Finally, the birthing and delivery story of Alethea...

Alethea's birthing story...

I've only been meaning to write this all of this last week!
Yay, finally getting it done :)

For those of you who were curious about exactly what happened and why she came early:

WEEK 37 DOC APPOINTMENT:

Wednesday, July 28th, I had my 37 week doc appointment, Mom and I had the whole day planned out with errands, haircuts and shopping; and lots of last minute things to get sorted out, before baby H's arrival. I had been praying that she would come early, for two reasons, one: July 30th is Grandma Juedes's B-day(J's Grandma) and two: we wanted to fly back to IL in mid-August and she needed to be at least a week or two weeks old for the Doctor and airlines to allow her to fly.

At my previous appointment I was completely closed(not dilated at all) and everything was normal, except for my blood pressure being slightly elevated. It didn't seem
likely that I would go into labor anytime soon. Even though I was praying for her to arrive early, I also knew that, realistically, many first time Mommies are late, so I was trying to prepare myself for whatever happened

At my 37 week appointment I discussed my options for an induction, but my doctor and the hospital's policy was to not induce until after the official due date, unless warranted by different medical reasons. She checked me again and I was still not dilated, we tentatively agreed to set the induction date for August 14th, the day after her official due date. We were just about to leave the room when she popped back in and said that she just wanted to double check the baby's movements just to be sure that she was still doing well, though the ultrasound, not even a week earlier had been near perfect.

We got all hooked up to the fetal monitor and after 20 minutes the doctor checked out the results and said that she wasn't as active as she would like her to be, so we went to get an ultrasound, she said it could just mean that she was sleeping. As the ultrasound tech was doing her scan it was pretty obvious that things weren't quite to her liking and when she left the room to get the doctor, we knew something was amiss. Long story, short, my amniotic fluid levels had plummeted from 9 cm (the previous Friday) to less than 2.2 cm on Wednesday. My doc came in and asked us if we were ready to have a baby?! Mom and I both shrieked and clapped our hands and we were taken down to labor and delivery right after that, where I got hooked up to a fetal monitor and other machines.

LABOR AND DELIVERY:

I was given medicine to help me dilate and efface at 6:30pm on Wednesday evening and I started to have light contractions through the night, which mainly felt like bad

lower back pains. The next morning, July 30th, Thursday, I was started on Pitocin at 6 am and shortly after that I started having more intense contractions. The doctor came in a while later and broke my water. Things started getting intense - I was able to use the bouncy ball to work through the contractions, since I was still having back labor and lying in bed was even worse. After a while my contractions were right on top of one another and I wasn't getting any breaks in between. At that point I decided to have some pain medication to take the edge off, and then I had to get back into the bed too. When the nurse checked me, I was 6 cm dilated which they seemed to consider something of a record for a first time Mom.

Not long after this that I told the nurse that I wanted to start pushing. When they checked me again, I was fully dilated and she said I could start pushing. At this time the nurses were saying things like "record time" and "that was quick". I started pushing until the nurse told me to stop and ran to get the doctor. I guess things progressed quicker than expected as the doc ran in with her robes half fastened and all I wanted to do was to push and get her out.

She was born at 10:15am, with her one arm wrapped around her neck (which they thought was her cord at first) and with her fingernails facing out. As a result, she scratched me quite a bit internally, which caused a lot of bleeding. I was just happy to have her out and to hear her scream. The doctor was busy with me for about 50minutes afterwards, and she explained that the stitches kept coming apart and bleeding. Eventually they gave up on the stitches and put in packing(vag-pack) to stop the bleeding - and I was able to hold Alethea - at last!

That's about it in a nutshell, we had some troubles getting Alethea to latch on, but now she is doing great!!

**A huge praise God for prompting my doctor to do the fetal monitoring and ultrasound and that HE made everything work out so wonderfully! and of course for our beautiful baby girl who is FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE BY HIM!!

***Please be praying for Alethea, that she would stay HEALTHY and tolerate the flight back to WI/IL on Saturday morning.***