I figured I'd take some time to write out Evelyn's birth story since she is currently sleeping and I don't know how long she will stay sleeping lol... Monday night on March 14, Jody and I decided to go see 'The Adjustment Bureau'. We figured this would be our last opportunity to see a movie before the baby came. So we had some dinner at Sweet Tomatoes first and then decided to go to Rosemont to see the movie at Muvico. When we got there, we found out that the projector was broken and the next showing wasn't for another couple of hours... We decided to just go to the theater at Village Crossing instead.
After the movie, we got home and Jody said he needed to run to the bathroom, so I decided to just take Molly out before we settled in for the night. It was 11:00 p.m. at this point. So, I'm standing in the backyard waiting for Molly to do her thing, when all of a sudden I feel some fluid dripping out of me. It wasn't much, but it was noticeable. I went inside with Molly and Jody was standing there and I told him that i had either just peed my pants or my water was breaking. I went to the bathroom and some clear fluid dripped out... Still not thinking much of it, I changed into my PJs, got into bed and hopped on my phone to google 'water breaking'. About 20 minutes later I got up to use the bathroom again and MORE fluid was coming out. At this point Jody is telling me we need to get ready to go to the hospital... I didn't want to believe it because I was feeling just fine and wasn't in any pain. After a while, I agreed with him, so I took a shower, washed, dried and straightened my hair, put on some makeup, grabbed my stuff and we were on our way.
When we got to the hospital we decided to just go up to Labor& Delivery instead of going through the ER as they had told us to do, since I wasn't in any pain and wasn't exactly sure I was in labor lol. At this point it was 1:00 a.m. So we walked in and the nurse was like 'Can I help you?' and I responded by telling her i *thought* my water had broken, but I wasn't feeling any contractions, so I wasn't sure. She took my information down and got me into a room to wait for a doctor to come check me out. Eventually a doctor came in (around 2:00 a.m.) to see if I was in fact leaking fluid... It was confirmed that I was. The doctor also told me that I was about 2 cm dilated, which is what I had been when I saw the doctor last. I asked the nurse if I'd be staying and she said yes, so we decided to settle in. Jody went to the car to get our bags and I got settled into the hospital bed.
Around 2:30 a nurse came in to give me an IV and start me on fluids. After that, no one came in for a while. We could hear some woman giving birth in the next room and it seemed to take her a long while. Around 3:45 a nurse came in and told me that they had a difficult delivery with that woman and that someone would now be in to give me Pitocin to start my contractions (I still wasn't feeling anything at this point.) I got the Pitocin at 4:00 a.m. and didn't feel anything too extremely strong for a while. The pain was there, but I have a pretty high pain tolerance so it was just more annoying than anything. Then all of a sudden around 6:00 or so, I started having the worst back labor. By 7:00 I was dying of pain. I was clenching the rails on the bed and I seriously thought I was going to die from the pain. A doctor came in to check me again and told me I was between 3-4 cm dilated. After a while, my doctor came in and confirmed the same thing. At this point I was in so much pain I just wanted my epidural. I asked my doctor how long I had to wait and she told me I could get the epidural now if I wanted to. I told her that I did. A few minutes later the anesthesiologist came in to do the epidural. Jody went to get some breakfast while they did this. I must say, it was not as painful as I had thought it was going to be. In fact, I think the IV hurt much more than getting the epidural. A few minutes later, the anesthesiologist connected me to the IV and I was pain free. I told him that he was my best friend and he just laughed. It felt so good to have the pain go away. Let me tell ya, back labor is NOT fun. At this point I think it was around 9:00 a.m. or so.
For the next few hours I just had people coming in to check on me and check my progress. Each time I received a different answer... One person said 3 cm, another said 5, and yet another said 4. My doctor came back in to check me around 1:30 - 2:00 p.m. and told me that I was still at 3 cm and that she didn't seem to feel the baby's head coming down at all. She told me we'd give it another hour or so and she would come back and check me again. She later came back and confirmed there still was no further progress going on. She felt around for the baby and told me that she thought the baby's head was coming down crooked. However, she said we'd give it another hour and she'd come back again. Around 4:00 she came back and told me there was no change. She then started feeling around on my belly and she told me that she thought the baby was going to be big and perhaps that was why the baby wasn't coming down (she thought I wasn't big enough to deliver a larger baby). At this point she told me to start considering the possibility of a C-Section as there was no progress happening and she didn't want to risk it turning into an emergency since my water had broken a while ago. I asked her to give me another hour to see if there were any changes. She agreed and came back around 5:00 to confirm that there was no change.
