The Birth Story

Surprise! I didn’t die in childbirth, although the time between our last post and this one may have led some of you to believe otherwise. Let me quell your fears and assure you that all of us in the Bradley household are alive and well.

So, ready for the birth story? I will try my best to be appropriate and not say the words uterus, fluid, stitches, blood, guts, or excruciating pain too many times for those of you who have yet to be tainted by the glories of birth. Let me tell you, having a baby is womanly but it is simply not ladylike.

Oh, and I’m sure this will be a lengthy post, so if you get bored, just scroll to the bottom and you can see cute pictures (of the baby and Kyle, not so much me since I just had given birth…and that’s a good enough excuse for me.)

On June 4^th I was at work, on a Saturday, short staffed, and feeling particularly “done” with being larger than majority of the people on my floor. I made a crack to my charge nurse about my water hypothetically breaking. She turned to me and said, “Lindsay, if that happened I would simply tell you to put a cork in it and finish up your shift.”

And with that lovely image in my mind I went ahead and finished up my shift, hugged and kissed my patients good-bye and told them I would see them the following day.

I Lied.

I got home from work shortly before 7:00, had dinner, probably cried to Kyle about something (I’ll be completely honest, there has rarely been a day I haven’t found something to cry about since my third trimester began, so I was pretty sure my hormones were skyrocketing like a good pregnant woman’s should) and was asleep by 10:00.

At 3:30 I woke up to a general feeling of wet. My first thought was, “How old am I? Did I seriously wet the bed?” but then recalled I had just gone to the bathroom an hour before. I rolled over and nudged Kyle.

Me: “Hey, Kyle? I think my water broke.”

Kyle: “Hmmm…” *roll over*

Me: *Lovingly, but forcefully, smack Kyle’s chest* “Kyle! I really think my water is broken”

Kyle: *Pause for 5 seconds. Then shoot straight up in bed.* “Are you serious? Oh man! Seriously?”

Now, what is any woman’s first instinct when something is happening to you that has never happened before? Call your mom of course! So 5:30 Michigan time I woke up my Mom, who then got on the computer, bought a plane ticket, and was on the road to the airport 15 minutes later. She’s amazing and she was in the hospital with me a mere 30 minutes after Baby Cakes was born. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I then called into work to tell them that I would not be coming in that day. They were all excited and told me to get an epidural. Oh, how I love nurses! :)

I finally then called my doctor, who I probably should have called first, but so it goes when you are frazzled early in the morning. He told me that it looked like I was going to be having a baby that day and that I should get to the hospital in the next little bit.

Since I wasn’t having any contractions that were different from anything I had felt for the last several weeks, I jumped into the shower. Meanwhile Kyle was running around like he had a fire in his pants grabbing anything he could get his hands on. I haven’t seen that boy with that much energy since we went to Lagoon! He kept poking his head into the bathroom saying, “Should I bring a towel? How about socks? Oh man! Linds, we are going to have a baby!!”

After finishing getting ready, we sat down to a breakfast of champions, which is obviously Cinnamon Toast Crunch and not Wheaties.

It had been an hour since my water broke, and I was starting to be weirded out by how normal I felt. Here is my last pregnant shot. 37 weeks and 6 days.

So by 5:00 we were checked into the hospital and I met my nurse who was there only long enough to question me about my “water really breaking” since her shift ended at 6:00. I assured her I had lost enough fluid to fill a kiddie pool, and since my bladder was about the size of a walnut I was positive I hadn’t simply peed my pants. After her testing me with nitrizine paper (paper that turns blue after it’s pressed to amniotic fluid) and finding out my water was broken, she then checked me. At my previous appointment I was almost completely effaced and was a 2. This nurse informed me that she thought I was 70% effaced and was a 1.5. Honestly, who cares? You can call me whatever you want. I’m having a baby either way, so if it makes you feel good to call me a negative 5.6, go right ahead and knock yourself out.

Luckily, she took off and I then got to meet my new nurse Nicki. She hooked me up to the monitors (these are the first 2 lines that I was hooked up to) and informed me that she believed I was having a girl when I told her Kyle and I hadn’t found out the gender. After watching our baby’s heart rate she told me that there wasn’t as much variability in it as she wanted. So she started an IV (line 3) and dumped a liter of D5LR in me in 10 minutes (fluid that has a little bit of sugar in it to help wake the baby up.) Naturally me and my walnut visited the ladies room multiple times after that.

