everything from the past 10 months: emery's story

In honor of our newest little bundle's due date (July 21), I wanted to try to find a minute to record some memories and emotions about her birth story, which was so different from Ellie's and so different from what I was expecting. Here is the long story, only a week late!

Similar to last year with Ellie, when I was pregnant with Emery, I had a hard time thinking too much about when she'd actually be here and what our new life would be like. I spent most of the pregnancy ignoring what was actually happening and focusing on trying to keep Ellie's life as normal as it ever was.

Our girls are 15 months apart. That's crazy. People ask us if we were planning on having another one so soon after Ellie and I don't think David and I have a real answer for that. Sure, we knew it was a possibility, but were actually completely shocked when we found out I was pregnant again when Ellie was just 7 months old. We barely told anyone for about a month, pushed off calling the doctor, and didn't really talk about it--it took us a little while just to be able to think about it by ourselves. The next 9 months were difficult for me; emotionally, physically, mentally.

Emotionally, I struggled with what baby number 2 meant for baby number 1. I worried about being the best mom that Ellie deserved despite everything else I was dealing with. Physically, I was tired, I gained a ton of weight (again, on top of the weight that was still there from Ellie), had crazy heartburn, lots of pelvic pressure, and stretch marks. Mentally, I questioned if this would mess up Ellie's life, how we would afford another kid, how we would accomplish daily tasks, how to balance life, pregnancy, and work. My coping strategy for dealing with all of that was to ignore it. For the past nine months, I've felt like a shell of my old self, unable to really be present to anything that was happening in my world except for my time with Ellie. I think it was all too overwhelming for me and I didn't feel as happy as I thought I should feel and it made it hard to live and interact in normal ways.

I had a hard time connecting with the baby that was growing inside me. I was just anxious to get to the end and to not be pregnant anymore. I started telling people at work that I was going to have this baby 3 weeks early (the earliest date she could live healthfully), and then would explain that no, I am in no way ready to have another baby, but I'm so ready to be done being pregnant. When I went in for my 38 week appointment and my blood pressure had sky-rocketed, I started freaking out. I had joked (stupidly) the night before that I wanted to find a way to make my blood pressure high for my appointment so they would induce me because of pre-eclampsia. I didn't get induced that day, but was sent to Labor & Delivery to have my blood pressure monitored and some labs run--all of which cleared me to go home. I was sent home with a few giant bottles to collect all of my urine for the next 24 hours. This would give the doctors a more accurate test of the protein in my urine and a more definite diagnosis of pre-eclampsia.

David worked the next day and I was home with Ellie. We hung out at home, went to the grocery store, and tried our first ever White Castle for lunch. When David got home, I went to the office quickly, thinking that I should get a few things in line in case I ended up staying at the hospital, but mostly planning on being back for a meeting at 4:30. I went to the hospital and had to go through all of the paperwork to get admitted for tests again, they sent my urine bottles off to the lab and hooked me up to the blood pressure machine. My blood pressure was consistently higher than normal, but not over the "emergency" range my doctor had told me about. After about 45 minutes, they came to tell me that everything seemed fine so they'd have me wait for my urine results in the waiting room.

At that point I was expecting to go home, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I wanted to be induced and I wanted to be sent home to prepare for it another day. I think I told David that I wasn't prepared for either result. I didn't want to be pregnant (and worried about my blood pressure) anymore, but I wasn't ready to leave Ellie, go through labor & delivery, and have a newborn either. It was a matter of minutes after being told I'd be sent to the waiting room that the doctor came back in to tell me that my results were 306 and 300 is the limit for pre-eclampsia, so I was going to be induced. I asked if I was allowed to leave the hospital and she said no. So now what? David is at home trying to cook dinner for Ellie and I'm stuck at the hospital about to have a baby.

David called everyone to figure out what needed to happen. I had a seemingly incompetent (and I think brand new) nurse dig in my wrist to place the IV. David and Ellie came to hang out with me at the hospital. Ellie watched her Elmo video on the portable DVD player and sat in my lap, curious about the tubes and tape stuck to my arms. I cried. David tried to hold everything together. I asked him to take some pictures, this was the last time it would just be us, our family of 3 (4 with Aldy, but obviously he wasn't allowed at the hospital). Ellie had no idea.

