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November 2014 Moms
Kristil2014
member
Kaitlyn's birth story - it's a long one
Kristil2014
member
I have debated for the last week or so on whether or not to share my story. Kaitlyn's delivery was not what I had hoped for or what I was planning in the least. It couldn't have gone any more sideways.
I feel truly blessed to have my perfect 6lbs 1 oz bundle of joy!
Here is our story:
It started at 38 weeks when I was diagnosed with pregnancy induced hypertension. My bp was higher than what my MW's like to deal with so the referred me to an OB. He put me on some bp meds and wanted to continue to monitor me. He allowed me to continue on with my birth plan, (med free at the birth center) until my health or the baby's health was effected.
I continued seeing the OB and my MW for the duration of my pregnancy. The OB gave me a timeline of needing to deliver the baby before 41 weeks. At 41 weeks I would be facing induction. He didn't want me to go any longer than that with my high bp. After many failed membrane sweeps, I ended up back in the OB's office at 40+5 talking about our induction plan.
My husband and I walked over to the hospital from the OB's office for some cervadil. Once I walked into the hospital I felt pretty defeated. My body just didn't want to go into labour on it's own. My plan was to get the cervadil, get monitored and go home hoping that it would start my labour and allow me to go to the birth center as planned. Once I was strapped to the monitors and stuck in that awful hospital bed my bp went through the roof! It was stupidly high. And do you think the nurses would leave me alone, I swear they checked it every 5 mins, making it go higher and higher. My emotions were all over the place making my bp rise higher and higher. They gave me meds to artificially lower it, but that made me even worse. The headache I got from my bp being all over the place was intense.
While being monitored they noticed that my baby's accelerations and decellerations were not where they like them to be and wanted me to stay. I explained to them that the movements I was feeling were the same movements that I was feeling my whole pregnancy and I demanded to go home cause there was no way in hell I was staying strapped to that awful bed until I went into labour. They released me and told me to come back the next morning or sooner if my bp continued to rise. We went home and I slept gloriously in my own bed.
We got back to the hospital for 7:30am the next morning. We ate a muffin and I had some orange juice. They checked me to see if I had made any progress on the cervadil and nothing had happened in 17 hrs. They decided to start a second dose of the cervadil. Meanwhile my OB came over to check out the monitoring graphs and he noticed that the accelerations and decellerations were still not where he wanted them to be, so he sent me for an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that baby had lost a bit if weight from the ultrasound I had the week prior. (they never said how much weight) The week prior has estimated her weight to be about 6.7 or so.
With the news of her losing weight the OB gave me 2 options: do a stress test with pitocin to see if baby could withstand a tough labour. (A labour where I confined to monitors, no water birth and not being the labour I had wanted.) or have a csection. I didn't want to but my baby through any more stress, so I opted for the csection. They removed the cervadil and we weighted for our turn to go to the operating room.
After they finally finished the elective csections, they had lots of emergent cases and since I wasn't emergent I kept on getting bumped. (Now I am starving since I had a small breakfast and have been "on call to go into the operating room" - no food or drink by mouth) Finally 9 hrs after deciding to do the csection I finally went I to the operating room.
We were delayed again, when the anesthesiologist had to go do some epi's. I asked the scrub nurses what to expect during a csection since I hadn't done any research on them, since they were the farthest action from my birth plan. They explained that the spinal would take effect super fast. And when they take the baby out, I will feel some pressure below my chest. Other than that, I really shouldn't feel anything.
My OB comes in and starts the procedure. My husband comes in and sits beside me. He said afterwards that when he walked in he saw my uterus on top of me. (Not knowing what happens in a csection, he thought that it was normal) I explain to my hubby that I am feeling a lot of pressure. More than I expected from the chat I had with the nurses. I see my baby be passed by me by her foot with a piece of the cord still attached to her. I hear her crying . (The best sound ever) My husband is taken over to the baby area and a team of nurses start sucking mucus out of her lungs and she is put on some oxygen to get her levels up. They then ask my hubby to go with the baby to another area for some skin to skin. Meanwhile I am still feeling lots of pressure and I am become somewhat lightheaded and I start to have pain in my shoulder.
My calm OB says to me, that I have lost some blood and they are just working to stop it. I look up into the big light above me and all I see is red. (Don't look into the big light whatever you do!)
I hear my OB ask them to call in another OB from his office. They say, oh it may take a bit for them to get here cause of the weather and they live 30 mins from the hospital. I then hear the voice of a female OB that I spoke to earlier that day at my ultrasound. Little did I know that, my OB is speaking to my husband telling him that they are doing everything they can to save my uterus, but there is lots of bleeding and there was a softball size vascular tumor on the uterus where they usually cut the baby out of. He also explains to my husband that my uterus was twisted 360 degrees. My hubby said to my doctor what any husband would... Save my wife, we don't need the uterus.
