Zara's Birth Story

JNR6510 · August 2017

Good morning ladies! I would like to announce the arrival of our little girl, Zara. I will try to post pics later today after I am finally cleared to go and visit her.

She was born on August 10th, 2017 at 1:59pm. Zara was 18 inches long and weighed 4lbs 12 oz. She is doing very well so far. We had a few low blood sugar issues, but they were able to get her an IV and on fluids in NICU.

They started the induction around noon on August 9th due to pre-eclampsia complications. Between the Mg drip and 3 rounds of cytotec, my water finally broke the morning of the 10th. The cytotec wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. The contractions progressed fairly gradually at first. I did end up getting an epidural shortly after my water broke, and it was the best decision ever! I was finally able to relax and get a couple hours of rest after having been up all night. I seriously can't recommend accepting the pain relief enough. I was miserable and exhausted from trying to go "all natural" in spite of having to be induced. I would not have had the energy I needed to handle labor without the few hours of sleep getting the epidural afforded.

The epidural took away most all the pain, leaving just a feeling of pressure with the stronger contractions. My only hiccup with the epidural was that it is gravitational. So laying on one side for too long made the other side of my body feel the contractions again. But that was a super easy fix of just making sure I flipped sides frequently. I could tell when I was having contractions with the epidural and still felt the urge to push.

We had a few problems with Zara's heart rate decelerating with the contractions or based on my positioning. I was nearly in tears trying to find a good position that didn't drop her heart rate. But in the end we made it. I progressed from 3cm to 10cm within an hour of the OB dropping by. She was barely able to make it back to L&D in time with how fast Zara came. I pushed 5x for maybe 20 minutes, and my baby girl was here. She was so tiny and blue when she came out. I literally burst into tears with worry. But she started crying right away and breathing on her own.

I'm doing ok. Feeling like I got hit by a bag of bricks this morning, but doing really well. Only one small tear to the vaginal wall from progressing so quickly from just 3 cm to delivering. I'm just waiting for my labs to clear so I can be released to visit her in NICU. I have to stay in their special maternity ward until 2:00pm just to make sure everything is good with my labs and my BP stays where it belongs. I did get to try to start pumping. My milk isn't in quite yet, but it's still early and we are going to try to pump every 2-3 hours to get the ball rolling. Zara will receive donor breast milk in the meantime.

To the amazing ladies who have donated your breast milk in the past, thank you so very much! I never thought I would possibly need donor milk, and now it is a lifesaver for my baby girl!

ETA: pic added to comments in spoiler box