But...my little girl arrived on December 11th at 8:07 pm. She weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces and was 21 inches long (I question that length being accurate as she was about 19 inches a few days later). I was 36 weeks and 4 days.
My water broke (at work of all places) on Thursday, December 10th around 3:45 pm. After a tiny bit of mayhem, I made it to L&D only to find out I wasn't dilated. They wanted to see if I would start on my own, but nope! Around midnight I was put on Pitocin. An hour or so later, they administered the epidural.
Now, I always assumed I'd get the drugs for labor and delivery of a baby. And many people on that day said, "don't be a hero, get the drugs". I will tell you right now that is my biggest regret. The epidural made me the most miserable of any other part of my labor. For this reason. I got "wet tapped". Google it. But it basically means that they went to far. They punctured my dura. This meant that they had to give me the meds for the epidural very slowly because of the intense effect it would have. My lower body was complete dead weight. I couldn't feel them at all and even worse, for about 8-10 hours my legs felt asleep. Like the pins and needles asleep feeling. It pretty much drove me insane. To the point that I finally told them to turn the epidural meds way down so I could have feeling back.
By around 5 pm, on Friday, December 11th, I was finally dilated to a 10. We pushed for over 2 hours but she wouldn't budged past my pelvic bone. The doctor didn't think she was going to be able to get past it. She said I could push for another hour, but she just didn't see it working. So c-section it was.
At 8:07, my beautiful Liddy Rose arrived into this world as perfect as she could be. I will never ever forget those moments. The moment in which we became a perfect family of five. When my family was officially complete.
The next day, my cup runneth over when my boys "strolled" into the room. It was in that moment that I broke down in tears. One, I'd been away from them for 2 full days. Two, I had all my children together, in one place for the first time.
I wish I could say that things were super easy and smooth sailing from there. They weren't exactly. We were discharged on Monday, December 14th. But on Tuesday, Liddy was looking a wee too yellow and we had her bilirubin checked. It was 19. WAY too high. She was immediately admitted into the NICU and put under lights. That same day, my headaches from the last 2 days intensified. This was something I was told to watch out for from the anesthesiologist. I was told to go to triage (2 floors down from the NICU) and it was confirmed that I was having spinal headaches from the wet tap. So in between feeding Liddy in the NICU, I had to have a blood patch to try and fix the wet tap. Luckily it worked and the headaches went away immediately. But having a second epidural knowing that the same thing could happen again...was NOT fun.
The next two nights. I stayed at the hospital. Walking the halls at night (less than a week after my c-section) every few hours to feed my little girl. Luckily my milk had come in around the same day she was admitted. I like to think that I helped in a small way with getting her out of there and home quickly. On Thursday, December 17th, we finally went home for good.
It was so hard being away from the boys for so long and especially hard knowing I couldn't pick them up. The restrictions from the c-section AND the blood patch were pretty clear on that. It sucked. I won't lie.
The past 5 days have been a bit of a blur. We have 3 babies age 5 months and under. Pretty freaking amazing, but pretty exhausting too. Especially while recovering. But I'm doing great...and so is she. And so are my boys! We're finding a decent little rhythm and luckily have had family in town to help us.
My husband was my hero through all of this. Everything he's done and continues to do makes me realize how lucky I truly am to have him. I look at him and these beautiful children and trust me, I know how blessed we are this very special Christmas.
