A Baby Story

So, how did our little princess arrive? Her official due date was Saturday, February 20. I walked over 3 miles on the treadmill that day, got loads of housework done and headed to dinner at our fave Mexi place, Real de Minas, hoping that any of the above activities would activate something. Sunday, I walked over 2.5 miles at the gym and started to feel a bit more abdominal tightening than usual.

We laid around most of Sunday and I put in a call to my baby guru friend Geri to see if these were 'real' contractions and if this was the start of labor. Her answer was, well maybe. That evening at about 11:30pm I got up because they were turning into real contractions...nothing intense or regular, but real nonetheless. As any practical mother-to-be would do, at about 4am I showered, straightened my hair and finished packing the hospital bag.

I started really timing the contractions (with a handy application on Zums' iPhone) about 5:30am and because they seemed quite regular accoring to the 5-1-1 plan, we called the doctor. Dr. Barenbaum said to head into the hospital. By no means was I at an 'ohmygod, these contractions are so bad I'm going to die' stage, but they were intense enough for a person with little to no pain tolerance like me. We arrived at Rose Hospital around 9am, got examined by the admittance nurse and were told I was dilated 1.5 cm. What!?!?! Thankfully, Dr. Goodman did not want them to send me home since I was 2 days overdue, so they moved us to a Labor & Delivery room and by 11:30am I had an epidural and was in relaxation heaven! I wasn't progressing much at all and at 2pm they manually broke my water. In doing this, they found meconium in the fluid (yep, she pooped in me). This can be quite toxic, so they hooked up an amniotic fluid IV hoping to clear this out but no luck. On top of this, my contractions stopped altogether, and baby's heartrate was staying steady at 150-160 then would suddenly plummet to 100 or less on a regular basis. We later learned this was because she was wearing the umbilical cord like a beauty queen sash and was clamping down on it ever so often.

A quick call was put in to Dr. Goodman around 3pm, and the nurses returned to the room and said that a c-section would have to be done since things were not progressing and to just get this baby into the world safely. Everything happened so fast at that point. Zums quickly changed into scrubs, I was given stronger pain meds in my epidural and we were swiftly wisked off to the operating room. Serious stuff, and we hadn't a second to think about what was really happening.

At 3:27pm we heard the healthy and mighty screams of our beloved daughter, Isla (eye-la) Sophia. I didn't get to see her right away, but I certainly heard everyone commenting what a big girl she was. Zums cut her umbilical cord and stayed with the nurses to clean her up and weigh her...a plump 8 lbs 4 oz and 21 inches long. Wowzers, as I never really thought I was that big!

I went to the Recovery area for a good hour, where I had a terrible case of the chills and just felt out of it from all the drugs and pain meds. We were finally a family of three in our own room around 5pm.

I can't say enough about how wonderful all the staff at Rose have been. The nurses have all been so patient and kind and nurturing. Isla has been a dream baby thus far, taking well to breastfeeding every 3 hours and being a mild, sleeping baby in between feedings. Unfortunately, she became quite jaundiced Tuesday evening, so she's on the baby sunbeds right now trying to get everything back to normal. Considering all that can go wrong, if this is the biggest thing, I have no complaints.

We are eager to get home Thursday or Friday and fall into our own family routine!