She's here!!

Baby Delaney Elizabeth, or Elizabeth Delaney, we can't make up our mind, made her early arrival on Sept. 24th at 12:21 pm. She weighed 6 lbs 2 oz and was 19 in. long. Here's how it all went down. {this is lengthy and detailed for my benefit so be prepared!}

I went in for my weekly checkup on Monday the 20th. My BP was pretty high, but baby still looked good on my 30 minute monitoring so they said to keep an eye on it and if I felt any symptoms, bad headache, nausea, disorientation, etc to give them a call ASAP. The Dr. had talked about taking me to the hospital that day to induce possibly, but I was NOT keen on that idea, 35 weeks sounded awfully early even though he thought it would be fine. And frankly I just wasn't ready to have this baby yet! So home I went on semi-bed rest, trying to take it as easy as possible.

Well, for me that was very hard! I had a lot to do to try and get DONE with all my work so I could take time off, I finally turned my Etsy shop off but had a few things I had to finish up. I actually cancelled quite a few sales due to the bed rest, people were so nice and friendly about it, saying to take care of myself and they'd keep me in their prayers. Etsy is an awesome community! Anyway, I probably wasn't as good as I should have been about taking it easy. On Wed. I borrowed a friend's BP cuff so I could take my pressure at home, and it was NOT GOOD, varying from 160/90s up to as high as 190/117. And even if I laid down for hours it still was high, too high. I probably should have gone in that night, but being the stubborn person I am I thought I could wait it out and didn't want to get admitted into the ER in the middle of the night. Anyway, we waited till morning and called my OB ASAP. The nurse said to go straight to the OB Triage center at the hospital, to have Chris drive, that I should not do ANYTHING strenuous. I should have known better, I really could have had a stroke or seizure with how high my numbers were.

So we sat and waited for about an hour before getting into the Triage center, then was put on a monitor for about 3 hrs. It was of course crazy busy that day in the Labor and Delivery so I think we probably stayed longer than we needed to, but oh well. Numbers were still high and blood work showed higher liver enzymes which is a sign of pre-eclampsia. So. . . they said we'd be doing a 24 hr urine watch in the hospital over night. Moved to Labor and Delivery, sat, waited, waited some more. . . started the urine watch. Chris went to go pick up the kids from their various locations and while he was gone, my lovely nurse, Diane, who I adored, said she thought they'd probably just induce me later that night when my Dr. arrived. He happened to be the Dr. on call that night, which worked great! She'd talked with the other dr. on call at the time and thought that was probably what they'd do. SO, call Chris, tell him to get the kids situated again! they were already on their way to see me so we chatted for a little while and then he was off again. Thank you to the Martin's for keeping them over night and getting the kids to their schools! It's so great to have such wonderful friends that you can count on when no family is close. Our ward is our family here! They are all terrific.

Dr. Smith-O'brien arrived around 7pm and confirmed that they would be inducing me that night. He thought there was little chance that my BP would go down in coming weeks and that the baby was far enough along that she should do fine if induced early. He also said that babies who have been under BP stress, tend to develop a little earlier due to the stress of it, and she's a girl {girls develop about a week faster than boys, even in the womb they're ahead of the curve!}. So, feeling good about it, we went ahead with the induction. We moved rooms, waited, waited a little more, and finally got the pitocin going around 9pm.

Contractions started and got pretty regular, but not very strong. I was about a 2 coming into Labor, and didn't progress much beyond that until morning. I finally got to a 3-4 around 5:30 in the morning. It was a very long night, my BP was better on my side but the contractions weren't as strong while on my side, keeping the baby monitor going the whole night, finding her if she moved around, not being able to move around much due to the IV and monitors. . . long night!! and poor Chris was on a reclining rocker that looked as comfortable as a pile of rocks! But we knew the end was in sight.

They broke my water at 5:30am and I'd hoped that that would get things moving. It did, and I was soon having pretty hard contractions. I still hadn't had an epidural yet, I was pretty grumpy by the time they got there at 8:15ish. But I'd made some progress, was about a 4-5 by the time the epidural went in. The relief is instant with those things, and my BP instantly improved because I was in less pain. I also continued to progress more quickly. By 11:30 I was at an 8 and moving quickly, by 12 my OB had arrived and started making all the preparations for delivery. My legs were pretty numb and I was worried it would take me longer to push her out because I couldn't feel much. I'd had my epidural a lot longer with Gavin and I think it was beginning to wear off by the time I delivered so I felt quite a bit of his delivery, and he came out very easily.

They had a NICU team in the delivery room in case she needed it, there were 2 student or new nurses in there, as well as my OB and regular nurse, I think all together there were about 10 people in the room! Definitely the most I've ever had in a delivery room. Kinda weird, but it was fine. My nurse was AWESOME, funny and calming and on top of everything. I'll be writing Stephanie a very nice note. My OB was great too. Preparations were done and I was ready, pushed twice and out she came! No tearing or cutting neccesary thank goodness. She came out pretty purple, but cried on her own and Dr. said she was really strong and kicking and moving on her own. Guesses were made on her weight before delivery, and my nurse had guessed right on, 6lbs 2 oz! A great size for a 4 wk preemie.

Chris got to cut the cord and then they took her over to the incubator to make sure she was ok, so I didn't get to hold her right off the bat. They did all the finish up stuff on me and then let me hold her. There's nothing like holding your baby for the first time, the feeling of heaven in the room. She was beautiful and perfect, and we'd worked so hard to get her here. It just felt so good to finally hold her in my arms. I think I would have totally bawled like a baby if there hadn't been 10 people in the room, but I tried to hold it together and only a few tears of joy were shed.

She ate well right away, totally knew what to do! I'm always amazed at baby's instincts. I had to stay in the Labor ward for about 5 hrs so they could monitor my BP which still wasn't going down. They started me on a BP medicine, not magnesium thanks goodness, which they had threatened. They finally decided I wasn't in any danger of stroking or seizuring, so they moved me to my lovely room in Mother Baby. These rooms are HUGE! very nice. The evening went well, the kids and Chris came and saw the baby, the kids were so sweet with her and so excited that she's finally here. Gavin is excited to not be the youngest any more, and Maci is going to be such a great big sister and mommy's helper. We did great over night, tried to get as much sleep as I could between feedings and BP monitorings and whatnot. She's still eating great and really hasn't cried much at all! We'll see how long that lasts ;-)

We feel so blessed to have this baby in our family. We've known so many people who have struggled with infertility or having very difficult pregnancies and are grateful that after our short trial of patience and faith, our wishes for another baby have finally happened. I still want to have one more, and hopefully now what we know what works it won't take as long next time. We'll see where we're at in a couple years :-)

Thanks to all our family and friends who have sent us support from around the country. We miss you all! but know that our friends here are taking good care of us. Pics to come when I get them off of our camera!
Love you all
Ali