She made it. Arden Ballard Fussa, 6:40 am. 5-4-11.
That's her name up there. Arden. She JUST received it now. It makes me really nervous to pick baby names.
Below is a looong story of the somewhat dramatic circumstances of her birth for my record and those interested... I hope it makes sense, I'm a little sleepy and my eyes are dry..., but all you need to know is she's healthy and happy and I'll post photos when I get home tomorrow... Big brother is in total love with her.
Well.. it was a little hairy. I was going to be induced on wednesday. I went to the hospital tuesday afternoon in prep for that. But things were complicated by me having too many contractions. So they had me wait around in the MICU. I eventually requested that if they weren't going to do anything to advance my labor (since 6 hours of strong contractions every 2 minutes didn't progress me at all) that they needed to let me eat. So after a sandwich and some more time sitting quietly in the dark managing my contractions, I had finally started making more progress and some rooms opened up in L and D, (apparently EVERY room, they delivered a bunch of babies right before I went down there). I went down to L and D. The night nurses were cool, and the on call resident was cool and they settled me in, and got Mark one of those fancy chair beds (the MICU had no such accommodations for papas) so he could rest. It was about... 2 am.
Pretty much the moment I got to the L and D room, her heart rate dropped to 90. The rest of the labor was basically a battle against serious decels. After two more hours I was exhausted with the pain and was agreeable to an epidural (which I had assumed I would get since I thought I would be induced with pitocin, something which I did not think I could tolerate without pain management. In the end I don't REGRET the epidural, but it was probably not necessary). About 15 minutes after my epidural my water ruptured (it was weird and kind of pleasantly warm!) and of course, because nothing can go well, it was stained with meconium, probably from the stress of days of strong contractions, I imagine.
The next two hours or so the nurses spent a lot of time flipping me back and forth and up and down trying to get her hear rate to stay up above 110, or not go down very low with the contractions. Turns out my fears about her tolerating my contractions were somewhat justified.... though these were monster contractions. The last thing that happened in any relaxed way was them sitting me up nice and straight (cocked off just slightly to the side to make sure blood flow to the babe was okay) to gain the help of gravity. I did my best to sit indian style and make plenty of room for her. I sat like that for about an hour. The epidural had PCA controlled boluses available, but I didn't use it and just settled for the base rate pain relief, because I didn't want to slow things down any more, and was concerned about her heart rate.
I'm not sure how long this period lasted (less than an hour.. it should be said here neither Mark nor my mom know either because they were resting and I prefer to deal with my pain in silent meditation, so no one really knew it was getting painful until it was completely beyond belief). Soon the pain became pretty intolerable and I asked the nurse to come and help me change positions. The hip that was propped up to tilt me was getting no medicine and had become agonizing. By the time the nurse came in, it was beyond agonizing (and it took her only seconds to get in). I told the nurse I was dying (then of course clarified in my pain addled state that I knew I was not ACTUALLY dying, but I wanted to die and it felt like I was dying.)
At this point, I think heart rates started getting a little sketchy (90-100) and they laid me back down. And then either MORE fluid was leaking or I peed all over myself, but I didn't know. The nurse was pulling the pad out from the bed, telling me to lay on my side. I did so half-heartedly, thinking it was to ease her extracting the wet pad, and she gently but firmly shoved my shoulder over and told me firmly I needed to lay on my side. Then someone mentioned there was blood on the pad. Then more fluid leaked. Then the room was full of nurses and someone was putting a mask on me talking to me. The they started flipping me back and forth, and had removed the heart beat monitor and were moving it around by hand looking for a heart beat. Her heart rate had dropped down to 60, and then disappeared and all their maneuvering couldn't get it to come back up, and it was continuing to drop.
I was mostly unaware of any of this because I was so out of my mind in pain I hadn't any idea what was going on. Suddenly then I had nurses all around and people were calling for the NICU (because of the meconium). The resident was calling for an attending and other nurses were pulling up my feet and telling me to push. It wasn't until I looked up into the face of one my nurses when I realized when they said push hard, they meant, like NOW, or else. I am a pretty big rockstar when it comes to pushing babies hard and fast, which came in handy that day. Not a skill you need very often, however. In two pushes her head was out, two more and she was born. Eli's birth (not labor) was fast and furious, but there was enough time to have my mom and mark standing next to me, and after he was born, Mark cut the cord, and Eli was put right on my chest and things were happy and excited, not frantic.
She ended up being absolutely fine and nearly a full pound heavier than her brother (she weighed 7.0 lbs). The attending didn't make it to the birth, but the resident was amazing. Calm, confident, competent. The nurses knew what they were doing and got stuff done in a hurry and my little girl is doing awesome thanks to them all. I got her back a couple minutes later, and she nursed like a champ from the get go. She was wide awake, alert and looking around the room for several hours after she was born. She's so different from her brother. He was never a sleeper (even in the earliest days), and never spent any time awake and calm. The littlest one here sleeps an average amount for a newborn (ie a lot) and spends the rest of her time looking around quietly making barely a peep. Whenever she DOES make a noise everyone in the room runs over to see her, since it's such an odd event (short of diaper changes, which of course elicit a loud wailing.)