We were moved to our birthing room which was equipped with a giant bathtub and birthing ball that Ellie enjoyed. They started the induction process and I was told that because of my diagnosis of pre-eclampsia I would have to be given a drug called Magnesium Sulfate throughout my labor and for 24 hours after delivery. I was told that it would make me feel like I had the flu, but would prevent me from having seizures. Awesome! Mike came to pick up Ellie to wait for grandparents to arrive to take care of her for the night and right before they left, the nurse came to tell me that they had to pad my bed rails because of the possibility of seizures. She told me this moments before I said goodbye to my baby girl. That was terrible. The medicine made it almost impossible for me to see anything. My eyes couldn't focus on anything near or far and I would get headaches if I even tried. I felt exhausted and weak the whole time I was in labor and all the nurses kept commenting that the medicine was awful, but was better for us in the long run.

I was induced with pitocin, the same as with Ellie, but it didn't work the same way this time. My labor was slow, there wasn't much pain, contractions were sporadic. I had to have a catheter in, which was the most painful part at the beginning. A doctor came to break my water and I'm not sure what he did, but it was super painful, took forever, and he and the nurse kept apologizing during and after the process. I continued to "progress," but it was very slow. Sometime near midnight I asked to have an epidural, hoping I'd be able to sleep some during the night. The doctor that placed my epidural wasn't very nice and had to do it twice to make sure he did it right. At this point, I felt like everything was going terribly--things that happened seamlessly during Ellie's delivery were extremely painful and uncomfortable this time. I was convinced this baby wasn't ready to come out, and felt so guilty for the attitude I'd had towards her for the past nine months. We continued through the night, sleeping as much as possible between visits from doctors and nurses, worried about our parents that refused to go home to sleep and were camped out in the waiting room. Sometime in the early morning I asked the nurse if I could eat after I delivered and she told me that unfortunately I wouldn't be able to eat for as long as I was on the Magnesium Sulfate (24 hours after delivery). Argh! Food at this point was like the only thing that I could imagine to motivate and reward myself for going through this, and now I didn't even have that.

I was exhausted, hungry, and defeated. Everything seemed to be going wrong and my feelings that our baby wasn't ready to come into the world were growing. I wished I could take back every negative thought I ever had about this pregnancy to take care of her a little longer. I slowly continued to progress until around 9:30 when we started getting ready to push. When Ellie was born Chris Rock was being interviewed on David Letterman--a funny but weird thing I'll always remember. David told me he thought that this one was going to be born during Regis & Kelly (a guilty pleasure of mine before life got crazy!), but 10:00 rolled around and Regis & Kelly was replaced by Let's Make a Deal and David turned off the TV. The bright spot of this labor was that a doctor I really enjoyed from our practice was going to be the one to deliver our girl. He was fun, friendly, and made me feel comfortable. Pushing was harder this time, with Ellie it just happened so fast and easily, this time I had to work to try and figure out the right way to push. Our second, beautiful, amazing little girl was born at 10:08 am on Friday, July 8th--exactly 15 months after Ellise.

It felt so much different this time. I think it was partly because I had such a difficult time connecting with this pregnancy with everything else going on in our life and partly because of the drugs that were being pumped into my system, but when she finally came out I just remember flopping my head back to the pillow and closing my eyes. So relieved to be done. It's hard to admit that I didn't feel instantly overwhelmed with emotion the way I did with Ellie, I was just tired and relieved. They put her up on my chest and I tried to look at her, but could barely keep my eyes open, much less focused on her. The nurse asked if it was okay to take her to clean her up and it was fine. While they were working on her, she was "singing," which we thought was cute at first, but soon found out that the noise was actually a sign of respiratory distress (that could be caused by the magnesium sulfate). Eventually they brought her back over to me and hearing her struggle for breath, and root around on my neck was enough to make me fall in love and worry like the worrier I am. She was soft, tiny, warm and sweet. I was so happy to have her in my arms--to be done with the waiting game of pregnancy and the stress of delivery. She was here, and we were more of family now than we had ever been before.