wouldn’t it be amazing if we could plan every detail of our children’s birth? YES! unfortunately, not being the case, Nori
remained breech. after adam and i attended 12 weeks of Bradley Natural Birthing Classes, “scheduled csection” wasn’t
exactly what i wanted to hear.
we remain very passionate about natural birthing and hope to experience the next go
around! At 30 wks we found out little nori was laying transverse and she should have already been head down by that point.
i wasn’t worried cause she had plenty of time, but that day started the wild goose chase to fix the situation. i researched the
heck out of ‘breech’ presentations online and began doing EVERY technique/procedure that seemed to work for everyone
else. as the weeks went by and the doc’s started using that dreaded term “c section,” I started becoming a little bit crazy.
we took it up a notch and instead of “laying on a 30 degree slant”, adam would put my legs over his shoulders and hang
me completely upside down! nothing. i paid hundreds of dollars to every sort of therapist/chiropractor who swore of 97%
success rates for flipping breech babies. nothing. the last option was at 37 weeks, we checked into the hospital (bags
packed in case of emergency), and the doctor performed an ECV on me. while it was very painful and left
me bruised and sore, it wasn’t successful. at that point, many offered to help us find a doctor who would deliver
a frank breech baby. but with much meditation, prayer and finally acceptance, we decided everything DOES happen
for a reason. we THOUGHT the baby and i were healthy and wanted to keep it that way…
~~~
my last belly shot, just before they gave me my heplock to prep for surgery. 39 weeks.
my BFF emily was able to be with us to support me and take cool pics that my husband was too afraid to take. he’s a wimp.
i wish the roles were reversed, i would have loved to take shots of that!
as if i wasn’t swollen enough…they had to pump me full of THREE fluid bags in the hour leading up to surgery! aghhh!!
thankfully adam hid my dbl chin
i couldn’t believe adam didn’t pass out. i was even more impressed he was able to stand up and get this!! he did it so fast,
he must not have realized what he did!
remember how i said she was breech? for the last 9 weeks in the womb her feet were touching her facewhen they inked
her little feet, she got black on her ears and nose!! she stayed like this the first few days unless we swaddled her legs down!
think she will be a gymnast when she grows up?
she was so wittle! as you could see her color was VERY white. when babies come out the nurses quickly assess a number of
things, and give them an apgar score out of 10. nori’s was 4. that is dangerously low.
the transfer from the operating room to recovery. it was about a 30 second ride. this was the first and only time i got to
hold her for the first 36 hours of her life. soon after this, adam and the nurses took her to the NICU. and thank God emily
was with me and able to go get our parents. i needed support IMMEDIATELY!!
in recovery, the nurses were all crowded around nori getting ready to take her. i wasn’t even able to see her from my bed.
since i was able to use my upper half (ha!) just fine… i snapped some proud daddy shots. for fathers day i bought adam a
plain tshirt so they could stamp her feet on him
in the NICU they knew something was wrong but couldn’t figure it out exactly. without the oxygen she’d lose her color
but her heart and lungs were fully developed so it wasn’t making sense. her hemoglobin count was 16 and should have
been around or above 40. they knew she didn’t have enough blood in her, which is why she wasn’t receiving enough
oxygen to keep her color.
here she is all ‘hooked up’.they took my blood after they took hers and found i had ‘baby blood’ in me. which meant
my placenta had been leaking blood and they didn’t know it. my body was absorbing the blood she should have been
receiving! once they established this, they knew blood transfusions would solve her problem. the red tube leading into her
hand was blood. after receiving blood for about 10 hrs, she then became jaundice :-/ thankfully it stayed at an ok count
that she didn’t have to be under the lights.
once i was able to feel my lower half (about dinner time), erin was allowed to wheel me to the NICU. Daddy had literally been
standing there by her side like this the entire time. by almost midnight i had to beg him to come back to the room with
me and go to bed.
about 48 hours later they finally released her to be with us! the walk out of the NICU was very exciting but at the same time,
it was the saddest moment. as they wheeled her incubator past all the other sickly TEENY tiny babies in the NICU, my heart
sunk wondering if and when they will ever be released. we were so blessed to be walking out with a beautiful healthy baby
who practically looked like a giant next to them. this picture was just after the first time i was able to breastfeed her. i was
very VERY happy she was able to feed since they were supplementing her in the NICU with bottles.
they later told me the tear/detachment/leak/?? was most likely,(w/o taking full responsibility) caused by the ECV
procedure. you know, that procedure i was VERY unsure about and wanted to avoid at all costs because it could
damage my placenta…yah, that one. they sent my placenta to the lab to see what happened. i was never given direct
answer, which is a WHOLE other story, but it does clearly explain why she was so small in weight and length. she
was smaller than they estimated her to be at the ECV, which means, last two weeks she wasn’t receiving the full amount of
blood and nutrients to continue growing.after all the drama she was finally discharged only one day late! yippee! the
hospital team told us to act as if none of it ever happened?! they said she was healthy now and that the transfusions will
never be an issue again. THANK YOU GOD!! we knew she was going to be an excellent christmas present…
we didn’t know she was going to be our christmas miracle!! she’s perfect. -written in jan 2010.