So, I ended up having the little one before my induction was even scheduled to start, and almost NO interventions even happened (I had the epidural for all of 2.5 hours).
Below is a looong story of the somewhat dramatic circumstances of her birth for my record and those interested... I hope it makes sense, I'm a little sleepy and my eyes are dry..., but all you need to know is she's healthy and happy and I'll post photos when I get home tomorrow... Big brother is in total love with her.
Well.. it was a little hairy. I was going to be induced on wednesday. I went to the hospital tuesday afternoon in prep for that. But things were complicated by me having too many contractions. So they had me wait around in the MICU. I eventually requested that if they weren't going to do anything to advance my labor (since 6 hours of strong contractions every 2 minutes didn't progress me at all) that they needed to let me eat. So after a sandwich and some more time sitting quietly in the dark managing my contractions, I had finally started making more progress and some rooms opened up in L and D, (apparently EVERY room, they delivered a bunch of babies right before I went down there). I went down to L and D. The night nurses were cool, and the on call resident was cool and they settled me in, and got Mark one of those fancy chair beds (the MICU had no such accommodations for papas) so he could rest. It was about... 2 am.
Pretty much the moment I got to the L and D room, her heart rate dropped to 90. The rest of the labor was basically a battle against serious decels. After two more hours I was exhausted with the pain and was agreeable to an epidural (which I had assumed I would get since I thought I would be induced with pitocin, something which I did not think I could tolerate without pain management. In the end I don't REGRET the epidural, but it was probably not necessary). About 15 minutes after my epidural my water ruptured (it was weird and kind of pleasantly warm!) and of course, because nothing can go well, it was stained with meconium, probably from the stress of days of strong contractions, I imagine.
The next two hours or so the nurses spent a lot of time flipping me back and forth and up and down trying to get her hear rate to stay up above 110, or not go down very low with the contractions. Turns out my fears about her tolerating my contractions were somewhat justified.... though these were monster contractions. The last thing that happened in any relaxed way was them sitting me up nice and straight (cocked off just slightly to the side to make sure blood flow to the babe was okay) to gain the help of gravity. I did my best to sit indian style and make plenty of room for her. I sat like that for about an hour. The epidural had PCA controlled boluses available, but I didn't use it and just settled for the base rate pain relief, because I didn't want to slow things down any more, and was concerned about her heart rate.
I'm not sure how long this period lasted (less than an hour.. it should be said here neither Mark nor my mom know either because they were resting and I prefer to deal with my pain in silent meditation, so no one really knew it was getting painful until it was completely beyond belief). Soon the pain became pretty intolerable and I asked the nurse to come and help me change positions. The hip that was propped up to tilt me was getting no medicine and had become agonizing. By the time the nurse came in, it was beyond agonizing (and it took her only seconds to get in). I told the nurse I was dying (then of course clarified in my pain addled state that I knew I was not ACTUALLY dying, but I wanted to die and it felt like I was dying.)
At this point, I think heart rates started getting a little sketchy (90-100) and they laid me back down. And then either MORE fluid was leaking or I peed all over myself, but I didn't know. The nurse was pulling the pad out from the bed, telling me to lay on my side. I did so half-heartedly, thinking it was to ease her extracting the wet pad, and she gently but firmly shoved my shoulder over and told me firmly I needed to lay on my side. Then someone mentioned there was blood on the pad. Then more fluid leaked. Then the room was full of nurses and someone was putting a mask on me talking to me. The they started flipping me back and forth, and had removed the heart beat monitor and were moving it around by hand looking for a heart beat. Her heart rate had dropped down to 60, and then disappeared and all their maneuvering couldn't get it to come back up, and it was continuing to drop.
I was mostly unaware of any of this because I was so out of my mind in pain I hadn't any idea what was going on. Suddenly then I had nurses all around and people were calling for the NICU (because of the meconium). The resident was calling for an attending and other nurses were pulling up my feet and telling me to push. It wasn't until I looked up into the face of one my nurses when I realized when they said push hard, they meant, like NOW, or else. I am a pretty big rockstar when it comes to pushing babies hard and fast, which came in handy that day. Not a skill you need very often, however. In two pushes her head was out, two more and she was born. Eli's birth (not labor) was fast and furious, but there was enough time to have my mom and mark standing next to me, and after he was born, Mark cut the cord, and Eli was put right on my chest and things were happy and excited, not frantic.
She ended up being absolutely fine and nearly a full pound heavier than her brother (she weighed 7.0 lbs). The attending didn't make it to the birth, but the resident was amazing. Calm, confident, competent. The nurses knew what they were doing and got stuff done in a hurry and my little girl is doing awesome thanks to them all. I got her back a couple minutes later, and she nursed like a champ from the get go. She was wide awake, alert and looking around the room for several hours after she was born. She's so different from her brother. He was never a sleeper (even in the earliest days), and never spent any time awake and calm. The littlest one here sleeps an average amount for a newborn (ie a lot) and spends the rest of her time looking around quietly making barely a peep. Whenever she DOES make a noise everyone in the room runs over to see her, since it's such an odd event (short of diaper changes, which of course elicit a loud wailing.)
So, I ended up having the little one before my induction was even scheduled to start, and almost NO interventions even happened (I had the epidural for all of 2.5 hours).