Claire's Birth Story: PART 1

Did you notice that Claire was born a day earlier than scheduled?  Slight change in plans occurred in my 38^th week.  My blood pressure started to creep up and at my last doctor visit it was high and given my history of preclampsia with my previous pregnancy, my doctor decided it wasn’t worth waiting even a day later so she bumped me up to a Thursday delivery.  No big deal, it was a day earlier than expected and ultimately given my blood pressure continued to increase after Claire’s birth, it definitely was a wise call by my doctor.

 

My doctor wasn’t scheduled to perform surgery that Thursday and I think she knew how unnerving that was for me to have a doctor I wasn’t familiar with so she accommodated her schedule to make herself available for my c-section.  Dr. McEntaffer has been an amazing OB thru both of my pregnancies.  Only downfall to our change was that I would have to wait until noon for surgery, when typically, they are done early in the morning as they don’t want you to eat or drink after midnight, not even water.  It was worth the starvation though to have my preferred doctor do the surgery.
 

I surprisingly slept okay (not great but not bad) the night before, I was allowed to take some Unisom to help me sleep, which always helps.  My mom came down the night before and we decided it would be best to take Annie into daycare, mainly because she naps better there and I didn’t want her grumpy that afternoon when she came to meet Claire.  Sending her off was kinda bittersweet, it was our last moment as a family of 3. 

I felt pretty calm that morning but was antsy to get the surgery behind us.  We decided to deliver at a different hospital this time just so we could be close to the children’s hospital, it only took that one scare during my pregnancy to make me change my delivery to the full service hospital.

We got checked in relatively quickly, settled into our tiny room (the main drawback of delivering at this hospital is the c-section rooms are tiny!) and got my IV going and my vitals were great, my blood pressure was just fine.   At this time, I asked my nurse if everything goes as scheduled, I should be able to have lunch a few hours after, right?  Um no.  Come to find out, no food/drink for a few hours and then mid-afternoon if I wanted to try some ice chips, we could and if that went well, I could have a popsicle for dinner and maybe by 9 pm I could consider some pudding.  And for breakfast the next day I could order solid foods.  WTH?!  Now that was super disappointing to find out!  With Annie being delivered so late, I was too tired to even think about food and fell asleep a few hours after she arrived so I guess I didn’t realize the whole no eating part would be long.  Ugh!   

Just waiting around for the doctor

My doctor was about 30 minutes behind schedule, no big deal, especially after finding out I wouldn’t be eating after all.  Once my doctor arrived, things happened fast.  I walked back to surgery and got up on the table, anesthesiologist put my spinal block in, which really didn’t hurt, no different than what I felt when I received an epidural for my previous pregnancy.  Like a bee sting.  Laid down and they pulled the curtain up and put my catheter in.  I’m really not sure when they started cutting but as promised, baby Claire was born very quickly, doctor had told me it would generally be 5 minutes after the start and it seemed to be the case.  It was hard for me to see her from where I was but they cleaned her up and did whatever they all do when babies are born.  I had asked to try skin to skin right after birth.  My anesthesiologist was not fond of the idea to allow this during surgery but I got the okay to do so.  It honestly was super awkward because the curtain was so high up on me that she was practically laying across my neck so after about a minute I asked that they take her and let Aaron hold her.  Surgery was supposed to last an hour, it felt quick and long all at the same time. 

 

7 lbs 7.4 oz -- a few ounces bigger than Annie!

Skin to skin during surgery 

At one point my doctor said things are moving along but my uterus was being ‘lazy’ for them.   I still have no idea what that meant exactly but at the time all I could think that must be code for complication so I started to panic a little but from what I understand, they put some medication on it and my uterus did whatever it was supposed to do but it made me feel off and I told my anesthesiologist that I was feeling faint and he said oh that’s just the normal reaction for the med they gave your uterus so that is how I know they had to do something that was a bit atypical.  I wanted to say take the damn thing out if it’s being ‘lazy’, I don’t need it anymore anyways!

When surgery was over, it was a huge sigh of relief for me.  I got wheeled back to my room and a lot of nurses were in and out and had our first feeding.  It was surreal how procedural it was, when I walked back to surgery I was like holy cow, we are going to be back in this room within an hour with a new baby, crazy! 

This delivery was way different than Annie’s.  It’s hard to even compare the two and I’m still getting comfortable with the admission that Annie’s birth may have been the worst day of my life (I hate that it had to be that way).  But I try not to blame myself for it because they had me so drugged up, I hadn’t had any food in 50 hours, was totally exhausted, it was late in the day when she arrived and I remember barley even being able to keep my eyes open the first time I held her, it felt awful to have that be my first moment with my precious newborn to be that way so of course her birth wasn’t as joyous for me with all those factors.  This time, my hunger was manageable, minimal drugs, I wasn’t too tired and I was mentally cognizant the first time I held her.  I was actually able to hold Claire and feel a lot more aware of the moment than I could with Annie’s birth, exactly how a Mother imagines meeting their new baby, I felt like what I was robbed of before, I got to experience this time around.  Much, much better experience overall!  

More blogging details to come… Part 2: After birth in the hospital (Annie meets Claire, yay!).  Part 3: The first week at home.