When my OB comes back into the operating room, he speaks to me again and I tell him to take out whatever he needs to, to make the bleeding stop, that I have a beautiful baby girl that I need to be here for. They then put me under and I wake up upstairs sometime Saturday.
They did a full hysterectomy. I still have my overies and my cervix. Still not too sure what that means for my future hormonal health, only time will tell.
The recovery in the hospital was rough because I was so high on morphine, I could barely hold my daughter. I was sent for multiple tests on my kidneys. They wanted to make sure they didn't get hurt in the chaos. (I had a renal scan, and AB CT scan) they ended up putting a tube in my back to insert a stint into the line that goes between the kidney and the bladder, because it got squished in the surgery.
I am not sure if you remember me telling you all about a mass they found in my bladder at about 12 weeks. They had ruled it as endometriosis. My OB doesn't think that was what it was... He thinks the 2 masses are related. But when they first looked at the bladder mass they didn't biopsy it, because they don't do biopsies on pregnant women. Was that a blessing or a curse that they didn't biopsy it, who knows. Would they have made me terminate my pregnancy if they knew it was a tumor? Is it a tumor?? We don't know. I see the bladder doctor next week. I am sure they will biopsy it this time.
I was so bruised from the surgery and from having my blood taken everyday for days. I had a giant bruise under my belly button that is finally fading.
My legs and feet were so swollen, that they looked like they belonged to a Sasquatch.
After multiple attempts to breastfeed, we just couldn't get it to work. And she slept and ate so well, I didn't want to change what she had going on. I didn't have the energy to fight with a screaming hungry baby.
I was discharged from the hospital 6 days after the surgery.
The pathology came back on the tumor. It wasn't cancerous. They said that I had an abnormal uterus, whatever that means. I have a follow up appointment with the OB next week to find out more.
My baby saved my life. Without her, I probably wouldn't have known about the masses. It's truly amazing that I was able to get pregnant in the first place.
Kaitlyn in an amazing baby. She is fussy sometimes, but I feel truly blessed to have her. I wouldn't trade her for anything.
Thanks for reading if you made it to the end...
here are some cute photos of her!
Just minutes old!
Me and her snuggling the first time I got to hold her.
Her at 2 weeks last Friday.
I feel truly blessed to have my perfect 6lbs 1 oz bundle of joy!
Here is our story:
It started at 38 weeks when I was diagnosed with pregnancy induced hypertension. My bp was higher than what my MW's like to deal with so the referred me to an OB. He put me on some bp meds and wanted to continue to monitor me. He allowed me to continue on with my birth plan, (med free at the birth center) until my health or the baby's health was effected.
I continued seeing the OB and my MW for the duration of my pregnancy. The OB gave me a timeline of needing to deliver the baby before 41 weeks. At 41 weeks I would be facing induction. He didn't want me to go any longer than that with my high bp. After many failed membrane sweeps, I ended up back in the OB's office at 40+5 talking about our induction plan.
My husband and I walked over to the hospital from the OB's office for some cervadil. Once I walked into the hospital I felt pretty defeated. My body just didn't want to go into labour on it's own. My plan was to get the cervadil, get monitored and go home hoping that it would start my labour and allow me to go to the birth center as planned. Once I was strapped to the monitors and stuck in that awful hospital bed my bp went through the roof! It was stupidly high. And do you think the nurses would leave me alone, I swear they checked it every 5 mins, making it go higher and higher. My emotions were all over the place making my bp rise higher and higher. They gave me meds to artificially lower it, but that made me even worse. The headache I got from my bp being all over the place was intense.
While being monitored they noticed that my baby's accelerations and decellerations were not where they like them to be and wanted me to stay. I explained to them that the movements I was feeling were the same movements that I was feeling my whole pregnancy and I demanded to go home cause there was no way in hell I was staying strapped to that awful bed until I went into labour. They released me and told me to come back the next morning or sooner if my bp continued to rise. We went home and I slept gloriously in my own bed.
We got back to the hospital for 7:30am the next morning. We ate a muffin and I had some orange juice. They checked me to see if I had made any progress on the cervadil and nothing had happened in 17 hrs. They decided to start a second dose of the cervadil. Meanwhile my OB came over to check out the monitoring graphs and he noticed that the accelerations and decellerations were still not where he wanted them to be, so he sent me for an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed that baby had lost a bit if weight from the ultrasound I had the week prior. (they never said how much weight) The week prior has estimated her weight to be about 6.7 or so.
