Petersons Never Give Up: Baby Lizzie's Here Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post I was scheduled for an induction on Wednesday at 6:30. I felt great all day on Tuesday, which was nice since I had been having contractions and was just so uncomfortable for what feels like weeks! We were able to get everything ready. We finished folding laundry, took showers, and set our alarms. We turned the lights out about 11 and I fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up at about midnight feeling uncomfortable and then just drifted in and out of sleep. By about 1, I kept getting up to use the bathroom because I thought that might help with the discomfort. I started to have some uncomfortable cramping and thought I should watch the time to see if there was any pattern to the pain. I was pretty determined to NOT be turned away from L&D again! Sean got up to use the bathroom at 1:20 and I felt some gushing. I thought my water was breaking so I was going to get up, but thought it would be better to wait for Sean to come back and bring me a towel. He came back in and I told him I thought my water had broken and that I needed a towel. When I got up there was tons of blood, which horrified me! I could not stop shaking and just wanted to get to the hospital as quickly as possible! Sean assured me it was ok, I asked him if that was normal and he said he didn’t know =) We got dressed, put the bags in the car, put some items in to soak and headed off to the hospital. At one point Sean came down the stairs to find me curling my hair, his expression was hilarious as he asked if I’d like to sit down, I reassured him that I was not doing all my hair, I just didn’t want my bangs in my eyes for the next 2 days. It took me about 3 minutes to get my hair out of my face, then I was ready =) It just reminded me of a friend whose water broke and her husband wanted to grill some lamb chops before they went to the hospital =)
We arrived at the hospital (which is luckily only 10 minutes from our house) and Sean asked if I would like a wheelchair. I declined remembering how our teacher from our birthing class we took 5 years ago told us to walk because you will likely need to walk to dilate more. After I had declined I told him I was such a dork because I really would have liked the wheelchair. We got to the desk and I asked if I could sit while Sean signed us in. They took me to my room and had me change then the nurse came in to evaluate. She was pretty skeptical (which sounds harsh because she was really nice) that my water had broken. After we explained what had happened and also that we were supposed to be induced at 6:30, she was good with keeping us. She checked me and we learned that my water had not broken, I had just had lots of bleeding as my cervix was changing, I was now at a 6 and having regular strong contractions. Sean kept a really good record that I will paste in here:
Lizzie's Birth

12:30am Jennie can't sleep, having irregular contractions
1:40am feels leaking, has bloody show; we get the bag and head out to the hospital!
2:30am checked in, monitor looks good, Chelsie has trouble with getting an IV, the charge nurse gets it after 3 other tries (her veins are "big and juicy" and blow easily). They check her and she is at 6/100% so we're getting admitted a few hours early before the scheduled induction at 6:30am.
3:00am the anesthesiologist Shane comes in with a Red Sox hat, and Jennie is feeling much better after the epidural is in. Contractions much more regular and strong but the epidural works great but she can still move her legs and feels when the contractions come, more like Alana's epidural.
3:30am the whirlwind admission is done with, we get some time to chill
3:45am now she's at a 7. We call Jennie's dad to come on over
5:00am Mom and Dad Z arrive
5:40am dilated to an 8! Chelsie takes off to sign out to the day nurse.
7:30am Dr. arrives, breaks her waters. Still at an 8. Jennie's tired, gets some rest. The day nurse is Michelle and she has two student nurses who watch on from a distance; one is super excited to be an L&D nurse someday.
8am They get gown and gloves for Sean to do the delivery.
8:35am Jennie starts pushing, takes about 10 pushes to get Lizzie out;
8:45am Lizzie is born! She comes sunnyside up, too.
8:46am Sean doesn't dawdle about cutting the cord because Lizzie's first APGAR score is 2 and not really breathing well. Respiratory therapy and nurses give her CPAP and suctioning but she doesn't perk up even after 2 rounds of the CPAP, so they called the NICU to have Lizzie sent there. Sean goes with Lizzie, while Dr. finishes stitching up Jennie. Jennie gets to hold Lizzie for a moment before she goes
9:31am Lizzie gives her first cry. She's put on oxygen by high flow nasal cannula and for a while they thought she would need CPAP for a long time, but it turns out she does okay on the O2. Even so she is breathing very fast, 80-100 times per minute, which worries the NICU doctor. So Lizzie gets a full workup including x-ray and the neonatologist wonders about Transient Tachypnea of the Newborn or if she doesn't get better perhaps Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn.
10:30am The neonatologist decides we need to put in central lines; they can use the umbilical vessels which is nice because they don't have nerve endings and it's easier than getting multiple pokes. Sean heads back to Jennie's postpartum room because he can't stay during the procedure and he wants to update the family. Lizzie is on 4L at 50%
11:00 Sean gets lunch. Yummy pizza! We talk with Mom and Dad Z
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2-3pm Candy and a student nurse Whitt help Jennie get to the bathroom so she can come to the NICU; Jennie still can't really stand but the nurses are great and help her out as much as she needs. Yay for wheelchairs!
3:30pm Sean and Jennie go to visit Lizzie; she's already down to 4L/40%. She has a cute name tag on her pod in the NICU. The nurse there is very kind and asks us to make sure to keep her asleep so she doesn't fidget with her lines. She's got the central lines in her belly button, an OG tube to help decompress her stomach from the air from the high flow nasal cannula.
4:30pm Our home teacher, comes by to help give a blessing because poor Dad Z has a cold so he's not allowed in the NICU.
Some tender mercies:

