Molly’s Birth Story

Molly’s due date was September 11th, 2018, but a made an early arrival two weeks ahead of schedule.  Very similar to my delivery with her sister, Madelyn, I went in for my 38 week OB check up (for Madelyn it was my 39 week check up) and my blood pressure was high and the fluids around the baby had dropped; so my doctor said it was time to have her! Time to have her, meaning I wouldn’t be going home and they would walk me directly from my Doc’s office in the hospital over to Labor and Delivery.

Thankfully, I was pretty calm this time around; but I still got emotional.  I couldn’t believe it was really happening even though I had called Matt on my way to this appointment and told him I was feeling pretty anxious.  I just knew in the back of my mind that there could be a possibility that I was having this baby today or at least this week.  So, I called Matt and told him the news.  I told him to go by the house and get our hospital bags (thankfully they were already packed)!

Everything happened so fast and so slow all at the same time! We got over to Labor and Delivery and they had me get in my gown, hooked me up to the monitors and then we just had to wait! I basically wasn’t dilated at all (less than 1cm), so they started by inserting a pill into my cervix to help soften things up and that was at 11:15am on August 28th.  That has to sit for 4 hours before we can start with the Pitocin.

At 4pm, we started on the Pitocin and they didn’t check my cervix again until 830pm.  I was about 2.5cm and 50% effaced at that point.  My brother had come up to the hospital to visit.  He brought me a grilled cheese to eat since I hadn’t eaten all day.  I probably wasn’t supposed to eat at all, but my nurse gave me the okay like she will turn her head the other way :).  During most of this time it was just a lot of sitting around.  I was on my phone, watching TV, whatever.  I sent Matt to dinner close by with my brother because there was really nothing we could do in the hospital and I knew it could be awhile.

Did I mention that my poor Mom was in France??  She was dying.  We never thought I would be having this baby two weeks early!!  My MIL had the big kids for us so we knew they were taken care of!

At 10:30 pm they check my cervix again and I was still at 2.5cm.  The nurse had been on the phone with my doctor who had gone home at this point.  He told her to check my cervix often and to go ahead and break my water at midnight.  Well, historically, I progress really fast after they break my water, so this is the point that things started moving really fast!!

12:3oam on August 29th they break my water.  I am at 3cm and 50% effaced at this point.  During this time, my nurse has been called into another delivery on my floor.  The L&D wing was a bit crazy that night with a full moon.  I knew my contractions always started getting painful after they broke my water.  So I called for my epidural at 1:30am.

2:30am I get my epidural and I am at 6cm dilated.  I spent the whole hour waiting for my epidural in pretty good pain.  The contractions got strong and close together really quickly.  I knew I should have called for the epidural sooner, but things were just a little crazy at the hospital and I really didn’t have a chance to catch my nurse to order it.

Ya’ll, all I know is that I barely got that epidural in time!  Next thing I know, they check my cervix at around 3am and I am 10cm PLUS!  Like, HEAD is there.  It’s 3am, my doctor lives 2o minutes away, the baby is coming out, what else do we do?????  We just go ahead and have that baby.

She is precious but I do immediately notice that she looks very blue.  When I say she came popping out so fast, I think I pushed twice.  It was fast.  We spent about an hour with her doing skin to skin and trying to breastfeed, but she wasn’t too interested.  She started making some grunting news which we learned was their way of showing signs of struggling to breathe.  It was about 445am or so that they called the NICU team to come look at her.  We learned she had fluid in her lungs and off they took her to the NICU.

This was our second baby to the NICU, so I knew a little more of what to expect but it is always so incredibly hard to watch them take your baby away.  Thankfully, in my heart, I knew she was fine; but it just breaks your heart still.

It was a LONG six nights in the hospital.  Matt and I stayed for the first three of them but then we had to go home and leave her in the NICU.  Basically, she swallowed a lot of amniotic fluid and didn’t spend long enough in the birth canal letting the fluid getting squeezed out of her.  Apparently this is a pretty common thing.  Once they take that first breath of air out of the womb, the fluid quickly spreads throughout their entire body and all in their lungs and then makes it difficult for them to breath.

So they typically spend 3 to 7 days in the NICU while their body eventually absorbs all that extra fluid and they can start breathing on their own.  It’s so hard seeing them connected to all these extra machines and tubes and makes holding them so much harder.  She didn’t eat on her own until around day four which meant she was fed through a feeding tube the first 3 or 4 days of her life.  Thankfully, she took to a bottle perfectly and then to my breast without any problems.

We are so thankful for the NICU team at Sacred Heart.  It seemed like the longest 6 days of our life there; but as many of you told us, it seems like ages ago now and it’s only been two months.  All my readers and followers were so sweet and encouraging during this emotional time.  I can’t thank all of you enough.  We are so thankful for Molly’s health and have loved watching her thrive!!

We were sad to not have that seamless delivery experience for our last child.  The one where I get to dress her in all the clothes I had carefully picked out over the last few months and then ones I had picked out for her big brother and sister to wear to meet her.  It was not at all the experience we envisioned, but at the end of the day, we came home with a beautiful and healthy baby and that is all that matters!  We are so grateful.