Everly: The Birth Story part 2

 Day 2 and Yay, we were ready to have a baby. We had been in a small hospital room all night watching our Little Love's heart rate dropping over and over again and having horrible pre labor contractions. Holy Hannah those had to be real labor contractions.

 

 Finally, we were upgraded to the big nice delivery room and ready to get this show on the road. I definitely wanted to start this show off a little better than the night before had finished. You know what that means? Drugs!!! I was emotionally and physically spent and ready for that liquid gold shot into my spine by way of a crazy, huge needle and equally crazy, long tube inserted in my back. Ah modern medicine is wonderful!

When my amazing Dr. watched through the door I said, "I'm a wuss I didn't make it. I had the epidural." Being the awesome Dr. she is, she replied, "You don't get a medal for going natural, your children could care less." Then she broke my water, which had meconium in it, again, man I have poopy kids! That meant the NICU people had to be in the room when the cute baby was delivered in case they needed to suction her lungs (Everly and Elanora are already twinners).

With my lower half adequately numb and my water broke I was definitely ready to have my baby... or maybe I should stop having contractions all together because we had just had the longest night of our lives, how about making it longest day of our lives.  So at this point I was numb, no longer having contractions and still having to watch my beautiful baby's heart rate drop over and over again. Chris and I would drift off to sleep listening to the beep, beep, beep of the baby's heart monitor and then the beep would slow way down and we would jump awake to stare at the monitor to watch her heart rate drop yet again.

Luckily for us we have an amazing Doctor that we trust completely. We were also blessed to have the most amazing nurse. 



(I still can't get over how fluffy I was)

She was definitely heaven sent. It was her day off but the hospital was so busy they called her in (and there I was taking up hospital space and not in labor, awesome. I bet they loved me). I am so grateful she came in. I don't know how many patients she had that day but I know she came in just for me. She helped Chris and I through something horribly scary with her 'nursing know how' and her sense of humor.

They wanted to give me Pitocin so we could get the Babylove out safe and sound but unfortunately they couldn't until her heart was stable for at least 30 minutes. At one point she waited until 29 long minutes had gone by and then, sure enough her heart dropped. Crazy baby!

Man this story is a mouthful, I guess technically a blog post full...Lame attempt at a joke to keep the audience reading. I usually like to have more pictures and even though we had both the camera and video camera and I had planned to do some fun interviews of everyone waiting patiently for Everly to get here, we were, at this point, a little nervous, not knowing whether or not she would actually get here and we definitely didn't want to document that. So no pictures yet.


They were trying all kinds of things, hydrating me (still), having me wear an oxygen mask, I even had to have blood pressure meds because mine wasn't doing to well at one point...not sure why, I wasn't that stressed :), they even added water back inside me because my water had been broke and they hoped it would chill the baby girlie out to have her water back. Nope.

It was getting a little critical that we get things moving along so the Dr. decided to do a test run of Pitocin. They didn't turn it all the way up, or whatever term is used to describe how they control how much Pitocin I'm getting. I remember them saying to turn it on to a 4...I think. I started having contractions right away and right along with the contractions, her heart rate dropped so low I couldn't hear the monitor beeping. They shut off the Pitocin and scrambled to find a heart beat. Chris was watching the monitor and said her heart was beating once every 3 seconds or something like that.

Everything calmed down and contractions stopped and Little Love's heart got back on track. The nurse looked at us and said, "Get ready, pretty sure you'll need a C-section." They were sure she was tangled in the umbilical cord which was causing all the trouble.
 
They gave Chris an awesome, flattering blue suit to put on, hat and booties included. Luckily for him, he can rock any outfit. Now I'm not a crier. My cold, cold heart doesn't allow it. But, at that moment I was a basket case. I couldn't stop crying. Not because I was worried about having a C-section but because I had just watched my child's heart almost stop.  We were tired and stressed to the max. Chris and a random man my mom tracked down in the hospital gave me a blessing. In the blessing Chris asked that the nurses and Dr. would have an open mind so that they would know what to do...not exact verbiage but you get the point.

This is when things get interesting. The nurse came in and said, "Okay, Julia wants to try one more thing." They proceeded to put me in the stirrups and then moved my bed to the most upright position it could go. Crazy. The nurse told Chris he had to hold me so I wouldn't fall out (numb lower half and all). She told him if I fell out of the bed she would have to do a lot of paper work. Did I mention she was awesome? They were hoping gravity would work. The Dr. said to put the Pitocin on 2. The nurse was nervous because she had just watched my baby's heart about stop so she said she would start with 1.  Gravity and a little Pitocin did the work. At 3:00pm our beautiful baby girl was born

They were right when they said she was wrapped in the umbilical cord. But it was crazy how wrapped she was. The cord was wrapped around her neck, arm and leg. My Dr. needed help untangling her. Obviously Everly was doing backflips in my tummy. My belly was huge so the Little Lamb had plenty of room. As they were cleaning her up, we learned just what a miracle our little Ever is. Her umbilical cord was not only wrapped all around that baby but is was disintegrating and not fully developed. The nurse patted me on the shoulder and said," Man you're lucky to have her here."
 She was only 5 lbs.11 oz. Her umbilical cord or lack thereof, was the reason she was  smaller.

The scariest/happiest moment of our lives ended with this beautiful baby... and wickedly awesome bedhead.