My beautiful daughter turns 6 today - *GASP* - where did the time go?!?!
Well in honor of her birthday I thought I would share her birth story with you.
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Ashley's due date was June 7th (according to the ultrasound). Well that date came and went with nothing happening except for the regular evening contractions that were consistently 7 minutes apart. But when I woke up in the morning, everything was back to normal. My feet were swollen and it was hard to walk, but we walked & walked & walked.
Wednesday June 21, 2006 – only 14 days after my due date, we had another doctor's appointment. The doctors checked me out and signed a form to start the induction process at 6:00pm. I was given strict instructions to go home, eat, keep my feet up and rest.
At 6:00 pm off to the hospital we went. After filling out lots of paperwork we went up to the 2nd floor. Then they had me change into a gown and took my blood pressure and other vitals. They gave me a drug called cervidel which was supposed to start labor. Then they hooked me up to monitors to monitor my contractions. Sometime shortly after that I had another contraction – but this one was 8 minutes long! So they were a little concerned and watch the monitors for a bit. By 10:00 nothing serious was happening and someone else was coming in to have a baby so they sent us home and told us to be back at 7:30 the next morning.
The next morning we got to the hospital at 7:30 and were told that there was no room for us. So we had to wait a while till they had discharged someone. Originally they were going to send us to Winnipeg, but our doctor fought for us and said that we had to be in Steinbach. Once we got into a room I was hooked up to all the monitors and an pictocin IV. With this medication I had to have a nurse with me all the time. Once they upped the meds a couple of times I started to have contractions, but nothing that really made me uncomfortable or have pain. One of my contractions lasted 5 minutes and again the nurses were concerned so they took me off the medication for about 1 ½ hours. I pretty much stayed in bed all day except for a few bathroom breaks. At around 5:00 they took me off the drug again because the nurse that was with me was at the end of her shift. I was off the IV for about 45 minutes while I ate supper and till they found someone else to monitor me. They called everyone who wasn't working to try and find someone to come in and sit with me, but no luck. It looked like they would have to send me home and we would have to start the whole process over the next day.
Luckily for us a friend of ours had surgery that day and his wife worked in L & D. Since she was at the hospital anyway, she agreed to sit and monitor me. Well she stayed till 9:00pm and though my contractions were getting more intense nothing was moving along. I was on the maximum amount of pictocin that they can give and they were all shocked that nothing was happening. They called our doctor and we waited for a little while longer to see if anything would happen. Around 10:30 the nurse came in and said that we needed to talk about a c-section. I was terrified and wasn't sure what to say. The nurse said that with each contraction the baby's heartbeat would go down and not come back up as quickly as they would like. The nurse called our doctor again and she and Craig decided that they would administer the cervidel again to see what would happen. That night was definitely NOT restful since the nurses came in to check my vitals about every 1/2 hour.
By 7:00 the next morning, nothing had changed and they decided to do a c-section. Again I got kicked out of my room because another woman was having a baby. Around 8:30 they moved me into a private room and prepped me for surgery. They tried to get the catheater in 6 times and failed at EACH attempt. (The doctor assisting with the surgery, introduced himself and asked if his intern Curtis could be present to watch. At that point I would have been okay with all the hospital staff watching.)
The operating room is was a very bright and very cold room. They gave me the spinal and before they could get me lying down I could feel my body starting to numb up. The anesthesiologist was on my left side by my head and told me exactly what was going on. About 10 minutes in the anesthesiologist told me that I was
going to feel lots of pressure on my chest as they pushed and pulled out: A GIRL!
Dr. Galessiere (the surgeon) said that Ashley never would have been born naturally because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her chest.
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So that is the l-o-n-g story of how our little baby girl came into the world.
I am SO proud of her and the beautiful young woman she has become.
HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY ASHLEY :)
