The Chapters We Skipped

After Evie was safe and in our arms on Tuesday, Graham and I admitted to each other that, despite all of our preparation and reading in order to get ready for labor, neither of us knew a thing about C-sections; we had skipped all of those chapters in our books. We just didn't see it as a possibility...but now it is our reality. I am beginning to think that it is the curse of a planner to have things not go according to plan.

Here is how little Evie's grand entrance came to pass: Monday evening was our first night of contraction counting. The real kind. The outch kind. We had our contraction counter application in hand because, well, you all know how much of a geek my husband is. The next morning I woke up still contracting...and they were getting closer and closer together. I wanted to stay at home and labor as long as possible because my biggest fear was getting to the hospital and being sent home...but Graham insisted that we go ahead (probably out of fear that my stubbornness would lead to him having to deliver a child IN OUR BATHTUB).

We get to the hospital and they hook me up to the monitor, and then everyone leaves the room. We start watching my contractions...and realize that with my first big contraction Evie's heart rate starts going down...and down...and down. Graham and I look at each other questioningly. "I am going to get a nurse" he says to me, and I (still being stubborn and not wanting to look like the typical "first time mom") tell him that someone will come in if anything unusual is happening. In that same second, 5 nurses run through the door and begin working on me.

I try, as politely as I can, to tell them that I do not want an IV...this was going to be a natural childbirth and pain medications were not in our plan. It turns out they were not interested in our plan, they were interested in keeping my baby alive (I am forever forever grateful to those 5 quick acting, slightly abrasive nurses). With every contraction that came, her heart decelerated, and within minutes my belly was being shaved and I was being wheeled off to the operating room for an emergency c-section.

When I woke up, I was a mama to this gorgeous little girl.

She was 6 pounds, 13 ounces, and 19 inches of over-cooked goodness and, just like everyone said she would be, totally worth the wait.

She had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and there was a kink in the cord so that every time I had a contraction her oxygen supply was cut off. The night after my c-section, I came down with a 102 degree fever. The fever spikes lasted over the next several hours, until I got put on antibiotics for the Strep B virus that my blood-work showed I had (which I had tested negative for on May 16th). Strep B is much, much worse for babies than it is for adults, so the doctors decided to go ahead and put Evie on antibiotics preemptively...they wouldn't get her blood-work back for another 24 hours and they'd rather be safe than sorry. The problem with the antibiotics, from a new mother's perspective, is that they had to get an IV in her arm...and seeing your 2-day-old baby being used as a little pincushion is akin to having your heart yanked out of your chest by a bulldozer and then having that bulldozer run over it...repeatedly. To make matters worse, they were unable to find a vein, and they can only try so many times before the risk of introducing an infection begins to outweigh the benefits of giving the medicine in the first place, so they did not get to start her on antibiotics yet. They are going to try again if her blood work comes back this afternoon and shows an infection. It has been a whirlwind. At times terrifying and, at others, blissfully amazing.

As one of our doctors put it....our case is very "interesting", and "interesting is not something that people want to be to him". My placenta is, as we speak, being shipped off to some super secret crime lab to be examined...which is all at once pretty cool and totally disgusting. We are still at the hospital, but hoping to be able to go home sometime this weekend...where we will get some much cuter pictures with Evie's brother (who cannot wait to meet her), her room, and all of her little lady clothes!

The important part of this story is, obviously, the ending..and regardless of which chapters we did or didn't read, we still got our happily ever after.