Wow! What an exciting day!
As most of you know, I have been very anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby Will. Well today, my wish somewhat unexpectedly came true. As I went to my doctor's appointment this morning at 39 weeks and 1 day pregnant, I was secretly hoping that she would tell me just to walk on over to Labor and Delivery and get ready to have a baby today. For the past 2 days I have had excrutiating pain in my lower back, and I've noticed that Will was not quite as wiggly as normal. In addition, when listening for Will's heartbeat today, my doctor could hear it and determine that the rate was normal, however it was pretty quite and the monitor wouldn't give an official reading where the probe was placed very low on my abnormal (note: foreshadowing!). Given these concerns, at the end of the visit my doctor asked me to go over to Labor and Delivery for monitoring. Based on the monitoring they would then determine if all was fine and I could go home and wait it out, or if there were concerns they would go ahead and induce labor today. There was also a third option: everything could look fine on the monitoring but they could also potentially go ahead and induce labor today if I wanted. This option, of course, was the one that I was hoping for. So, off I go to L&D making many phone calls along the way. Allie was safe and sound at Ms. Dee's house and was set up to spend the night if needed, so no worries there. David arrived at the hospital just as I was finishing registration and they were preparing to take me back to the triage room. When we got to the triage room, the nurse hooked me up to the monitors and asked me several medical history questions and then left saying "the doctor will be in to see you soon". Yeah, right! Two hours later, the OB resident came in rolling her portable ultrasound machine. The first thing that she did was to take a quick look at Baby Will and be sure that all was as they expected with his positioning. I happened to mention that we had not seen him since the 20 weeks ultrasound so I was excited to take a peak at him. The resident commented on how low the baby's head was and she was trying to figure out which way he was facing. She was having a hard time getting her bearings straight, so she decided to take a look over the rest of my abdomen to see if she could get her orientation. Well, guess what!!!!!! Baby Will was not head down, but was instead in a frank breech position meaning that it was his round little booty that was so low in my pelvis and his head was up under my right ribs! Now, this was a complete shock seeing as how my doctor has felt his "head" during my cervix exam the last two weeks.....uhhhh, I guess she was wrong! Of course, he could have recently flipped around and tricked us all right here at the end, but I'm thinking the stinker has been this way all along.
Now, the resident, David, and I are all very surprised. The resident calls the attending and asks him to come in and confirm what she has seen. Of course, he does, and proceeds to tell me that we will be having a C-section this afternoon. I'm thinking, ok, we've got a few hours to make all of our phone calls, get Allie situated and get everyone here to the hospital that wants to be here. But no....the attending goes on to mention that I am apparently now in active labor with contractions that they are seeing on the monitor every 6 minutes and I will likely be having a C-section in the next 30-60 minutes...just as soon as they can draw some labs and get the anesthesiologist in to meet with me. Ok, now I'm in complete shock! No time to adjust to this dramatic change of plans. Fortunately, as I am explaining to the attending how we were really hoping for a few hours notice, the resident checks my cervix and they learn that I am only dilated to 3cm. I haven't progressed as far as they suspected, so we will be able to take an hour or two of time to get the surgery arranged. Whew! Now I have a glimmer of hope that we can "take care of business" before I get wheeled into the OR.
All goes well with making the arrangements that need to be made for the evening. Allie will stay at Dee's house tonight and my mom made it to the hospital about 20 minutes before they wheeled me back to the OR. I must say that delivering a baby via surgery in a sterile operating room while literally having your arms and legs strapped to a table like someone undergoing lethal injection is not my idea of a pleasant experience. It's not that anything went wrong with the surgery, I would just prefer to go through a bit of labor, get my epidural, relax for a few hours and then push the little guy out the way that he was meant to come out! However, once Will arrived and I heard that precious cry, none of the shock and surprise of having a C-section mattered. The tears began to flow and all was right with the world again.
Will arrived at 5:53pm weighing 8 pounds and measuring 19 inches. He has dark brown hair that seems to have a little wave to it just like Allie's hair did. I must say that, because of the C-section, his head is a beautiful round shape as opposed to Allie's alien-looking cone shaped head that resulted from her travel down the birth canal.
So far, Will is doing fine. It's now 4:16am on Wednesday morning and he's sleeping well (along with his Daddy!) while mom suffers from adrenaline exposure and can't sleep. He hasn't decided to breast feed yet although I have been trying every hour. I must say, however, he is a champion pooper!
Sounds like we'll be in the hospital for 3 days, so I'm expecting that we'll get to go home on Friday. Recovery for me will be quite a bit different from my experience after delivery of Allie. From what I've been told so far, I cannot drive for two weeks, cannot lift Allie, and have to greatly limit the stairs that I climb. All of those things will certainly be challenging!
For now, enjoy the couple of pictures and video below. I'm going to try to get some rest and may even try to put the computer away for a couple of days and enjoy this time with my wonderful husband and our precious new baby boy, William David Ledbetter.
Nikki
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