I figured that I would take a little time to write about DD's birth today. When I start to feel uptight about life and where it is going, worrying over things that might never even happen, I like to think on the good things that God has done for me. As you can imagine, this is going to be a long post.

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I was 27 weeks into gestation with DD, when things started getting weird. Of course, I'm not sure that there has ever been a day that wasn't weird with our family, so maybe this was just normal. Anyway, I was always hyper-vigilant when it came to taking care of the little sprite in utero. Because of what had happened with our son, I really did take it to heart when my doctor advised me to go to the hospital whenever something bothered me. If it was something small, then I should go. If I even just felt that something was wrong, without proof, I was to go. So, after a bathroom trip and a tiny amount of spotting, I informed DH that we should go to the hospital. He wasn't worried, and we just shuffled out the door. After all, I had been to the hospital every week. I had already had a threatened miscarriage with DD, and numerous other little issues, all of which left me on bedrest. Going to the hospital was 'old hat'.

I laid there on the bed in triage, bored and wanting to go back home. I wasn't really feeling bad, and I figured that after they looked at me, they would tell me the same thing that they always did. The doctor would want me to go home and stay put, not letting me do anything at all. Check. I've got that covered. However, the doctor walked in with a funny look on his face, and then proceeded to tell me that I was dialated just a little. I was about 2cm dialated, but they wanted to keep me because of my history. Oy.

Let me tell you, that was only the beginning. The first thing that the staff did was to give me a steroid shot, and those things burn! *laughs* I'm such a wimp. Then I was hooked up on monitors. By the next day, they were giving me magnesium for a labor that had just begun. I really don't like magnesium very much. It makes you feel feverish and like you have the flu. You know that it is working when you are sweaty and miserable. But, it did stop my labor for a while. Because I was a more steady resident than the other ladies, I was given a room by myself, right next to the nurses station. By the end of the week, nurses were bringing me magazines and just stopping in to talk, so I wouldn't be so bored. How sweet is that? :o )  In the meantime, I was worrying over the baby, and worrying over the fact that my parents were in Florida. I wasn't sure if they could get home in time if the little one became too anxious to be born.

By the end of the week, my doctor and the hospital decided that it would be best for me to be transfered to a nearby hospital that has the best N.I.C.U. in the area. So, I got to take an ambulance ride. Hey, that was kind of fun, and it felt like a real sight-seeing trip after the confinement that I'd been experiencing. The unfortunate things is that the trip seemed to aggrivate the delicate balance of things, and back I went on the magnesium. From that point on, I'm not really sure if there was a time when they were dosing me with that stuff.

Now, one good thing about getting so much doctor care is that I had ultrasounds all the time. It was so nice to be able to see my baby. We also had everyone just dying to tell us the gender of our baby, so we let them. It was good for the bonding experience, to be able to come up with a name before DD was born. I had secretly known that she was a girl, but I didn't want to tell anyone for fear that I'd be wrong and everyone would tease me. *laughs* Another good thing about having ultrasounds all the time was that my new doctor made a point to tell me that it looked like the baby was going to have a healthy brain. I know, it isn't something that all mothers stress about, but I had been told weeks before that DD had a choroid plexus cyst inside her noodle. Does it matter if the things are benign or not? Just knowing that my baby had a cyst in her brain bothered me.

We were now at 28 weeks, and it looked as though the magnesium was finally working pretty well. Having some success, the nurse left a catheter in my vein, but unhooked the rest of my IV. I was so happy. They were talking about letting me go home, and even let me get up to use the bathroom. Yay! Oh........or at least it was a good time until the doc came to check me right before discharging me. Apparently I was dialated to 4cm, with a bulging bag of waters. Great. In goes the IV, and they put me in my bed, with my feet elevated way over my noggin. I wish that they had foot straps to keep you from sliding down the bed when they did that.

It was only a couple more days later when things got hairy. No amount of magnesium seemed to work, though they did manage to OD me. It's scary when you just stop breathing. Woo! Thankfully things didn't get bad, but they did end up taking me off of the stuff because my belly contractions stopped. THEY thought that we were doing better, but it is because they weren't listening to me. In hindsight, I could recognize how my body was actually laboring when I had problems with my son. I knew that things weren't over because I was cramping, but they didn't believe me because a monitor couldn't pick it up. On the morning that DD was born, I called my nurse numerous times, and no one would get my doctor. It wasn't until I was thrashing around on my bed and sobbing into my pillow that the lady in the next bed called HER nurse and got mean with them about getting someone in to see me. My nurse came in and barely touched me before running out of the room. They had me in the O.R. within five minutes.

How ridiculous is it for someone to tell a laboring woman not to push? Oh goodness, I tried. My body was on auto-pilot though, and didn't want to listen to me. I think that was why I was in so much pain, because I was trying my best to fight my own body. Even though I hate needles, the one that they put in my back wasn't too bad. *laughs* The whole world seemed to become a little more bearable after that, even though I couldn't feel my own legs. I was still very uncomfortable about the idea that just over that partition, doctors had my stuff all apart. There is something very disturbing about being awake while someone roots around on my inside. Still, I was so glad to be awake to hear that soft little cry. The nurses wheeled an incubator over for a moment so I could see my tiny little baby, and then they hurried off. I don't remember much after that, because I fell asleep. I thought that you were supposed to be awake for all of that, but I sure wasn't. I woke up in the recovery room, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Why didn't anyone tell me that having the C-Secion would make me shake like I was having a seizure, and I wouldn't be able to control it? That would have been good to know, just so I wouldn't have worried.

After I was awake, the recovery nurse wheeled me into the N.I.C.U. on the way to my new room. I remember the ceiling, decorated in clouds. I still wonder if the babies really like it, having a sky above them while they lay there. I wasn't able to stay for more than a moment, but I did get to see my tiny little girl while she lay in a tiny hospital crib. She was under a heat lamp, and it looked as though she had every tube and cord imagineable hooked up to her. DD was on a ventilator for a while, just so she wouldn't have to try so hard to breathe. I couldn't believe how red she was. It almost looked like she was burned, but I would stare at her tiny chest and watch it go up and down, and I felt better.

I didn't get to see DD much during the next four days, while my belly healed. Unfortunately, I had a spinal leak, and it gave me awful headaches. I would try so hard to walk down to the N.I.C.U. , only to be pushed back in a wheel chair because my head was going to fall off. So, I had blood taken from my arm, and injected into my back, and that made everything better. It was time for me to go home, but it felt really wrong to leave my baby at the hospital. We came back every day though.

( To be continued....)