On Tuesday, July 31st, there was a hurry of things happening so I didn't have a chance to share the changes in plans, or even the arrival of our newest daughter, in a timely fashion. Now that she is here and we are settling in to our new roles as parents of a newborn, I want to record the events of the previous days.
On Friday, July 27th, we received a call saying that our c section date had been moved from Tuesday (July 31) to Wednesday (Aug 1). This put us in a bit of a panic, not to any extreme, but to re arrange our childcare plans so that we could be at the hospital a different day at a different time. With eight little people at home and school still out of session, this can be a bit of a daunting task!
My parents would be staying with our kids for the most part, but we had childcare set up to give them a break each day and especially on the day of Delaina’s birth so that they could come up to the hospital to meet their newest granddaughter. We also had school meetings coming up for Kristopher which Mike would be attending with him, and child care/home help plans set up to get me through those meetings as well during my hospital stay and days of recovery after. It was a lot of stuff to shuffle around.
By Monday night we had set up all the needed child care and home help we needed, we caught up the laundry and picked up the house. We had cleaned the master bedroom and bathroom for my parents to use which were more of a task than other projects around the house and we had clothes mostly out for the kids for the next week after the baby arrived. We crashed around 12:30 or 1am and felt pretty good knowing that we still had a half day on Tuesday then we would be going in for pre-op before the delivery on Wednesday. Little did we know that when we crashed that night saying "everything is 90% finished...", we would actually be DONE since our baby girl had arrival plans of her own :)
On Tuesday morning at 5am I woke up with a bit of an odd feeling and my first thought was “I think my water broke…” This happens differently for different people, so excuse my detail in saying that it had broken more of a “trickle”. In fact, I wasn’t REALLY sure it had broken at all. I went back to bed, Googled quickly to see what I should do since I wasn’t in this situation before and figured someone else had been! My Googling said to lay down for 30 minutes then get back up and it would be obvious at that point if my water had broken. Easy enough.
So, I laid back down, let Mike know what was going on, and attempted to ‘rest’ for another 30 minutes or so. I got up, didn’t have any other ‘trickles’ and decided to go about getting myself showered and ready for the day, figuring we’d take it easy until the time Mike needed to go to work and decide before then whether we needed to head up to the hospital. We still had another hour or two.
When I started heading over to get the kids ready for school, I once again thought “there it is…” and decided to go ahead and call the maternity ward at the hospital to see what they said. Of course, they said “come in NOW.”
After a phone call to my parents that said “guess what, I need you… NOW” and a brief explanation that we thought my water had broken… maybe, and getting all the kids breakfast and medications and clothes on we finally left and went up to the hospital, arriving just after 9am at registration. We waited around there for a bit, talked with a friend from church that was also in the waiting area, and finally got registered and upstairs.
The nurses on the OB floor decided that either way, whether my water had broken or not, they would go ahead and do my preadmission testing since I was scheduled for the c-section the next day. Before they put anything in the computer, however, they had to decide whether they were admitting me or not. All their billing codes would be different if they were billed for TUESDAY or if they were billed for WEDNESDAY. If my water broke, they were admitting and billing for Tuesday. If it hadn’t, then they were sending me home after and billing under Wednesday.
They have a way of testing fluid to make sure it is amniotic fluid using a PH film. They tested… and it was negative. Then, they decided to wait a bit and test again (looks like my Googling of “lay down for 30 minutes then you’ll know wasn’t so far off). The second time it was a positive, but it was still not a clear firm answer. They tested a third time. And a fourth. Then they decided to do a test where they look at the fluid under a microscope to see what the shape of the cells are to know for SURE whether it’s amniotic fluid or not! I’d never even heard of that…
By this point my water was leaking enough that I was SURE that my water had broken and I was beginning to have contractions every 6 minutes or so at the same time. They FINALLY got a strong positive on the PH film AND the result of the other test which both said that my water had broken and they confirmed that we would be meeting our daughter later that day.
I called my parents, Mike called his, and we prepared that we’d have an afternoon c-section. Knowing that I would be having surgery and that I would have to have fasted for them to do the spinal for surgery, I hadn’t eaten or drank anything when I woke up that morning so that they could do the c-section IF my water had really broken. That proved to be a VERY good thing, and instead of waiting around, the nurse came back in the room and said “let’s go!” Yes, we were apparently having it done “right now.” Wow!
Then, I met the doctor. Yes, MET. As in, I’d never laid eyes on her before! Since I was now an “emergency” case, I had the on-call doctor. This was the ONE doctor in the practice that I’d never met during any of my 4 pregnancies! She seemed very nice and I knew she had been an OB in our town for many years, so there was really no hesitation on my part at having someone I didn’t know do the surgery. There was nothing I could do about it anyway!
We made another set of phone calls and had an IV put in then I walked over to the OR (it’s a little weird walking in to the operating room and climbing up on the surgery table on your own accord!). The anesthesia team gave me a spinal while Michael put on his garb to be able to go in to the operating room.
The Midwife who I DO know came in along with the OB and a Midwife-in-training as well. It was interesting to have the trainee in there because both the doctor and Midwife were very chatty about exactly what they were doing, and commenting about different ways that different doctors in their practice would do the same things. I found it very interesting! Apparently, some doctors pull the uterus out of the abdomen during the procedure, others choose not to. Some use staples to secure the incision closed, others do not. Interesting!
Just before noon our beautiful baby girl was welcomed in to this world with a healthy cry! Delaina was nameless for a while, but eventually weighed in at 6 pounds, 7 ounces and 19.5” long. Michael accompanied her to the nursery and I went to recovery, then we all converged in the hospital room soon thereafter.
We are so blessed that Delaina’s delivery went “as planned” just… not on the day that it was scheduled for
. She is a beautiful and sweet baby and after three days we brought her home to begin the tough stuff we call “life in the Cornish family”.Thanks for reading along! We are abundantly blessed!!
No comments:
Post a Comment