Friday, July 9, 2010

Day 8: July 9th, 2010

Paige’s birth story… part 1


I know, I know. I’m being obnoxious and dividing my birth story into multiple sections. But A.) I don’t know how much longer Paige is going to be napping and B.) there were some complications which led into my induction that I want to cover.

Paige had been a very quiet baby on the inside. I didn’t feel her kick until about 22 weeks despite her being in “prime location” for feeling kicks, according to my ultrasound tech. Around 33 weeks I noticed Paige wasn’t kicking very much at all – she was barely passing her kick count test. I mentioned it to my OB who said it was no big deal, just keep up with it and if she drops a lot then call.

At about 35 weeks, there was one day where I only felt her kick twice. And that was after I tried everything – juice, water, laying down, walking around, poking at my belly, laying on my side, etc. I called the OB on call and she advised me to go in to the hospital. Of course, it was on the day of the worst snow storm of the year and it took us an hour to drive to a hospital 15 minutes away… sigh. Anyways! I was on the monitor for several hours and she still didn’t move. I had a BPP (biophysical profile) and the ultrasound tech really had to grind into my stomach to get Paige moving. They gave me a few IVs, juice, had me change positions a lot, etc but she was just being lazy in there. I was also having some pretty heavy contractions on the monitor so they gave me meds to try to stop me from going into preterm labor. Eventually I got released since I had an OB appointment the next day anyways. They told me to make sure I got an NST (nonstress test) done the next Friday.

At my appointment, I was seeing one of the nurses since my OB was out of town. At the end of the appointment, she was like “well why don’t we just have you do the NST now so you don’t need to come back on Friday?”. Little did we know…

I got all hooked up and the right away the nurse was really concerned about Paige’s lack of movement. Apparently they are supposed to have 2 periods of raised heartrate for more than 20 seconds in a 20 minute period or something. Paige never had any. This could indicate a lack of oxygen and possibly cause brain damage so they sent me back to the hospital for more monitoring.

Long story short (haha right?), I ended up getting monitored 2-3 times a week until 39 weeks on top of getting weekly BPP ultrasounds to make sure she was okay in there. At my last BPP before my due date, I was excited to see Paige on screen because she woke up and moved around a little during the ultrasound. Towards the end of my pregnancy, it was rare to feel her move much at all. The ultrasound tech didn’t indicate any problems, just told us the usual, “please have a seat in the waiting room while I have our doctor verify that I got all the information we need”. Usually after sitting there for 5 minutes we are told everything’s fine and we can leave, but this time we started to get nervous after sitting there for 30 minutes with no response. About an hour after my BPP, the tech comes back and says “I have your on-call OB on the phone and she wants to talk to you”.

At this point I’m freaking out. My OB is out of town so I talk to one of the other OBs in her practice. She tells me that my baby failed the movement portion of the BPP and we need to get in to the hospital right away for an induction. She says to stop by my house and take care of my pets, make whatever phone calls I need, and pack my hospital bag. During the conversation my husband kept making “what’s going on?” faces at me but all I could do was say “tonight”.

And of course, the next most logical thing came to my head. I told him “omg, the dogs were walking all over Paige’s room with muddy paws today! I need to go home and mop the floor!”. He started cracking up and but since I was in labor (well, kinda!) I got my way. We checked into the hospital that night and since I was 2-3 cm dilated and 60% effaced and having some pretty serious contractions, I got to skip the 12 hour cervadil procedure! Yay!

Paige’s emergency c-section portion of the birth story coming later…

Here she is, vintage Paige! These were taken with my P&S, I didn't get my DSLR until she was 2 months old.


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