Amelia Marissa Birth Story

Amelia Marissa was born at 2:05PM on August 10^th. She surprised her momma by being a full pound bigger than her brother at 8lbs 13oz and 21 inches long.

Long Version:

On Saturday night I was feeling pretty crampy and baby girl was moving like crazy. I decided to head to bed early, around 9:00, in hopes of getting some relief. I was really frustrated because I was waking up every 45 minutes to pee.  Around 1:20AM I woke up to pee yet again and noticed my back was utterly killing me.  I went to the kitchen and took a Tylenol and went to the bathroom. When I wiped I noticed there was some bright red blood. I was pretty certain I had been loosing my plug since I had been stripped on Wednesday but it was still pretty shocking. I headed up to bed hoping either the backache would go away or would actually turn out to be something.

I laid back down and started watching the clock… the back ache started to subside after about 10 minutes. I tried to shut my eyes when all of sudden I had to pee…. again. So I got up and peed again, more bloody show and suddenly I was hit with another stabbing feeling in my back. I decided I better wake up DH and maybe go to the hospital to get checked. I was still convinced it was probably nothing. We gathered our things and in the course of 30 minutes I was having back aches/contractions ranging from every 3 to every 7 minutes and I had to stop what I was doing in between.

We got to the hospital, got checked and it was determined that we would be admitted. In my mind I was still convinced they were probably going to send us home. We got to the room and the nurse ordered up my epidural. (With DS it took 4 tries over the course of 6 hours to get it to work.) It was while they were placing the epidural that it hit me that we were actually going to have a baby within the next 24 hours.

Throughout the day I would progress some and then stall… they would talk Pitocin and then I they would find that I had progressed again. When I hit 8/9cm (around 10:30AM) they decided to break my water. Almost immediately I began to spike a fever. They kept checking to see if it would come down. When it didn’t they told me that there was a chance baby girl had also gotten the infection so she would have to go to the NICU for the duration of our stay to receive antibiotics. Obviously, that was terrifying to me.  Since I had stalled again they decided to give me some Pitocin to finish me out.  In the meantime, my doctor had 2 other patients go into labor at another hospital 2 miles away. He waited as long as he could, and since I wasn’t progressing, he figured he would have time to go deliver those babies and get back. The nurse also told DH he should go get something to eat within the hospital.

So there I am, sitting in my room, when BAMM, I had the strongest contraction and so much pressure. Luckily my nurse had just came back in. She laughed and called it the perfect storm… no doctor, no husband and I was complete. She told me to get ahold of DH and tell him to get back the room ASAP. Within 10 minutes he was running into the room with a mouth full of food. By this time it was obvious that my doctor wasn’t going to make it back so they called the on-call doctor… guess what? He was busy too. So they called a 3^rd hospital that my OB works with and luckily it was one of my favorite doctors on call. She said she would be there in 20 minutes. I have never experienced a longer 20 minutes in my life as I sat there and had to breathe through all the contractions. She walked in, threw on a gown, and told me to push whenever I was ready. Within 3 pushes she was out. They were able to put her on my chest for a few minutes but she was having a hard time transitioning so they took her to get her cleaned up and some oxygen. Within 12 minutes she was crying, had an IV in, and was ready to go to the NICU.  Since she was stable they felt comfortable to let me hold her for a while. They gave me 20 minutes of skin to skin time before they had to take her.

Amelia spent 2 days in the NICU and I initially was wheeled back and forth to see her and to feed her. Luckily she didn’t get my infection and we were both discharged together.

We are so in love. She is generally such a calm baby and her brother loves to give her kisses on her head and her nose.