Every pregnant woman counts down the days. The days until the end of the first trimester when hopefully the morning sickness will subside. The days until the baby is due and will become a part of your family in the outside world. I've been lucky that I have never had to count past the due date because I can imagine it could be frustrating. When Liam was born, I went into labor 2 days before his due date and then he ended up being a c-section and was born on his due date.
Ainsley's birth was a little less dramatic. No contractions. No calling everyone to say the baby is on her way. Very undramatic.
I found out that I was pregnant on July 1st. I was about 4 weeks along at the time. We had been trying for a few months and I thought there was a chance I could be pregnant but figured this test would be negative like previous ones had been. Good friends of ours, Billy and Kelly, were getting married the next day and I wanted to take the test so I knew if I could drink at the rehearsal dinner and wedding. Sean was getting ready for work and I didn't even tell him I was taking a test. I walked away from the test and came back expecting the Not Pregnant to be showing. Instead it said Pregnant!
I instantly was trying to figure out a creative way to tell Sean but since he was about to go to work and we would be busy with the wedding festivities (and I knew there was no way I couldn't tell him for the whole weekend), I simply decided to hand him the test. He was as excited as I was but it was a hard secret to keep all weekend with all the happy things going on but it wasn't our weekend and I knew we would try and keep it a secret for as long as we could.
With Liam, I felt nauseous for about the first 14 weeks or so, mostly all throughout the day. With this pregnancy I would randomly feel nauseous throughout the day but it usually passed quickly. Smells (especially the dirty diapers of the kids I was watching, but not Liam's) often triggered my gag reflex and I threw up more times than I care to remember. That lasted throughout the whole pregnancy and especially at the end I was feeling randomly nauseous again.
I mostly enjoyed being pregnant but I am not one of those people who will gush about how fantastic they felt or say it was awful the whole time. I started sleeping on my sides earlier this time thinking that would help me get used to it (I'm a stomach sleeper) but that backfired when I was tired of sleeping on my hips early on but could no longer sleep on my back.
The time seemed to pass very slowly and it seemed like March would never be here. The due date they gave us was March 9. I started counting down the days. Early on. the doctors told me that it would probably be best to have a repeat c-section since Liam was so big and babies are generally bigger on second pregnancies. They said if the baby was measuring small we could try to do a vbac but it wasn't seeming likely after Liam. A few days after I took my glucose test, I got a call from the doctor and I thought they were going to tell me I needed to take the 3 hour test but instead they said I passed the glucose test and they scheduled the c-section for March 6th, just 3 days before the due date.
March finally arrived and we were ready to meet our new baby! I think if I had started to feel contractions, I would have felt anxious because in my mind, the baby was coming March 6th and not before that. I actually didn't finish packing my bag until the night before we came to the hospital. The night before, I decided I should go to bed a little late thinking I could get a solid 5 hours of sleep or so before we needed to get ready to go. That didn't work so well when I found I could not fall asleep! I maybe slept for an hour or so during that time. Needless to say, I was tired when it was time to get going but also ready to go because I was so excited to meet our new baby!
On March 6th at 4:35 a.m., Sean and I left the house (as quietly as we could since my parents, sisters, and Liam were still sleeping). We discussed along the way how this felt so different from coming to the hospital to have Liam. We got to the nurses station and they asked us all the standard questions to finish the check in. We waited for a little while in the waiting room and then they took us to an area to start monitoring the baby. They put two belts on me to monitor the baby and my heart rates and prepped me for surgery. Sean tried to nap in a chair and I tried to rest a bit too but there were too many thoughts in my head and other things going on around us that kept me from being able to sleep. I was supposed to go into the operating room at 7 to start the epidural and surgery to then start at 7:30 but the doctor wasn't there so that delayed us a little bit. We waited and waited (what seemed like forever but was really only an extra 30 minutes or so). They took me into the operating room and left Sean with some scrubs to put on and told him they would come get him when they were ready.
Once in the (very, very bright) operating room, they got me on the operating table and then had me sit up for the epidural. The epidural this time was very different. They couldn't quite get it places correctly this time so I think they stuck me at least three times. I am so thankful for the very calm nurse who helped me hold it together. It hurt (and I wasn't expecting it to because the epidural with Liam did not). They finally got me situated. They brought Sean in and he looked nervous again but not so green in the face like he had last time.
Finally they started the surgery! Sean and I were able to talk and joke a bit and he even had me laughing while we were waiting. I didn't feel nervous this and didn't get shaky like I did the first time around. I do remember feeling very cold. Sean took a few pictures and finally the moment had arrived for them to pull the baby out. They told Sean to be ready to tell me what we had. I heard a cry and then he stood up and said, "You got your girl". We both cried tears of joy that she was a healthy little girl. (Since we already had a boy, I was hoping for a girl but didn't want to convince myself that she might be a girl just in case).
They held her over the curtain for me to see and then got her wrapped up so Sean could hold her. She had apgar scores of 8 and 9 which are great! At some point they weighed her and she came in at 9 pounds 13 ounces, just one ounce shy of Liam. Sean got to hold her for awhile while they stitched me back up and then after the moved me to the bed, I held her on the way to recovery.
We had two girl names picked out with one being our favorite. I asked what we were going to name her and Sean said you pick. We talked it over for a few minutes and decided to go with our favorite, Ainsley Kay. Ainsley was a name we had heard on the West Wing a long time ago and liked very much. Kay is my Aunt Melody's middle name. It was very fitting when I talked to her later and she said the only Ainsley she had ever heard of was on the West Wing!
We wanted Liam to be the first to know the news and he was not allowed in recovery so everyone else had to wait. She was born at 8:19 am and we had to spend at least 2 hours in recovery. Our friend Melanie was here to take pictures so she came back to recovery and started snapping away. She got some really great pictures (check them out on the blog at http://www.cincinnatibirthphotography.com/). While in recovery, I was able to have some skin to skin time with Ainsley and start to nurse her as well. We ended up being there longer than we thought because we were waiting for our post partum room to be ready.
Apparently, there were lots and lots of babies born this week and most of the rooms are full and some are even double occupied. We were very fortunate because Sean knows someone who works with TriHealth and we were able to get the suite at the end of the hall (which we had with Liam too for the same reason). That made it worth the wait for sure! At this point, I am sure that our families were very anxious to hear the news but they all seemed to be okay with us telling Liam first.
Almost as soon as I was in the room, Sean went to get Liam so he could come meet his baby sister. Sean carried him into the room and then picked up Ainsley and said this is your baby sister. Liam said, "Hi, baby!" and then ran around the room to jump in a chair. We got a few pictures and then Liam, Sean, and Melanie went down the hall to tell everyone the news and capture some pictures. Sean said he told Liam about halfway down the hall to tell them that he had a baby sister. They got to everyone and Sean told Liam to tell what he had and he said, "Baby brother." Sean quickly said that it was a bay sister and then our entourage came down the hall to meet Ainsley.
No comments:
Post a Comment