“The Baby”

On Sunday morning, Scott took a few of the kids who weren’t coughing quite so badly to church. I stayed home with the really sick ones. Keona looked like a walking corpse. Poor thing… and Jed, well he couldn’t stop coughing, but that didn’t deter him from running around non-stop.

 

Shortly after breakfast, I noticed that my braxton hicks contractions were becoming more frequent. Not painful. Just more often. Around lunch time, I decided to time them, and noticed that they were about 5 minutes apart. That lasted for an hour and then stopped. This continued all day long. I texted Scott to warn him. He told his Mom to be ready to head over ‘just in case’… but I really didn’t give it much thought. Afterall, my body refuses to go into labour… and I’m only 35/36 weeks. Mind you, my OB had told me that she wouldn’t be surprised if I went early- seeing that the baby was measuring farther along… and to come in right away if my contractions lasted more than 1/2 an hour.

 

Fast forward to Monday morning… the contractions were back. Still not “labour”… but they were definitely getting more noticeable. My back was cramping with them now, and every once in a while I had a sharp pain by my c section scar. Which was a little bit unnerving with how many c-sections I’ve had. After speaking with my OB’s assistant, we decided to head into the hospital totally expecting to be back home in a few hours.

 

At first, the monitor was picking up my contractions and I honestly started to wonder if I was crazy. I told Scott to come put his hand on my stomach just to be sure I wasn’t imagining things… After moving the monitors around and the pain getting a little more intense, they decided to start an IV to see if that put a stop to things. Nope. Still thought I was going home shortly. Then they gave me a shot of… cannot remember the name of it- but it made me feel like I was in a dream for the rest of the night. That didn’t work to stop the contractions either. Before either of us were expecting anything, the OB came in and told us that we were heading to the ER right away for a c-section. They didn’t want to risk any damage to my scar…

Yikes! Nurses were handing me papers, quizzing me on past surgeries, allergies… you name it! I could barely put a sentence together, nevermind remember any of those things! I started crying as I was telling Scott to call my Mom and scribbling down random numbers as my kids birthdates, that made no sense at all!

About 20 minutes later, at 6:12pm, a 5lb 10oz baby girl was born!

I was positive, that I was having a boy- so we didn’t have any girl names picked out! She remained “the baby” until the next morning.

The rest of the events of that evening are less than pleasant, and not particularly ones I want to remember. My perfectly healthy, crying-like-a-champ baby, was taken from me shortly after I got her because she was “grunting” (diagnosed by a rookie paediatrician) put on an IV for antibiotics it turns out she never needed, poked over 8 times as they tried to get an IV into every single one of her limbs, before they finally put it in her umbilical cord and x-rayed her to make sure it was in right, accidentally pulled it out, put it in and x-rayed her again, and then… she was diagnosed with erratic breathing. Well I guess so! I would be breathing pretty erratically after going through all of that as well! I got to see her again at 3:30am, when I was told not to touch her so that the IV doesn’t come out. The IV she never needed in the first place… But I digress…

Daddy’s hand…

The next morning after going to see her in the nursery, we named her “Lily Elizabeth.” Neither of those names had come up throughout the entire pregnancy. And… we agreed on it right away. Ha! “Lily” after my mom, and “Elizabeth” after Scott’s grandma.

Thankfully, she never had another problem for the next 4 days that she spent in the hospital.

Me, holding her for the first time after the whole ordeal…

It was not how I had envisioned her birth.

My kids were not there. We didn’t get all the pictures I had planned. My kids didn’t get to see her until Saturday, because they were all so sick that we couldn’t bring them into the hospital to visit. But God is good! My new OB was on call the day we came in and she is a brilliant surgeon. My surgery that was expected to have complications- went flawlessly. Scott was able to take the week off of work without any problems. Between my mom and Scott’s mom, we didn’t have to worry about our other kids at all. Lily, was a perfectly healthy little girl in spite of being born early. She has nursed like a little piggy from the get-go. She got to come home to the same house as our last three… Oh yeah, did I mention that we moved 9 days after she was born??? :) The rest of my kids are healthy again, and thankfully didn’t pass anything on to their baby sister. So many things to be thankful for…

Cell phone pic of her ‘going home’ outfit!

Two weeks later, and she has already filled-out that sleeper!

 

So there’s the story.

Now you’ll have to put up with me posting pictures of her constantly!

Her, and my new house… ;)