I still wasn’t having any pain with my contractions, and Nicki was worried about the baby’s heart rate. So they cranked me up to 10 L of oxygen on a face mask (line 4) for the rest of my delivery, just to ensure the baby was getting enough oxygen.

A little after 7:00 I still wasn’t having much of contractions, so they started me on pitocin. Boy, does that stuff ever work!!! In a matter of 15 minutes I went from feeling just dandy to throwing up, shaking, and feeling pain in parts of my body I had never felt before. They also applied an intrauterine monitor (line 5) to measure the strength of my contractions and were checking my blood pressure every 15 minutes (line 6).

Fortunately, they let me have yummy ice chips. I’m not kidding! The ice was awesome and they even let me pick what kind of snow cone flavor I wanted to add. And really, is there any flavor better than Tiger’s Blood? I say no.

But a woman in labor cannot survive by ice chips alone, and by 8:15 I was ready for some kind of pain relief. She gave me fentanyl through my IV which helped, but didn’t take away those blasted shakes I had. Nicki kept coming in the room and having me turn to different sides to see if we could help my baby’s heart rate. Now, it’s not like my baby had a flat line for a heart rate, or that the heart rate was low. The problem was that baby’s heart rate wasn’t really changing, which could mean the umbilical cord was getting compressed somewhere (possibly around the neck, or maybe squished somewhere between the baby and my uterus.) It made me nervous and I was watching the monitors like a hawk, which made me a terrible candidate for managing my pain on my own. So at 9:30 I got my epidural which was awesome. It made my legs all tingly, but I could always move them and I could still feel the pressure from the contractions, so I was happy. Definitely pro epidural!

At some point they started an amniotransfusion (line 7), where they were dumping fluid back into my womb to try and “re-float” our baby since the heart rate was still less than ideal. They also applied a fetal heart monitor to the baby’s head (line 8) so they could more accurately see what was going on.

At 11:30 I was at a 3.5. The doctor and nurse still weren’t thrilled with the heart rate, so they would come in the room every 10 minutes to “tickle” the top of the head to try and stimulate the heart rate. I kept asking if it felt like boy or girl hair, but no one was able to tell me. The heart rate would react for a few minutes, but then would go back to how it was. Nicki decided to prep me for a c-section just in case things were to go south.

That’s when I started crying. It wasn’t about actually having a c-section. I was just so worried about my baby! For 5 ½ hours I kept being told that the heart rate wasn’t where it should be, and I was scared that was going to do damage. Plus, I had been shaking like I was having a seizure for all those hours as well, so I’m sure that didn’t help my spirits. But, fortunately I had great support from Kyle who really was a champ through the whole process.

Now, I don’t know what happened, but by 1:30 I had jumped to a 10 and they told me it was time to push. Actually, the baby’s heart rate looked better right before I started pushing than it had the entire labor. Go figure, right? So, good-bye to the thought of a c-section and good-bye to that terrible heart rate! Of course I had to throw up first, but then I was able to do my job of pushing. Now this might weird people out, but they even had a mirror so I could actually see my little baby making progress to being born. I loved being able to see what was happening. Nicki turned to me at one point and said, “After this push you are going to be a mother!” Well, I of course start bawling at that idea and had trouble re-focusing to even push.

After 20 minutes or so, my baby finally came to meet us! Kyle was the one who told me that we had just given birth to a little girl. I was just a little waterfall and it took me a good 30 minutes to stop crying after she was born. The doctor asked if Kyle wanted to cut the cord, which he declined. The doc then asked if I wanted to, so I did! Who knew that you could do that? Of course he had to assist me since I could barely see anything because I was tearing up so much!

So at 1:55 Avery Dawn Bradley was born. She was (and is) magnificent! I couldn’t believe she made it through the delivery and that I finally got to meet her. It was awesome being able to finally know who my baby was! I will treasure that moment forever!

Alright, and her she is in her 6 lbs 3 oz and 18 inches glory!

Here is Grandma Lesli! Like I said, she was there 30 minutes after Avery was born! We hadn't even left the delivery room for Mom Baby yet. 

This is Nicki our nurse, she was fabulous!

Our first family picture together!