do I feel immediately calmer. Joyce came back in and they wheeled me away, leaving Tim in the room to change in to scrubs. Once I arrive in to the OR, I am introduced to more people and put in a waiting area to wait for my doctor. He arrives and is wheeling in an ultrasound machine to make sure she’s still breech. He puts the goo on my belly, and –
she’s head down again.
“You have GOT to be joking!” I tell my doctor. “Now what? Where’s Tim?”
He says, and I am paraphrasing here, but essentially we can start an induction now, wait until Friday (as we had originally planned) and then induce if I hadn’t given birth by 4/2, or continue with the c-section. He would let me make the call, but he made it very obvious that he thought we should continue with the c-section because
1. I am still not dilated at all and am still only 50% effaced. If we continue with an induction, we run the risk of a very long and painful labor that doesn’t progress and I’d have a high chance of a c-section anyway.
2. He again said that in all of his years of delivering children, babies as mobile as Eleanor are extremely rare, and if we wait until Friday she could be breech again.
3. Once my water breaks, the “polyhydramnios“ that I had (essentially, lots of amniotic fluid) which was making Eleanor so mobile put me at a risk for umbilical cord prolapse, where the umbilical cord slips below the cervix.
Tim and I talked, and we decided to proceed with the c-section. I am moved from the waiting area to the OR, they give me an oxygen mask, and they begin my spinal. Once it starts to work, I am put flat on my back and they START TO TIE MY ARMS TO THE TABLE TO HOLD THEM DOWN. No one told me about this part and I think it’s a combo of my legs starting to lose feeling, the mask on my face, and the fact that the only part of my body that I can feel is being tied down to the table, but I start to freak out again and tried lifting myself off the table (this is probably why they tie you down). I do remember what I said at that point, and it was something like “Oh my God I can’t do this ahhHHHHHHHHH!” Joyce, who was also there, grabs my hand and does some sort of guided meditation thing where we’re walking on a sandy beach or something, and my breathing regulates. My legs now have no feeling in them, which I think is better than that in-between state where you can sort of feel them. I feel better. I’m ready. Let’s do this.
Tim walks in, and I flash him a smile to show him I Am Okay With All Of This Now. He sits by my head and grabs my hand. I tell him I’m okay, and I really am. We’re chit chatting to each other when 5 minutes in to the c-section we hear a wail. Our baby girl is here!
We both start to cry, and a nurse comments “Wow – she’s so beautiful!” The rest is a blur. They hold her up over the sheet so we can see what she looks like, and I am immediately struck with how true the nurse was – she looked so beautiful and so perfect. Tim cuts the cord, and they wrap her up and bring her over to me. I cannot believe that she’s here, that she’s mine. I still cannot.
I’m going to try to wrap this up because this is getting insanely long. While I was in recovery, my doctor told Tim that between the ultrasound and the c-section, she had already turned from a head-down position to a transverse (laying horizontally across my stomach) position. Unreal!
I was in the hospital for 5 days, 4 nights - we could have left after 3 nights, but chose to stay an additional night due to a complication that came up regarding Eleanor's weight. During our hospital stay, we were told that Eleanor had lost more weight than they’d like to see, and this was a concern to them (and us). In breastfed babies, they typically lose 7% of their birth body weight; Eleanor had lost 11%. She is now on a vigorous feeding schedule and is being fed every 2(ish) hours. I am still getting the hang of nursing; it’s hard.
Coming home from the hospital was incredibly emotional for Tim and I. It was the realization of a dream coming true; that we really were parents after years of yearning, and that we really did get to keep this beautiful girl. Reality soon set in though: it is really hard to maneuver around my house when recovering from a c-section. The bathroom is on the second floor, the bed is high and it hurts to climb in to it, etc. I spent a good part of the day in tears and in pain, and a lot of that is my fault – I waited way too long to take my pain meds (the nurses just give them to you when you need them in the hospital!), and I overdid it a little in my eagerness to return home. Today has been much better, and in between feedings and diaper changings (OH MY GOSH DOES SHE POOP AND PEE!), we’ve pretty much spent the day gazing at this tiny creature and falling more and more in love with her.
She truly is a dream come true. Our lives will never, ever be the same.
Krissy
