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Thursday, July 26, 2012

She's here!

Tessa is FINALLY here. And what a story to tell on this little girl.............

I went in Tuesday afternoon at 4pm to my OB office. I was having a Foley Bulb put in. Basically, that's a balloon that they put in your cervix while it's still deflated and then once it's inserted, she fills it with fluid and it's supposed to help you dilate and possibly send you into labor. She let me know if my contractions got to be 5 minutes apart to head to the hospital. She also said it was possible the bulb would fall out and that was okay too.

Well I started having contractions around 5:30 or so and had them consistently every 15 minutes. I was SO excited and thought that we would for sure be going in to the hospital before my scheduled induction time the next day. I labored for about 1 1/2 hours.........and then the bulb fell out. And contractions stopped :( SO bummed. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to use any drugs to induce, but once the bulb fell out, I gave up hope and tried really hard to get some rest.

We got up around 6:30am (Nick worked 3rd shift, so he went to work Tuesday night around 7:45pm and got home in time to take me in for the induction). We did a short little photo shoot as our last pictures of a family of 3. Tommy was obviously overjoyed.........

We got around and packed up the car and headed to the hospital. They checked me in, got all my paperwork done and then got me hooked up to all my monitors. Everything was going great. They checked my cervix and I was dilated to 3 1/2 cm. I was even starting to have a few contractions on my own without drugs, so Dr. Hague decided to go ahead and break my water at 8:52am. That took me immediately to 4 cm. Things were going so much faster and smoother than they did with Tommy! I was SO encouraged by that! I continued to have contractions....they hurt, but weren't unbearable. They let me know I could have an epidural whenever I wanted and then just monitored me. But at about 9:30am, four nurses rushed into my room in a panic. The resident, Dr. McMurray, told one of them to STAT page Dr. Hague. We had no idea what was going on but were quickly informed that Tessa's heart rate had dropped drastically. They put oxygen on me and decided to put her on an internal heart monitor to make sure the heart rate was accurate and put in an internal contraction monitor to be sure my contractions were picked up on the monitor. They said she had been decelerating with each contraction, but the last one had been really bad. I think she got down into the 60s and she had been/was supposed to be in the 140 range. I was crying because it freaked me out to see the nurses panicking. But they assured me she was back to normal and let me know if it happened again, they would have to do a c-section.

I decided to go ahead and get an epidural at that point because if something happened emergently, I wanted to be able to be ready for a c-seciton ASAP instead of getting general anesthesia that completely knocked me out. If I got general anesthesia, I wouldn't be awake when she was born and Nick wouldn't be able to be in the room during the procedure.  That was at 10:30am. I LOVED my anesthesiologist. His name was Dr. Stapleton and he was amazing. He explained everything thoroughly and made sure I understood and was comfortable with everything that was happening.

After my epidural, I was on cloud nine! I felt NO pain. They gave me a button to push any time I thought I needed more medication. I was set and ready to have a baby!!


And then everything changed in an instant. At 12:15pm, I had a contraction that made her decelerate quickly and horribly low. Her heart rate dropped to 40bpm. I knew immediately something was wrong because the monitor beeping had almost all but stopped. Five people came running, paging Dr. Hague again and started ripping all my monitors off the wall. They threw some scrubs to Nick and told him to get dressed because we were going for an emergency c-section. From the time they wheeled me back to the time she was out, it was about 5 minutes.She was born at 12:24pm. I was so confused and panicked and had NO idea what was happening. My medication wasn't quite strong enough and I could feel them cutting me open and ripping my incision apart to get her. It was SO painful. Nick wasn't allowed in the OR and when they pulled her out, I knew immediately that she wasn't breathing. She was dark purple and I heard no crying. I started crying because nobody would tell me what was going on. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them working on her..........they put a tube in her throat and were using the manual pump bag to make her breathe. I could see her little chest heaving but knew it wasn't because she was breathing but because they were making her breathe. That went on for about 2-3 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Finally, the anesthesiologist told me she was breathing on her own and they let Nick come in the room. We got to see her for about 30 seconds before she was taken to NICU. My heart was broken and I wanted nothing more than to hold my baby girl. But instead, I had to lay as still as possible while they stitched me up and talked about how now I was a high risk for infection. Then we had to wait 30 minutes for x-ray to come and x-ray my stomach to be sure no instruments were left behind since they didn't have time to do a precount of everything they used.

They took us back to our room and let my mom and sister come back. We were all praying for Tessa that she was okay. FINALLY, my nurse came and said she was looking good and started breathing well on her own. They kept telling us for 2 hours that she was going to be brought back to our room soon, but she never was. Nick finally just went to NICU to see her and I got these sweet pictures:



She looked perfect.  But my arms were literally aching to hold her. My heart was broken that she wasn't with her mommy and daddy as soon as she was born. They moved me up to the 5th floor and said she would be with me quickly. But she wasn't. It was about FIVE HOURS LATER that I FINALLY got to hold her. It was Heaven!!!! She's amazing and I'm more in love than ever. I've never, EVER experienced something so traumatic and horrible as thinking you're watching your newborn die. SO awful. I'm praising God with every breath that she's okay and has no side effects from being without oxygen after birth. She's healthy and alive and totally amazing.


Tessa Grace
8lbs 2oz
20 1/2 inches
July 25, 2012
12:24pm

1 comment:

Elane said...

What a beautiful little girl and such a precious gift from God.