Reluctantly, Jody and I decided that having the C-Section was probably the best option, as we didn't want to risk any problems with me trying to push the baby out and her getting stuck or something. So, they quickly got me ready and wheeled into the OR. I was SO SCARED. I was also very disappointed and crying. Jody told me not to worry and that he would be there next to me as soon as they let him. The OR was so cold! On top of that I had some horrible pain in the back of my neck and no one seemed to want to listen to me when I told them about it. Finally I think the doctor gave me something for the pain because it finally went away. They then checked to make sure that the epidural was doing it's job so I wasn't feeling anything basically below my neck -- I wasn't. At this point, they finally brought Jody into the room and he held my hand. I was so scared because I hadn't even considered the possibility of having a C-Section. I was so unprepared for it and this made me very upset. Jody tried to calm me down and i just laid there as they started the procedure. Before I knew it, I heard her crying and that made me start bawling my eyes out. I looked over at Jody and could tell that he was tearing up as well. They then called him over to come take pictures of the baby. At this point the only thing I wanted to know was how much she weighed. I kept trying to hear what the nurses were saying... At some point someone said something about '9' and I thought they meant the weight of the baby... BUT then I heard someone ask for the weight and they said it in grams, which didn't help me much and so then I heard someone say to do the conversion and finally they said she was 6 lbs 11.6 oz. This relieved me as I had no idea what I would do with a 9 lb baby ha! After they had gotten me all closed up, my doctor came over to congratulate me and told me the reason why the baby wasn't coming down was because she was face up. She told me there was no way I could have ever delivered her vaginally. I don't know if this was supposed to make me feel better or what, but at that point I was just happy she was there. Jody came back by me and asked me if I wanted to see pictures of her or see her first. I told him I wanted to see her.
Now this part is kind of blurry to me... I'm not sure if they gave her to Jody or what but I don't remember actually seeing her until I was in the recovery room. And even at this point, I couldn't hold her because i was literally convulsing due to the meds and being so cold. Instead I watched Jody hold her and then my sister, who had come to see me right after the surgery. When I finally stopped shaking, they handed her to me and all I could do was cry. I couldn't believe she was finally here. And even though I didn't deliver her the way I wanted to, I was glad she was okay and that was all that mattered to me.
I stayed in the recovery room for about an hour before they moved me to my actual room. At that point, Jody was making phone calls to his family and my family to let them know that everything was ok. They took Evelyn from me to take her to the nursery to get checked out and cleaned. That was the longest 2 hours of my life. All I wanted to do was hold my baby and they took her away from me right away. I finally got her back around 10:00 p.m. and my parents were finally there to meet her and find out her name. They were so happy to meet her and that made me happy too.
So for the next day and a half I was confined to the hospital bed. Even though I wasn't feeling bad, they wouldn't let me get up and use the bathroom unless there was a nurse there etc. I must admit that whole day and a half were so embarrassing to me. I'm not used to people doing everything for me and to have to be in such a vulnerable position was just uncomfortable and embarrassing. I was so happy when they told me that I could finally shower and use the bathroom on my own whenever I wanted.
The few days I spent in the hospital were the longest days of my life. All I wanted to do was come home. It was soo boring staying at the hospital. Jody actually ended up working the rest of the week because we figured there was no sense for him to take time off to sit in a hospital with me... we both agreed he would be more useful to me here at home this week. So I spent the days at the hospital by myself. My sister came by a couple of times for a bit and my boss also visited me (which was a suprise). My mom and dad came in the evenings and also Amanda and Steve came to visit as well... but the days dragged so long because I was mostly there by myself... trying to learn how to take care of the baby and do things for her on my own was difficult, but I got through it.
Now I've been home for a week and it's been a challenge, but I'm trying. My hormones are so out of whack it's not even funny. Everything makes me cry and I just feel overwhelmed at times. However, I am thankful that Jody has been home with me this week because he's been a tremendous help. I'm kind of apprehensive about him going back to work on Monday because I don't want to be by myself, but hopefully it will all be okay. I think right now I'm just struggling with getting her to sleep in the evenings and figuring out how much she should be awake during the day. I'm not sure if she's sleeping too much or if I should be entertaining her more? Since she's so tiny she doesn't play or anything, so I just don't know if I should be doing anything else to engage her, or if I should just let her sleep!
Hopefully as time goes on, I will figure all this out...
