Baby Claire - now with a birth story!

We are home from the hospital. Her cardiologist says she is great. Her sisters love her. DH and I think she is the most beautiful baby. More info to be posted.

http://www.siouxvalley.org/ClassLibr...ParentId=14206

Claire's Birth Story

At our last prenatal appoint on Tuesday June 7 we scheduled an induction for Friday at 9am with hopes that maybe I would go into labor on my own before then. My due date had passed just on Monday. Instead, on Thursday night we got a call from Sioux Valley's Labor and Delivery Floor that they were full and would not be able to do the induction that morning. They would give us a call about 9 to tell us an update. So I called my mom so she could wait and not come until we needed her. Around 10 L&D said they would call us back around noon. Around 1:30pm they said to come at 3pm!! Here we go! We arrived at admissions at 3pm and then they hooked me up to the monitor at 4. Dr. Carrie Carlson came at 4:30 to check my cervix and said I had changed. I was now 3 ½ instead of 2 ½ as I had been on Tuesday. That was encouraging, but baby's head was too high to just break my waters. Instead they gave my cytotec and monitored me for an hour. Then we walked for another hour and monitored for an hour. Then repeated that again. That did get the contractions started, but when we checked again I was still about the same with the head fairly high. Then we walked for another hour. Dr. Carlson came about 10:45 pm and said that the head was more applied so she broke my bag of waters. That certainly made the contractions stronger and more intense. She also applied a scalp electrode to help make sure we were monitoring baby and not my heart rate. The baby liked to have a heart rate in the 110's and occasionally dip a bit lower. You could also here the skipped beats in there as well, but since talking to the perinatologist we knew that these were OK to have. I dealt with the intensity for a while, but did get some stadol at 11:20pm. It did get repeated at 12:30pm. The stadol did slow the contractions down some, but I was able to doze off in between which was a great way to store some energy up. So here it was after midnight and we had missed my dad's birthday, but we sure came close. Around 1 am was about 6 cm. I tried to go to the bathroom just to have a change in position. Prior to that I could feel a lot of intensity in my low back and the baby's head was transverse. Sylvia, my nurse, was wonderful in giving counter pressure in my back and reminding me to breathe through the contraction. Jeff was incredible as he massaged my neck, held my hands, and talked me through each contraction. He was such a wonderful support. Sylvia ran a bath and I sat in the tub through some contractions. The jets did help distract me some. Earlier this evening, Jeff had asked Sylvia how she would know I was ready to push. She said I would start to sing opera. Jeff told me afterwards I did that as I was leaving the tub so he knew we were getting close. I was a rim at this point and tired to listen to my body as to whether or not I should push. Dr. Carlson came and emptied my bladder while the rest of the crew brought in the warmer. I started to push and that's when they could see this baby had hair. Really? It took me a couple of pushes to get the hang of it again and once I got into the push it really did feel better to push as it got rid of the intense pain up front. We worked on getting the baby around the pubic bone, but the heart tones would drop from the 110's to the 90's and occasionally into the 80's. I was getting nervous and I just wanted the baby out. Dr. Carlson got the vacuum out and attempted to assist me, but then the heart tones were up in the 120's and she said it was OK to continue pushing. About that time the baby came around the pubic bone. Dr. Carlson and Sylvia kept encouraging my pushing efforts.

One of the most incredible moments of the delivery was looking at Jeff at this moment. He was watching all of this with his eyes wide open in amazement. He was so excited in the expectation of this new baby that was about to be born. Then the baby's head was finally out. Dr. Carlson announced "It's a Girl!" We made her check again to be sure. Three girls! Three girls! Three girls! After so many people had been predicting a boy, Jeff and I were right with our initial instincts! Jeff cut the cord and then off she went to the warmer as she was a little pale. I could tell she looked bigger than her sisters and she was 8 pounds 3 ounces which was the weight I had told Jeff when we started the induction that she would be! APGARS were 8 and 9. Cord pH was 7.25. Very healthy looking placenta. She looks like her sisters except for all that hair! It's dark too! I got to hold her for a while and then she and Jeff went upstairs to the nursery so she could be monitored because of her paleness, her arrhythmia, her low fetal heart tones, and the murmur that Dr. Carlson could now hear. They brought her down to be fed which she did really well at. Then she went back up to the nursery for her bath. She was evaluated by the pediatric cardiologist who said that her EKG was normal and that he was hearing fewer irregular beats. He still wanted an echo which would be done that afternoon. It should very few PAC's that was the cause of her irregular heart rate which was reassuring because most newborns with that completely and quickly outgrow it just as she was doing. There was a slight redundancy in her atrial walls which was the probably the source and it was very mild. The mumur, as he suspected, was a small patent ductus arteriosis. This is a hole in the heart that is supposed to be there while the baby is in utero. Most of them close in the first few days. Everything else was completely normal which was a relief. Dr. Waltz recommended seeing her back at 3 months to repeat the echo to prove that it had resolved.
That morning brought all of the visitors. Maddie was very excited to come to the hospital so see the baby. She insisted to Grandma that she was going up there to see her baby brother, but once there she was very happy with her baby sister. She did ask when would she be able to take a baby brother home. That made my mom and me laugh so hard because when I saw my little sister for the first time I had asked my mom "Next time could we get one with a blue blanket?" I'm still waiting. Ellysia was just happy to see her mom and dad.

Michelle