Waitin' on Tater » Deena & Mikel's countdown to their new baby!

Miss Arabella Marie Riley has made her appearance in this world!  For those interested, here’s her birth story… I’m writing this all out while I have a shot at remembering the details.  So, what I’m saying, this post is mainly for me – ha!  Sorry to those of you who just want to know she’s here.  This may be TMI for some you (Kara)  Anywho… here we go!

At about 10:30 AM on Friday, August 6, I was running around the house getting a few things done – putting away my laundry, doing a couple of loads of Miss A’s laundry, etc.  I was running around the house and felt… moisture… you get the idea.  It wasn’t anything like the water breaking experiences you see in the movies, so I decided to send a text to Mikel, who was at work, to let him know that shenanigans may have been afoot and monitor the situation.

I had plans to have lunch with various members of my family and needed to leave the house at 11:00.  By the time I left the house, I still couldn’t tell if we were “game on” yet, so off I went.  I called my OB’s office, which was on the way to lunch, to see if they had a way of telling my water broke at the office, and they advised me just to go to labor & deliver (hereafter referred to as “L&D”) if I suspected that my water had broken.  Wanting to avoid a “false alarm,” which we had a week before, I decided to just keep going to lunch.

I got to the restaurant, met my Mom and my Nana, and promptly excused myself to the restroom to check on things.  It was then I realized that, yes, my water had mostly likely broken.  I went back out and told them what I suspected.  My mom drove me to the hospital, which was just down the road while I called Mikel and told him that he may want to start heading towards the hospital.  We got there about noon.

Let me note, at this point I had not eaten all day.  I slept a little late that day and decided to just wait to eat until I had lunch.  I hadn’t eaten anything since the evening before (a Prin Pub-type shake for those of you curious)… those of you who have had a baby know where I’m going with this…

We made it to the hospital and I was taken to a L&D room so they could determine if my water had actually broken for sure.  They were able to do a test on some of the fluid, and indeed, my water had broken!  Baby time!

Mikel arrived not too terribly long after they had gotten me settled into “labor mode.”   They put an IV in my hand (it took them 3 tries) and had started me on Pitocin as I was not really contracting on my own.  Mikel and I indulged in at little Food Network action, even though I was officially not allowed to eat anything until Miss A was here (please reference the paragraph 2 before this one to gauge my hunger…).

At about 4:30, I went ahead and asked for my epidural and by about 5:00, Keith, the magic man, had arrived and gotten me set up.  I was told I had a great epidural – I was nice and numb (Mikel was impressed at the strength of the contractions I couldn’t feel), but I still had “excellent” mobility according to the nurses.

My progress was slow – I arrived at the hospital dilated to 3 cm, but had only made it to about a 4 at this point.  My doc arrived around 6:00 to check things out, and realized that my water had never completely broken.  She took care of that issue and labor began to progress much more quickly.

By about 8:00 or so, Miss A’s heart started slowing down with each contraction.  My doc determined that her umbilical cord was probably being compressed in some way with each contraction and ordered an amnio-infusion – in other words, she decided to put water back in to me to try to float the cord into a better position.  Yeah.  Fun.  She also had me in a position called a “go fast” – basically twisting one leg over the other and putting it into the opposite stirrup while lying on my side.  It was fairly uncomfortable as it was, and I couldn’t imagine being in this spot without the epidural.  Luckily, it seemed to help the whole cord situation because Miss A stopped having decelerations.

I made it to about 8 cm and stalled out again.  At about 11:45, Keith came back in because I was starting to feel more things (so I thought) and boosted my epidural.  I later realized that there was more to this…

At midnight, things got interesting.  The epidural boost had made me very drowsy and I had been cat napping for a few minutes.  While I was dozing, I heard some alarm going off, but was too conked to be able to ask Mikel what was going on.  My doc came in and said that I was going to be having this baby a different way and that the operating room was prepped for my c-section.  She said that normally she didn’t mind too much if the baby was having heart decelerations with contractions as long as the mom was progressing towards delivery, but she wasn’t pleased with my lack of progress and it was time to go to another route.  I must have made quite the face (probably a horrified face) because she offered to check me one last time before taking me back for the c-section.  She checked and said something like “I think there’s been a little change here…” and told me with the next contraction she wanted me to push.  So, I pushed and I’m pretty sure she manually stretched me to a 10 with that contraction.

She decided to let me have a go at a natural labor and told me it was going to involve forceps.  Yikes.  She also told me that I was going to have to be pretty successful with this route fairly quickly or else we were going right back to the c-section.  So, I wasn’t going to argue with the forceps.

The “Pit Crew” came in – a bunch of L&D nurses for me and Nursery nurses for Miss A had the room set up for delivery in about 5 minutes.  I was incredibly numb – we later realized that boost of epidural “for my comfort” was actually a boost big enough to get me through the c-section I hadn’t been told I was having yet.  Once everything was set up, I was told to push with all my might with the next contraction (forceps were engaged at this point).  I did the best I could considering that I couldn’t feel a dang thing.  My eyes were closed in concentration but Mikel told me that I was making progress.  I pushed 4 times with the first contraction and everyone in the room was telling me I was almost there, including Mikel.  I took a break between contractions, and then we were off again.  While I was in the midst of pushing through this second contraction, I was told to open my eyes – she was here!  Mikel said he was impressed with my fortitude to get her out.  Ha!

She was born at 12:33 AM on August 7.  She weighed in at 7 lbs 5 ounces and measured 20.5 inches long.  We’re both doing great.  I had relatively little damaged considering how quick her delivery went.  We’re both at home now and “real” photos are in the offing!  I’ll be sharing those soon!