The slightly longwinded Lillianna's Story

     I feel I need to preface this story a little bit. I am a mother of now four children two boys and two girls. My eldest (who is living with his GP) is going to be eight in November and my youngest (Lillianna) is just over a week old. My original due date as given to me by my doctor was August 15th, 2011. Later my doctor told me that he had made a mistake and my actual date was somewhere between Aug 30th and Sept 9th.  I have had epidurals for all of my births.

  August 22 started like any other Monday morning for me, my alarm went off at 4:30 AM so that I could start waking up my husband for work as well as get him clothing and make his lunch for the day. I had been having Braxton-Hicks contractions since the Wednesday before and had been incredibly uncomfortable for the last two or three nights while trying to sleep. My middle two children woke up at about 5 for a diaper change and a sippy/bottle and then had gone back to sleep. At about the same time, my husband  decided that he needed to take me to the hospital that morning. Granted I had been having pains that started on the right side of my back and radiated to my stomach but, they weren't anymore painful than the Braxton-Hicks. So at about 5:15 we left for the hospital, leaving our roommate to watch the kids.

     We got to the hospital and checked in in the ER and proceeded to L&D, me in a wheelchair as per hospital policy. When we got to L&D, they put me in an exam room and a nurse came in to check me and hook me up to the heart monitor. Upon checking me, she told me that she thought that I was at 2-3 cm but she wasn't sure because my cervix sits high and her fingers were too short. She told me that there was going to be a nurse in with longer fingers a little later so they would monitor me for about an hour and send her in.  Well the hour passed with intermittent contractions (not really painful or anything). I looked at my husband and told him that we should've stayed home and he should've gone into work as usual because I wasn't in labor yet. The nurse with the long fingers came into the room and looked at the paper on the heart monitor and told me that if I hadn't dilated anymore that we could go home. The next thing I knew is that she checked and looked at the other nurse and asked her to check as well. Then they both looked at me and told me that they had to call the Dr. About 5 minutes later, they both came back in and told me that I was being admitted because I was actually 5-6 cm dilated. I promptly broke down into tears because it wasn't what we were expecting. We hadn't brought anything with us and my husband didn't want to leave for fear of missing the birth of the baby (none of our friends have cars). The nurses followed me into a delivery room to start an IV drip just in case. They couldn't find a good vein on the back of my hand so they ended up putting the IV in my wrist. They then called the anathesiologist to give me my epidural. The anathesiologist came in and told me to curl into a sitting ball so he could give it to me. He found the spot where all my previous epidurals had been placed and proceeded to insert the needle. This was the most painful epidural I had ever gotten because of calcified deposits from my other three previous epidurals. I was feeling sharp stabbing pains around my left kidney the entire time he was inserting the needle and the line for the drugs. Then the first line that he had inserted wouldn't flush so he had to start over again. When he was finally done, I was starting to get the butterfly feeling in my stomach that the epidurals give me right before I go completely numb from the breasts down. The nurse came back with a bunch of paperwork for me to sign and to start an IV antibiotic because my strep B results hadn't come back yet. I sat and waited completely numb, asking my husband to move my legs for me every once in a while because I sure couldn't. Then I discovered that I couldn't take a deep breath, my chest muscles felt paralyzed and my husband called the nurses in. The nurses told me that as long as my pulse-ox stayed above 90% I was fine and not to worry.

  From that point on I dozed waiting for the arrival of the doctor at 9 AM. When he got there, he checked me and I was at a 7 and apparently had been there for a while because they started the pitocen drip after he popped my water. I went back to sleep for a little bit while I was waiting for the pitocen to work. The next thing that brought me back was the tingling in my legs as the epidural wore off. The contractions were so intense it wasn't funny and I was starting the feel the need to push. My husband called the nurses in again so I could tell them what was going on. They told me that they had to page the Dr. because he had gone into the office to see his morning patients and that I had to breathe through the contractions until he got there. While I was waiting, the urge to push was almost too strong to ignore but I kept breathing through them. When the doc finally got there, he told me to push so I did, three times during that first contraction and one big one with two small ones during the next contraction and my beautiful Lillianna was born at 1:03 PM. My husband cut the cord and the cord apparently wasn't clamped all the way because it sprayed the doctor. Lillianna weighs 9 pounds 11 ounces and is 21 inches long. She was blue, and didn't start breathing on her own right away and they had to rub and slap at her for a little while to get her to breathe. That first cry was the best thing I have ever heard in my life. The doctor told me she was a nice size for s 3 week early baby. I then delivered my placenta but it didn't come out in one piece so he had to go in after it and when he finally got it all out he told me that that was the most blood he had seen in a delivery. When that was done, he told me  that I hadn't torn or anything and I should be fine. He left and the baby was taken to the nursery for her evaluation and glucose test. The nurses came back in to tell me that her glucose was low so they were going to give her some formula. I sat and waited for almost two hours after that no word from the nursery or any L&D nurses coming in. Finally when I was about to call them myself one came in and asked if I had to pee and if I peed that they would take out my IV and move me to a room. Well I did what I had to do and got put in my room.

 About an hour after that, the nurses came in and asked me if I planned on BFing Lilli and told them I was. They told me that her glucose wasn't holding steady so that after BFing I would have to supplement with formula. 

 The next morning, Lilli's glucose still wasn't holding and everyone was asking me if I was diabetic (I wasn't). That day, she spent most of the day in my room with glucose checks done after every feeding to see if it would hold steady. That night the nurses took her so I could get some sleep and wonderfully, the next morning her glucose was normal and not dropping an hour after eating. At that point in time they also told me that they had to start her on antibiotics because of the group B strep results not being back and that we had to wait for a 48 hour "clean" culture before she could go home. 

Two days later, I was anxiously awaiting the results of her 48 hour culture and was told that I could be released. There was no point in me going home in the morning only to have to possibly come back that night to get Lilli, so my husband and I hung out around the hospital and waited. At 8 that night, I got word that she was going to be released and that we could go home. So by 8:30 PM on  Aug 25th 2011, Lillianna and I were able to come home and I could start the challange of caring for three children at once.