Daniella's Birth Story

LauraBeth1401

Well, here is our birth story.  I'll try to keep it rather short....

Last Saturday my OB sent me to the hospital to get an NST.  It was our third and I only went to the hospital since the office was closed.  The other NST's went fine so I wasn't expecting anything to come of this one.  Well LO's heart rate dropped a few times during my contractions and since I was already 9 days late they decided to induce me.  I had Cervadil put in around 3:30 and contractions definitely started.  I was pretty uncomfortable but tried sleeping.  It was so annoying with the monitors on and trying to get comfortable.  At 11:30 all of the sudden there were like 5 nurses and doctors in my room telling me to switch sides or do this or do that.  Apparently LO's heart rate dropped again and wasn't coming back like they wanted it to. It eventually did recover but in the process they needed to put an internal monitor on which broke my water.  It kicked in my contractions pretty good and we called our doula to come in.  I tried for hours to go naturally but eventually I hit a wall mentally and when the OB checked me around 9am I hadn't really progressed at all and I was just done mentally at that point.  My contractions had stalled and so they wanted to put my on Pitocin.  I'd been awake all night and still had a long way to go so we decided to get the epidural.  It helped me relax and within hours I'd hit 9 centimeters.  No way I could have done that without the epidural, I'm convinced.  I'd hit 10 centimeters but LO was still high up and the OB was with another patient who was in the middle of pushing so I decided to hold off about an hour before I started pushing.  When the pressure was too much I started pushing and at one point they told me to stop and breath through the next few contractions because the OB was with another patient (apparently there were like 4 of us all at the same point at the same time) but I told them I didn't care who delivered the baby, I had to push and couldn't help it.  I pushed for about 30 minutes and out came my Daniella.  She cried right away and was very alert right after she was born.  She scored 8 and then 9 on her Apgar scores.  DH and I both sobbed when she was born and are still in complete awe of her. Our doula took some great pictures right after she was born.

I admit it's been a rough week with the sleep deprivation and my hormones being completely out of wack.  But we are doing better and better every day.  Nursing has been a bit of a challenge but we have a really great lactation consultant.  LO is starting to gain weight which is really good to know as well.  If you want to breastfeed, I highly recommend getting in touch with a good lactation consultant.  Also, if you are even considering doing a natural birth, you MUST get a doula.  Even with the epidural, there is no way we'd have been able to get through labor.  If we are able to have another baby, even though I'll probably get the epidural, I'm still hiring our doula again.

All the needles, money, RE appointments, emotions and time are all completely worth it.  18 months ago we were told we'd never have a baby of our own and yet, here she is.   Good luck to all the mama's to be!