Little Baby's ALMOST Birth Story!

I love reminiscing about birth stories and I want to be able to share my girls' birth stories with them without forgetting any of the details...so let's jot this down, shall we? :o) 

Little Baby wasn't due 'til August 21st, but her birth story (or my labor story, rather) really starts way back on June 5th. I had been having some contractions here and there (what I figured were Braxton Hicks, which I never had with Kaitlyn) for a few weeks, but on the night of June 4th I was having more than what I had been. I tried to sleep them off, but I was having so many that I couldn't sleep through them and ended up getting on the computer to google things like "pre-term labor" and "true vs. false labor." I think it was at that point when I added a contraction timer app to my phone and started tracking how often these tummy squeezes were coming because they weren't occasional anymore. I timed them for not quite an hour and had 17 (!!!) contractions that were about 3 minutes apart! Oh. My. Gosh!!! What the heck?! I was only 29 weeks pregnant that Friday...this was WAYYYY too soon to be having regular, time able contractions like this! I tried changing positions, walking around, resting, drinking lots of water...all the things you should try to get BH contractions to go away...well, NOTHING was working. I didn't want to be the girl who bothered her OB in the middle of the night, but I was getting pretty worried that something wasn't right...so, at around 2:30am, I called my OB and waited for the call back...and waited...and didn't hear from them after a half hour so I called back...and waited again...all the while, contractions are coming regularly every 3-4 minutes and my anxiety is building. Finally, the on-call OB calls back and, after I told her what was going on, she says to bypass St. Luke's and head right to Toledo Hospital (where the NICU is, just in case)...INSTANT WORRY. My OB practice doesn't even deliver at Toledo Hospital, just St. Luke's, where I planned to have this little baby. So, I go wake up Wayne (who, I think, thought I was joking at first), he calls Chris to come stay with the girls and then the OB calls back. In my file, she noticed how close we live to St. Luke's and that it'd take us a while to get to Toledo Hospital, so she says to get to St. Luke's NOW and they can evaluate me and then decide if I need to transfer to Toledo. I was staying relatively calm on the outside, but was so worried and scared that something was wrong with Little Baby. So, off we go to St. Luke's!

On the way to the hospital I remember thinking how NOT ready we were to have this baby...most of the "stuff" was ready, like her room, but we had not even come close to deciding on a name! I remember the nurse wheeling me up to L&D asking me how many weeks pregnant I was...by that time it was technically Friday morning and I was 29 weeks exactly...she said "Well, you're here too soon!" Yea. No kidding! They put us in the L&D triage room, hooked me up to a contraction monitor, baby's heart rate monitor and gave me a HUGE pitcher of water to drink. I told the nurse I'd already been drinking a ton of water and it wasn't helping, but she made me chug that thing and I had to pee every 15 minutes, which was an ordeal just to go potty because I was hooked up to all sorts of monitors! I seriously went to the bathroom in the triage room 10 times, I bet, all in the span of a couple hours. From here on out, the rest is kind of a blur...I know they checked me for dilation (if I remember right, I was at 1cm), they tested for bacteria/infections, etc. They even had to put a catheter in to get a clean urine sample...holy discomfort! After chugging a TON of water didn't make the contractions stop, they hooked me up to an IV bag...and then another one...and then another...contractions still every 3-5 minutes or so. They did a few ultrasounds to check if my cervix was thinning or not. They gave me a Fetal Fibronectin test, which can tell if you'll go into labor within 14 days...it came back positive, although they said false-positives are common. Still...holy crap, things were gettin' REAL quickly! I can't remember what else they tried in that time span, but I do remember I was admitted to a room, my mom came up from Dayton and I eventually started on Procardia, which was supposed to slow/stop the contractions. Took the first pill and it did nothing. Took 2 more pills...notta. At this point, nurses and doctors were starting to talk "next steps"...if Procardia didn't stop the contractions, we were going to be transported by ambulance (eeeeep, never done that before!) to Toledo Hospital. It sounded like St. Luke's was trying everything possible to stop the contractions, but if baby was going to come, they weren't equipped to handle a premie like Toledo was. This is where I started getting really nervous...this baby was a total surprise from the start and I knew she was supposed to be part of our family...she was a blessing given to us...the thought of losing her was so scary and way too real by this point. At only 29 weeks I knew she'd have a chance, but it would be a very long, hard road for her and that made me incredibly anxious and scared. I took a 3rd dose of Procardia and waited for it to work...if it didn't stop the contractions, we'd be headed to Toledo for bed rest and steroid shots for baby's lungs to get her ready for an early arrival. Please God, let this pill do the trick! IT DID!! It didn't stop the contractions, but it slowed them down enough (I think every 10 minutes or so) and since I wasn't progressing, they were ok with sending me home! Hallelujah!

So, I was sent home with strict "take-it-easy" orders...not official bed rest, but no lifting, no exercise (eventually I was cleared to take walks again), etc. I took that Procardia almost daily for the rest of my pregnancy...'til I hit 35 weeks and the OB said we didn't need to stop labor at that point. Phew. We made it! I had contractions daily from 29 weeks until I delivered (another story for another time) and they were often VERY regular and time able. Apparently, this is known as Prodromal Labor and it's somewhat common...I found a group on Babycenter.com and we all supported (read: complained to) each other with it. The last month or so of my pregnancy, I was having so many contractions that I was afraid I'd never know if it was the real deal or not! It was a tiring cycle of having contractions, timing them, wondering if I should call the doctor or not, etc. Trying to sleep through them was getting much more difficult and resulted in a lot of sleepless nights of me trying to get comfortable on the couch. Every time I went to the bathroom I 'checked' for signs of labor because...contractions ALL THE TIME! Every time I went to work I wondered if I'd go into real labor there or if these contractions were just like the others and pointless. With every passing week I couldn't believe I was still pregnant because I just thought for sure all those contractions meant that I'd go into labor really early. Nope, notta. By week 38 I was counting down the days (and getting slightly annoyed with pregnancy, lol) since Kaitlyn was born at 38w3d...and I just KNEW this baby would be born early too...after all, aren't second pregnancies supposed to be shorter?!

I forgot to mention the possible reason for this Prodromal Labor...baby's position. This little baby had been Frank Breech my ENTIRE pregnancy! Every single ultrasound showed her butt down with her feet up in her face and I never felt her do flips or spin around. I was trying EVERYTHING to get her to flip because I really didn't want to have a C-section...I wanted another go-round with laboring and delivery...I wanted a shot at trying to go natural...I wanted to fell that intense emotion that came with birthing a baby after hours and hours of laboring and pushing. Giving birth to Kaitlyn was the best experience of my life and I was really looking forward to that again, so I tried anything and everything to get this little baby to flip around...I tried all sorts of exercises on spinningbabies.com...things like hanging off the couch upside down, putting your feet/butt up in the air so your body is on a decline, various stretches, walking, swimming, I even tried going to a chiropractor a few times. I had several extra ultrasounds to check baby's position and every time was a gut check...baby was still breech. We even talked about the possibility of flipping baby via an External Cephalic Version, but the OB eventually decided I'm too small and there wouldn't be enough room for baby to safely turn. Sigh. I had to come to terms with being ok with a C-section, so I asked friends for the positives about that...scheduling baby's birth date, a beautifully shaped head, no 'down there' pain, etc...ok, it wouldn't be so bad afterall...as long as baby was born healthy, that's the most important thing. So, at my 37w appointment, we scheduled a C-section for August 13th, a week before baby's due date. The end was in sight! We had a PLAN. Little Baby would make her arrival on August 13th...or so we thought...to be continued. :o)