Miss Bailey’s Birth Story

Well since she’s been here for over two months now, i figured I’ve kept you waiting long enough here is miss bailey’s Birth story blog post!

i didn’t have a super specific birth plan in mind. i knew I’d like to labor In a tub for a while iF possible and that i wanted an epidural (pRaise Jesus for modern medicine!) with the goal of a vaginal birth. but other than that, we wanted her here and for both mama and baby to be safe!

without further delay, here is the story of our little girl’s birth

My due date haD come and gone. I was 40+1 and it was memorial day morning. We had an induction scheduled for Thursday morning so i was kind of ready, kind Of not. I fully expected to have to be Induced.

I Got up to go to the bathroom around 4:45am and Was crampy from then until 6:30. I Got up to go to the bathroom again And On the way back to the bed water started trickling down my leg. It really was like a scene from a movie watching it run down my leg lol. I Went back to the toilet and more came out. I also noticed that it wasn’t clear, it had a bit of a green tinT to it, which i knew mEant there was likely meconium in it.

I Texted Ryan who was about to get off work that I think my water broke and I called the nurse on call and they said to come in to labor and deliverY and they would confirm whether my water had broken or not.

Ryan was able to leave a little early and come home to get me while I packed the rest of the hospital bag, ate something, and got Josie ready. He got home, made coffee, and showered and we headed out.

We got to triage and got checked out, they confirmed that it was my water, and admitted. Us. We Were in our room by 9:15, Got an IV and I was started on low dose pitocin.

I Labored in The tub for two hours or so, got bumped up to 4 and then to 6 units of pitocin. it haD been about 5 hours since We were admitted so I Got out of the tub and got checked and was still at 1Cm which was super discouraging especially since my contractions were starting to hurt pretty bad courtesy of the pitocin and my water having already been broken.

I labored some more between the bed and the birthing ball. The birthing ball was better for distracting me from my contractions which made them more bearable. We were also watching the contractions of a mom in another room who was literally 10cm and about to start pushing which distracted me from my contractions as well until we saw changes that indicated she gave birth, yay!.

Eventually I was able to get checked again and was finally at 4cm, at which point I asked for the epidural. The anesthesiologist was there I swear within a minute to give it to me (praise the Lord). She was super sweet and made sure I couldn’t feel anymore contractions. I still had relatively good use of my legs despite them being tingly so I was able to change positions in bed as I wanted.

We switched from day time doctors and nurses to night time ones and we had the sweetest nurse and resident helping us. They started to get concerned about Bailey’s heart rate…it would drop and not in a way that was consistent with my contraction pattern. Our nurse, Grace, explained that they like to see the heart rate drop as the contraction gets more intense and then come back up as it trails off. Bailey’s was dropping for a minute or more at a time not having anything to do with contractions. They thought it could be one of a number of things…she could have been holding the cord in her hand and squeezing during contractions but then continuing to hold it after they finished. It could have been that she wasn’t reacting well to the amount of pitocin they were giving me (up to like 18 units at that point). They weren’t sure but they wanted to figure it out so we could try to deliver vaginally if at all possible.

Another problem is that she was moving so much (per usual) that they couldn’t get a solid reading on her heart rate and what it was doing in relation to my contractions either. So they stopped using the external heart rate and contraction monitors and inserted one into my uterus to track contractions and put one on her head to track her heart rate. That would be able to give the doctors a better idea of the correlation between her heart rate and my contractions. When that was on for a while, they decided to cut down my pitocin levels to see if her heart rate would stop dropping. Initially it did but the more pitocin they added back, the more she didn’t like it. At one point I swear we had the whole L&D staff in my room trying to get her heart rate back up. At least two nurses, two residents, and an attending. Not to mention it was like 11pm at this point and we were prepared for a long night of labor so Ryan and I were both trying to get some sleep so we woke up to everyone rushing into the room. I was laying on my side so First they turned me on my other side then onto my hands and knees while rocking my butt back and forth to get her to bring her heart rate back up. Eventually it did go back up but at this point we started discussing the possibility of a c section.

Our next steps were to cut pitocin completely and see if my body would continue to contract and labor on its own and if that would keep her happy. Spoiler alert, it didn’t lol. Even with no pitocin and with less strong contractions, her heart rate still dropped. One more time everyone came rushing in, got me on my hands and knees again and we decided a c section was the right decision to get her here safely.

I swear from the time that decision was made until she made her arrival was maybe 15 minutes lol. They prepped me for surgery, gave Ryan his gown thing, hair net, and shoe covers, and wheeled me to the OR.

By this point I was shaking uncontrollably (apparently normal) and worried that would mess something up. The anesthesiologists used morphine to make my bottom half go from kinda numb but still useable to feeling nothing and then they went right in. They had several countdowns going. From the time they wheeled me in until they cut me open and then another one that I’m not quite sure what it was, maybe from when they put the morphine in. They started cutting before ryan was even in the room because of one of the countdowns. He said he walked in and they already had their hands inside of me…talk about crazy. Anyway they did their thing, there was a lot of tugging but other than that I didn’t feel anything.

They pulled her out and she didn’t start crying right away. I remember them saying “it’s definitely a girl” and then “she’s stunned” and “cry for us baby”. It seemed like it took forever to hear that first cry but when we finally did, I cried too. They showed her to ryan over the curtain while they stitched me up. The pediatric doctors were working on her and put her on oxygen. They brought her around the curtain so both of us could see her again but then told us they’d be taking her to the NICU because of her difficulty breathing initially.

Ryan stayed in the OR with me until they were done stitching me up. They moved me back onto the bed from the operating table and wheeled me back to our room where they started the post-op stuff — fundal massage, checking my vitals, etc. Ryan was able to go down to the NICU to see her and take some pictures so I could see her too. They had her on CPAP to help with her breathing and they had an IV in her tiny hand (we think for antibiotics because of the meconium).

Once they took us to our postpartum room we both tried to get some sleep but I dozed for maybe 10 minutes. Thankfully ryan was able to get some sleep but he wanted to go back down to the nicu for rounds at 9 to see what the doctor had to say about how she was doing. I ended up not being able to go see her until like 11 or 12 by the time my morphine was starting to wear off so I could get into a wheel chair. It was an odd thing going through the nicu not knowing which baby was yours because you didn’t know what your own baby looked like.

Little girl ended up staying in the NICU for about 36 hours. She got to come up to our room on Wednesday afternoon (she was born early Tuesday morning). They were monitoring her temperature and blood sugar. And then when she came up to us they were waiting for her to poop again lol. After pooping 4 times on Tuesday she didn’t end up pooping again until Friday night after we were home (and she basically hasn’t stopped since lol).

Overall we’re super grateful for the doctors and nurses doing everything they could to try to get us the vaginal birth we wanted but when they started getting concerned about bailey’s blood flow not being good because of whatever was going on in there, we knew we were making the right decision to go with a c section. We wanted her here safely and that’s what we got! Despite not being the exact birth i envisioned, it was still an overall good experience and were grateful to have this little girl in our arms!

Whew, that was a lot. If you made it this far, good for you, here are some baby pictures as a reward