My husbands (Josh's) parents drove up from Texas that weekend just in case we had the baby. Everything went smoothly all weekend with no changes so they ended up driving back Sunday night. Monday September 12th after my daily ultrasound Dr Noland told me we would be having a baby that night. My blood pressure was getting worse every day, and my 24 hour collection showed the protein levels were rising rapidly.
The recovery nurse came to get me at 7:30 and took me downstairs to recovery to get prepped for surgery. I had my second IV put in as they had taken the first out because it was over 4 days old. She took more blood for some tests they had forgotten to run beforehand. I spoke with the anesthesiologist and had my blood pressure taken every 10 minutes. It was steadily getting worse because I was so nervous. It didn’t hit me until I was on that gurney in recovery that I was about to be naked in front of a half a dozen strangers, cut open and have my baby taken out 5 weeks and 3 days early. We didn’t know if she would make it, if she would even breathe after they took her.
I was brought in to a very tiny operating room at 8:34, it’s nothing like the ones on TV. There were 4-5 people milling around seeming to do something of importance. My recovery nurse was with me the whole time. She stood in front of me and held my shoulders as the anesthesiologist asked me how tall I was and told me how to arch my back for the spinal block. My Dr came along about that time and explained it another way, so I thought I was somehow doing it wrong, but a couple of minutes later they were rushing me to lie down before it started work and I wasn’t able to move. Everyone had told me that the spinal block was the worst part of a c section, and let me tell you, they are full of it and don’t know what they are saying. The spinal was a breeze, it didn’t feel like a bee sting at all, in fact it hurt way less than getting an IV. As soon as it started working I felt warm all over, like someone had wrapped me in a heated blanket. They gave me a catheter and I didn’t even feel it. They threw a sheet over me and blocked my view then told my husband to come in and sit by my head.
I felt very warm even though I knew it was about 40 degrees in there and even my husband was cold and he’s always hot. I was shaking like crazy because I was so scared and nervous. My Dr pinched my stomach and asked if I could feel it, I told her yes but it didn’t hurt. She said “well its working then because I pinched the crap out of you and that should have hurt” The Dr told me my shaking was making it harder because her target was moving, so I tried to calm down and stop shaking. My husband kept telling me it would be okay and he was holding my hand and rubbing my forehead.
I could hear them talking and was trying to concentrate on what they were saying. I know the Dr let a student do a lot of the surgery. I could hear her explaining things and once they got inside say “oh yeah she’ll be able to have more kids some day, she will just have to do it this way again” because a VBAC in our state is illegal. There was a lot of tugging and some pressure. I felt like they were in my ribs, my whole body was moving from all the tugging. Finally they said “a little girl…Dad stand up and see” He stood up and just stood there, didn’t say anything and she didn’t cry. They finally told him to sit back down and at that time I heard the most beautiful sound in the world. My baby girl screaming her head off, upset that we took her out of her warm home. My husband said “She’s crying, she’s okay did you hear her?” I said yes and started crying.
It was 9:12PM on September 12th 2011 when my beautiful little girl came into this world. Her Dr took her into the other room to check on her while they were sewing me up. I went into recovery for an hour and was started on magnesium for my crazy high blood pressure. After 20 minutes of magnesium and not throwing up they wheeled me in to the NICU to see my daughter for the first time. I went past a dozen other babies and had no idea which was mine. Finally they pushed me up to her. Her belly was very distended and she was on CPAP and had an IV. I couldn’t see any of her face but her mouth and chin but she was gorgeous.
I was taken back up to my room and was on the magnesium and bed rest for 24 hours. That next evening around 4 or 5 Winry’s specialist came in and told us that her belly was worse, and that she would need surgery ASAP, but they couldn’t do it there, she would have to be sent to the children’s hospital across town. We waited for hours for them to take her, they kept coming in having us sign papers telling us how urgent it was and that they would bring her up to me before they took her. This scared me to death, I thought they were bringing her in case I never saw her again. Around 7 my husband went down to see her, when he came back up he seemed reluctant to tell me how she was. He said they were bringing her in to see me right then, that she now had a breathing tube because she had trouble breathing from all the pressure on her lungs from the “fluid”
(less than 24 hours old)
A whole group of people wheeled her in. At least 4 of them, she was in an incubator strapped to a gurney with oxygen and a ton of other things. I had to shove myself up to see her and it was very painful since I had not moved since the surgery and wasn’t taking my pain meds. She looked scary and I could hardly see her in there. I knew everyone was watching me it was like they were all waiting on me to break. Guess I should have mentioned that there were probably already 6-7 people in my room before the transport crew brought Winry in.
My husband and his family rushed to the other hospital to sign papers and be there for Winry after her surgery. I was stuck in a bed in a separate hospital 15 minutes away, with all my family and friends just waiting. On September 13th around 8:30 they started her surgery, she was only 23 hours old. Around 11 that night I finally got a hold of my husband. Winry came out of the surgery okay, she had a perforated intestine that had leaked bowel inside of her for maybe 2 weeks while she was still in utero, they cleaned it out and gave her a colostomy bag for her waste to go into until the hole could hopefully heal itself.
That Wednesday the day after her surgery and not even 48 hours after the c section the on call Dr discharged me so I could go to the other hospital to see my daughter. I had just gotten up out of bed for the first time at midnight the night before. It was awful, almost the worst pain I’ve ever felt before. I almost fell back onto the bed. No one had told me not to try standing straight up after the surgery. I hobbled into the bathroom shaking from the pain and ended up bleeding all over the floor because it took me so long to sit down on the toilet. My nurse got me cleaned up and back into bed. My family had driven to Old Navy to get me some clothes to wear home, and my sister drove me to the Children’s hospital. My Mom brought a wheel chair and took me up to see my daughter.
(1 day after surgery)
Winry had the breathing tube a little less than a week and was off morphine in the same amount of time, on my birthday September 23rd she had her first taste of breast milk. She was doing great and moving right along until Wednesday October 5th when she developed a bowel infection. That set her back a couple of weeks.
This was by far the hardest thing I have ever gone through and hopefully the hardest thing Winry ever goes through. There is nothing worse than seeing your child sick and in pain, knowing there is nothing you can do about it, and that it happened somehow while she was still inside you, the one place she should have been the safest.
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