Ella's Birth Story

August 11, 2010
We got to the hospital a little after 7 am and checked in with the admissions desk.  After getting to our room, the nurses got me all settled in and hooked up to the monitors and got the IV started with pitocin at 8 am.  The contractions pretty much started right away.  Dr. Reue came in around 8:30 am to check my cervix and he went ahead and broke my water since I was almost 4 cm. Surprisingly enough I wasn't nervous or anxious, just excited to get things started.  The few days before I was very nervous but being there knowing that I would be meeting my daughter in the next several hours had me very calm.  The contractions started up pretty quickly and had a very good pattern to them that even the nurse was surprised how text book they were.  My mom and dad brought Colin up to the hospital around 9:00 am and he did very well with seeing me in the hospital bed, I was nervous that he would be upset or very concerned but all he wanted to do was watch his videos.  Jay's parents arrived about 9:30 am from Houston so we had a nice full house.  I asked the nurse when I should get the epidural because I wasn't feeling too badly from the contractions but I feared being too far along to get it.  She said that I could get it whenever I liked and it might be better to go ahead and get it to relax my body since my blood pressure was getting a bit high.  The anesthesiologist came in around 10:45 am and made me pretty comfortable.  The nurse checked my cervix around 11:30 am and said I was now dilated 7 cm and 90% effaced so we were making good progress but the contractions had stalled out due to the epidural so she increased the pitocin but for some reason my blood pressure wasn't coming down as much as they thought.  I think this is the reason I wasn't feeling so well and sort of out of it during the last part of my labor.  I wasn't as chipper as I was during Colin's labor, the epidural was supposed to make you feel like rainbows and unicorns but it wasn't the same.  I called the nurse around 12:30 pm because I was feeling a ton of pressure so she called the doctor.  Dr. Reue came in around 12:45 pm and said I was fully dilated and ready to go.  After all the hussle and bussle to get the room set up, I started pushing and Ella Katherine was born at 1:54 pm with a fantastic set of lungs.  She weighed in at 7 lbs. 1 oz and 19 inches long and the most beautiful thing ever.  She looks so much like her big brother.  They put her up on my chest for a while and she just stared at me and whimpered.  The nurses took her to get her assessments and get cleaned up while Dr. Reue continued to work on me.  The placenta had started to grow into my uterus and he had quite a bit of trouble to get it all removed.  He had to perform a D&C to get it all out.  He said that during a normal delivery, a woman will lose 200-400 cc of blood and I lost 600+.  Shortly after they took the baby away I nearly passed out, I just couldn't hold my eyes open but I vaguely remember people still talking and Dr. Reue working on me.  I think I remained pretty out of it for a few hours after delivery because of the blood loss and my blood pressure tanked to 90/50.  They finally moved me to a room when I started to feel a bit better and was able to have a little bit of food.  The next day was so much better but my blood pressure came back up but the doctor wasn't too concerned.  From the time she was born I told the nurses that I wanted a pediatric cardiologist to check her out because I had a few concerning ultrasounds that saw something on the left side of her heart and felt it was better to get it checked out after she was born to ease my mind.  I saw a perinatologist and he didn't see the same thing the former ultrasound tech saw but I couldn't get it out of my head.  The pediatrician checked her out and said she was perfect and would call the cardiologist to do the echo cardiogram later that afternoon.  Everything from that was just fine, there was nothing wrong with her heart which then instantly eased my mind.  We were released from the hospital on Friday afternoon and so glad to be able to go home.  I was a bit nervous since my blood pressure was still elevated and hoping that nothing else would come from the amount of bleeding I had.  We came home and had a house full of family through the weekend.  I just wasn't feeling so well, my head was killing me and I just tried to take it easy.  Ella was perfect, she slept a lot and nights weren't so bad.  Overall I felt fine from the actual delivery but still felt pretty crappy and kept thinking that something was wrong.  Jay and I took Ella to the pediatrician Monday morning for a newborn check up and on the way home I called my doctor's office, the nurse told me to go ahead and come in to get it all checked out.  We went and picked up Colin from school and headed to the doctor's office.  My doc had just gone over to the hospital for emergency surgery so I saw the on call doctor, Dr. Kish.  She checked my blood pressure which was still high and then saw that I had a lot of protein in my urine which was a bad sign.  She said that I had what was called postpartum pre-eclampsia so I was to go back over to the hospital to be readmitted and put on medication.  It was a good thing we picked up Colin because it was a long afternoon and we wouldn't have made it back up to his school to get him.  We walked over the ramp to the hospital and got checked in.  Never in my mind did I think I would be back in the hospital.  Luckily enough my mom was still around because she had taken my grandma to the doctor so she came back into town to stay with me. That was a God-send because I was terrified of what was going on and feared the worst that I would leave behind a husband and 2 children.  I know, the hormones got the best of me.  Jay called his mom and she gladly offered to come back up in the morning to help him out with the kids.  I think he was pretty panicked about having to take it all on himself and worrying about me.  He was able to focus on the kids while my mom focused on me.  The nurses got me all hooked back up and got the magnesium started.  They warned me that it would burn for about 20 minutes but that didn't do it justice, I felt like my body was on fire, I was so hot.  They said it would make me feel pretty crappy and that was right, I didn't sleep too well the first night because they had to come in every hour to check my vitals.  Dr. Reue came in the next day and checked all the labs from the night before and said that he was going to also start me on a blood pressure medication and if everything looked ok, I might be able to go home on Wednesday.  The hormones continued to get the best of me and all I could think about was my baby girl at home whom I hadn't seen but for only a few hours while I was there.  Jay and I didn't want her up at the hospital too much getting exposed to other germs and she couldn't stay with me because of the medications I was on.  After 36 hours of the magnesium, Dr. Reue said it could be stopped and if everything still looked ok the rest of the day I could go home. He came in Wednesday evening around 7 pm and answered any questions I had left and said I could go home.  My blood pressure levels were still high but he wasn't concerned since I was on the blood pressure medication and it would just take some time for it to start to level out.  I never felt so relieved to be at home and sleep in my own bed.  The days have been getting better and I'm starting to get around better.  I have to go back to see the doctor for a re-check but hopeful that the worst bumps are now behind us. 

What a whirlwind!!  Now for pictures: