Hollin was born on Tuesday, November 6th 2012, at 5:10 pm. She weighed 5 lbs 10 oz and was 18 in long. She came out tiny, sweet and screaming!
Here is the prelude of sorts! So, Dr. D wanted me to come in Tuesday morning at midnight to be induced. Hollin would be 37 weeks then and technically full term, which is the earliest an OB patient can be electively induced. Although it was medically necessary for me to be induced due to high BP. The same exact thing happened with Presley. But I had great BP’s with Hollin, right up until the end. I honestly thought that I would make it until November 27th, my due date. Call me stupid, but this pregnancy was just SO different than with Presley; everything was textbook perfect (well, except for that little scare about her weight), with P everything was high-risk drama!! Prelude to their personalities, maybe?!!!
Anyway, we arrived at the hospital at 1 am after a quick stop through Whataburger to eat. I wasn’t going in there hungry!!! I was only dilated to 1 cm so they gave my Cytotec at 2 am to hopefully jump start things.
~I was really nervous that because I was dilated so little when I got induced, that I would have to end up with a c-section. Doctors only give you around 24 hours after they break your water to have the baby, then they have to section you. It’s for the safety of the baby…when your bag of fluid is broken, bacteria can enter the womb and make your baby really sick. I really didn’t want to have a c-section, because I knew that they were much harder to recover from anyway, hello it’s major surgery, and I had a 3 year old to also take care of this time around. Dr D and I talked about this extensively and she reassured me that since I already had a vaginal delivery, odds were in my favor that my body would “know” what to do the second time around too. And I really needed to have her out because of my crazy high BP. She said that I could wait until 38 weeks to be induced and just go home on strict bed rest. I wrestled with that idea, but I hated to waste some of my maternity leave on just sitting around. I wanted to be cuddling a sweet baby while doing so! Jeremiah and I prayed about it, and ultimately decided to have another 37 week baby.~
We both got a little bit of sleep from 2-5 am. Then the nurse gave me more Cytotec at 6. I was still 1 cm. Dr D came in around 7 and said that she would come back in about 2 hours and break my water no matter what. She was going to break it at 7, but I asked could we wait since I hadn’t dilated anymore and again, I was petrified of having a section. Thankfully she agreed.
We started the Pitocin at 9 am. I was having a few contractions here and there, but nothing really substantial. When Dr. D broke my water at 10, whoa buddy, did that change!! Pitocin contractions are SO bad. The only thing I can think of to relate it to is having an anaconda wrap around you and break your body in half. no joke. I got really nauseous and finally got to the point of having enough pain that I wanted an epidural around 11. Bless those sweet souls! They were able to come almost immediately and finished up around 11:30. I don’t remember how far I was dilated at this point, probably not much more than a 2.
I forgot to mention that she had started dropping her heart rate after we broke my water. I guess it was the way her cord was positioned in the womb. She did not appreciate her amniotic fluid going away! After I got the epidural, my contractions got crazy strong and fast. They were right on top of one another and Hollin just kept dropping her heart rate each time. It was, without a doubt, one of the scariest times of my life. I’m a pediatric nurse and have seen the devastation that is caused by losing oxygen to your brain. I just kept thinking “this is my worst nightmare, my daughter is going to be born a vegetable because of all of these times that her cord is being compressed.” I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Writing this tonight, 11 weeks later, I still get tears thinking about how scary it was. The L&D nurse kept reassuring me that she was ok and that Dr. D was monitoring us through a computer in her office.
I still wasn’t ok with hearing her heart tones go so low so many times. The nurse thought that the contractions were just too strong and frequent for Hollin so she slowed my Pitocin down. She wanted to “float” Hollin a little bit by adding sterile water back into my uterus through a catheter. I was willing to try anything. This went on from 12 to about 3 pm. At one point I remember asking for a c-section because I was just so overwhelmed. We had tried to move me into many positions for Hollin to get optimum oxygen through her cord. I even had on an oxygen mask for a couple of hours. Nothing like that to make you feel really out of control of the situation. I just wanted my daughter to be delivered safely. Dr. D said that she would come give me a section if I really wanted one, but she felt like I had come so far and that I could do it! It helped that I knew she was watching us closely from her office and she was only a short walk over to where we were.
At 3:30 pm I was only 4 cm and so discouraged that she was ever going to come out! (with Presley it was so quick, only 8 hrs total!) But at this time we were floating Hollin and had finally found that sitting straight up in bed was doing the trick: I was comfortable and she had gone a while without dropping her heart rate. By 4:30 I was 7 cm and at 5 pm I was a 10!!! no joke! It was THAT fast! I felt the need to push right when she dropped her heart rate down to the 60’s, which is really low. We called for the nurse and she came running in and said “please tell me you feel pressure!” She paged Dr. D and a several nurses came in and started taking apart the bed and getting things ready quickly. Dr. D came walking in right as her pager was going off! She said that she heard her heart rate go down so low and started walking over to tell me that we were just going to have a c-section. I pushed 3 times and she was out by 5:10! Long labor but a quick delivery!
Looking back, God has once again proved to be so faithful. We thought the scare with her being too little during pregnancy was a bad thing, but really she needed to be tiny in order to get out quickly! Presley was a pound bigger and took longer to deliver. Hollin might not have survived me pushing for 30 min. Our God is so good! We know how fortunate we are that she came out completely perfect and all of the glory goes to Him.