With the news of her losing weight the OB gave me 2 options: do a stress test with pitocin to see if baby could withstand a tough labour. (A labour where I confined to monitors, no water birth and not being the labour I had wanted.) or have a csection. I didn't want to but my baby through any more stress, so I opted for the csection. They removed the cervadil and we weighted for our turn to go to the operating room.
After they finally finished the elective csections, they had lots of emergent cases and since I wasn't emergent I kept on getting bumped. (Now I am starving since I had a small breakfast and have been "on call to go into the operating room" - no food or drink by mouth) Finally 9 hrs after deciding to do the csection I finally went I to the operating room.
We were delayed again, when the anesthesiologist had to go do some epi's. I asked the scrub nurses what to expect during a csection since I hadn't done any research on them, since they were the farthest action from my birth plan. They explained that the spinal would take effect super fast. And when they take the baby out, I will feel some pressure below my chest. Other than that, I really shouldn't feel anything.
My OB comes in and starts the procedure. My husband comes in and sits beside me. He said afterwards that when he walked in he saw my uterus on top of me. (Not knowing what happens in a csection, he thought that it was normal) I explain to my hubby that I am feeling a lot of pressure. More than I expected from the chat I had with the nurses. I see my baby be passed by me by her foot with a piece of the cord still attached to her. I hear her crying . (The best sound ever) My husband is taken over to the baby area and a team of nurses start sucking mucus out of her lungs and she is put on some oxygen to get her levels up. They then ask my hubby to go with the baby to another area for some skin to skin. Meanwhile I am still feeling lots of pressure and I am become somewhat lightheaded and I start to have pain in my shoulder.
My calm OB says to me, that I have lost some blood and they are just working to stop it. I look up into the big light above me and all I see is red. (Don't look into the big light whatever you do!)
I hear my OB ask them to call in another OB from his office. They say, oh it may take a bit for them to get here cause of the weather and they live 30 mins from the hospital. I then hear the voice of a female OB that I spoke to earlier that day at my ultrasound. Little did I know that, my OB is speaking to my husband telling him that they are doing everything they can to save my uterus, but there is lots of bleeding and there was a softball size vascular tumor on the uterus where they usually cut the baby out of. He also explains to my husband that my uterus was twisted 360 degrees. My hubby said to my doctor what any husband would... Save my wife, we don't need the uterus.
When my OB comes back into the operating room, he speaks to me again and I tell him to take out whatever he needs to, to make the bleeding stop, that I have a beautiful baby girl that I need to be here for. They then put me under and I wake up upstairs sometime Saturday.
They did a full hysterectomy. I still have my overies and my cervix. Still not too sure what that means for my future hormonal health, only time will tell.
The recovery in the hospital was rough because I was so high on morphine, I could barely hold my daughter. I was sent for multiple tests on my kidneys. They wanted to make sure they didn't get hurt in the chaos. (I had a renal scan, and AB CT scan) they ended up putting a tube in my back to insert a stint into the line that goes between the kidney and the bladder, because it got squished in the surgery.
I am not sure if you remember me telling you all about a mass they found in my bladder at about 12 weeks. They had ruled it as endometriosis. My OB doesn't think that was what it was... He thinks the 2 masses are related. But when they first looked at the bladder mass they didn't biopsy it, because they don't do biopsies on pregnant women. Was that a blessing or a curse that they didn't biopsy it, who knows. Would they have made me terminate my pregnancy if they knew it was a tumor? Is it a tumor?? We don't know. I see the bladder doctor next week. I am sure they will biopsy it this time.
I was so bruised from the surgery and from having my blood taken everyday for days. I had a giant bruise under my belly button that is finally fading.
My legs and feet were so swollen, that they looked like they belonged to a Sasquatch.
After multiple attempts to breastfeed, we just couldn't get it to work. And she slept and ate so well, I didn't want to change what she had going on. I didn't have the energy to fight with a screaming hungry baby.
I was discharged from the hospital 6 days after the surgery.
The pathology came back on the tumor. It wasn't cancerous. They said that I had an abnormal uterus, whatever that means. I have a follow up appointment with the OB next week to find out more.
My baby saved my life. Without her, I probably wouldn't have known about the masses. It's truly amazing that I was able to get pregnant in the first place.
Kaitlyn in an amazing baby. She is fussy sometimes, but I feel truly blessed to have her. I wouldn't trade her for anything.
Thanks for reading if you made it to the end...
here are some cute photos of her!Just minutes old!
Me and her snuggling the first time I got to hold her.
Her at 2 weeks last Friday.
Kaitlyn - born November 7, 2014
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Kaitlyn's birth story - it's a long one
I am sorry about the hysterectomy though.
Big hugs.
BFP#4 3/17/14 - rainbow Baby BOY arrived 11/10/14 !!
DX: Uterine Septum - Resection 9/5/13 || MTHFR Hetero A1298C || My Chart