last thursday at my doctor appt, my dr told me that baby girl was head down, perfect position and she thought she would see me over the weekend to deliver. the weekend came and went and i stayed pregnant. given how late jakey came, i wasnt too concerned. then, at my appt this week on thursday, the dr checked me and felt something weird. she said she thought it was her hand above her head but ran to get the sono machine to make sure. she put the wand on my belly and got a strange expression on her face. "youre never going to believe this. she flipped this week and now she is breech." she went on to explain how this basically never happens, and marveled that i didnt feel her flipping. baby must have done it while i was asleep, or just with all the torso space i have she just wasnt too cramped to flip at will.
basically our option of "wait until labor and water breaking before going to the hospital" became "lets schedule an external version this afternoon because if your water breaks you will have to have a c-section." she told me there was about a 70% chance of the version being successful, and if it was, we would induce immediately so she didnt flip back to breech again.
i went home and called my mom and jeremy to let them know we were having a baby that afternoon, cleaned the house, packed all the last minute stuff in the hospital bag and did some down dog stretching to try and convince her to flip back around.
we checked into the hospital at 2pm. at 230ish, they checked me and did another sonogram. sure enough, our little gymnast had flipped back around and was head down again, although she had one hand stretched above her head and wasnt in total birthing position. thankfully, this took the idea of an emergency c-section off the table, so we started the pitocin and settled in to wait on her arrival.
just like with jacob, the first few hours of contractions went from barely noticeable to slightly uncomfortable. unlike with him, after they broke my water and increased the dosage numerous times, i didnt keep dilating and she didnt move down the canal to come out. after six hours of labor and one hour of very intense labor, we decided on an epidural. i was compleye exhausted already since jacob had woken us up around 530 that morning and i never really fell back to sleep. the pain was pretty bad and i wasnt sure how much longer i could do it, since i had been stuck at a 7 for almost 2 hours. her hadn was still above her head and she hadnt moved down either. after getting the medicine going, but before it really kicked in, things started happening very quickly. i went from 7 to pushing in about 5 minutes. after maybe five or so minutes of pushing, the doctor called the nicu drs and told them to come quick. she gave me an epiisiotmy and had me keep pushing, even between contractions, because baby's heart rate dropped dramatically and she wasnt moving. finally, after using the suction thing and several more minutes of pushing, she came out. she was a hideous color of purple black and didnt cry at all.
the nicu drs took her to the heat table and gave her oxygen and got her breathing and moving. i was freaking out and jeremy kept reassuring me that she was fine, he could see her moving on the table and to relax while they sewed me up and cleaned everything. finally, they got her to the point where we could have our hour of skin to skin time. it was then that jeremy confessed that he really had thought she might have been gone when she came out and was totally lying to me to help me keep it together, ive never been happier to be lied to in my life. her apgar improved from 3 to 8 and all was well in our little world. her official stats are: Aliza Fern born at 133am on 10/18. 7 lbs, 5 oz, 19.5 in long. We are calling her zz (or zeezee) and her name is pronounced aleeza. Aliza is hebrew for joyful and fern was jeremy's great gma's name.
we moved upstairs to the postpartum unit and tried to catch up on an entire night's worth of sleep, which is hard to do when nurses and doctors keep coming in to take vitals and check on the baby. sigh. all day friday was a parade of people and phone calls, and a lovely flower arrangement from work. jeremy went out to get himself dinner and came back with jacob, so he could meet his sister.
he thought it was fun to hold her but was very easily distracted. he tried to share his milk with her, and thought it was pretty silly that she drinks special milk from mommy's chest. given his recent obsession with eyeballs, we had to watch to make sure he didnt try to open hers up to check if they were there. he kept asking why she wasnt crying(maybe i overcoached him that sister would probably cry alot?) and wanted toput her in the crib since she was obviously asleep. the kid isnt going to win any babysitting awards, but he does love his sister and i think hes gonna be a good big brother.