We have felt a very powerful feeling of peace, and although we are sad Lizzie could not come home immediately, we always felt it would be okay
Jennie went into labor on the day we had set apart for her induction, so the office visits were cancelled, the kids were happily sent to Kaden and Lexi's house, and all was set so that when she went into labor spontaneously we didn't have to scramble
We felt good about getting a higher premium insurance this year which has lower deductibles and better coverage.

Now for some pictures =)
Sean was able to deliver Lizzie! He did an amazing job and it was really cool to see him do it! It was also fun to have my doctor holding one of my legs =) My mom got to be there for Lizzie’s birth too and it was really amazing to have her there, she said my leg was ridiculously heavy with the epidural. She was so wonderful at staying with me and holding my hand when everyone else went to help Lizzie!

Fully dilated and effaced and ready to push!

Kissing the doctor=)

Lizzie is rushed over to receive some breathing treatments since she is looking pretty bad. Sean said they even told him to quickly cut the cord and get her to them.

After she is rushed to the NICU, they hooked her up to so many monitors, it was so sad to see her with so many tubes and wires! Poor baby!

In this next picture you can see that I still have my iv in. They did things so differently than in Albuquerque. They didn’t wait for me to be able to get in a wheel chair before moving me to a recovery room, they just rolled me onto another bed and wheeled me down the hall. They also had me take in 2 bags of a pitocin through my iv AFTER the baby was born. It was fine as I was still numb, but pretty rotten as I got less numb and started pumping (which produces enough oxytocin on its own). I still don’t think its fair you have contractions for days after the baby is born. When I had about a quarter of the bag left I finally just told them to stop and that I didn’t want it. It did seem to work though to help everything contract and help slow the bleeding. I’ve lost 20 lbs this last week =)

Lizzie’s cute name tag and her Giraffe bed with all the monitors.

The hospital provided us with a celebratory meal for 2. It was super yummy, tasted just like a nice restaurant!

They delivered it with flowers and a table cloth and chocolates!

My parents came after dinner and my mom went to visit Lizzie. We weren’t allowed to hold her because of her central lines going through her belly button. After they left, we went over to see her again and say good night. She looked so sad and sick, it broke my heart! What a rotten way to start life! I was so so grateful for modern medicine that was helping her breathe though!

We went back to our room and had a prayer before going to bed thanking Heavenly Father for our new baby girl. It was so hard to not have her in the room with us and it had been a really long day for both of us too. I had cried a little throughout the day, but it sorta just hit me there that my baby was in the NICU and I didn’t know how long she’d have to stay. I asked Sean if it was okay that I just really didn’t want to do this, it wasn’t my plan for how things were supposed to go.
We both slept pretty well, just waking up once to pump and also when the nurse came in. I woke up at 5 with the nurse and she asked me to rate my pain, I said 0 and thought “I’m going to walk down to the NICU to see Lizzie then I’m going to take a shower, then we can figure out the day.” I stood up and it hit me pretty hard that I had just had a baby like less than 24 hours ago, I opted to have Sean wheel me down to the NICU. When we got there, Lizzie was doing so much better. She had come down on her oxygen quite a bit and was looking so much better! The nurse showed us her x-rays. The problem she was having was that the fluid in her body didn’t absorb correctly after she was born. The x-ray on the right shows tons of cloudiness on her left lung, the x-ray on the left shows that the cloudiness had gone down significantly in that first day, and it showed in her breathing as well =) They said if the doctor approved they would remove the central line and then we could hold her about 11. I had gotten to hold her for like 2 minutes before they rushed her to the NICU and that was so hard to not get to hold her for those hours! I can't even imagine how some families do this for months! We went back to the room and went back to sleep for a few hours. My doctor came in and cleared me to go home. I wanted to get back to Brett and Alana too =)