Birth Story

I finally have a few moments to try and capture Miles' birth story. His birth story really starts on the Sunday before he was born, and although I wrote briefly about it in previous posts, I'm including it here to have the complete story.

The Sunday before he was born, we were driving back from a relaxing weekend in Leavenworth. We stopped at a friend's house for a little baby shower from my work friends. I had a lovely time visiting with my friends and they were so generous to give us some food for our freezer to help once the baby came. Little did we know how soon we'd need it!
Later that night, just as we were getting ready for bed, I discovered I was bleeding. I called the on-call OB and she wanted me to come into triage and be seen. A neighbor came over to spend the night with Kate, so we didn't have to bring her with us. We ended up staying the whole night until Monday afternoon while they decided what to do with us. At one point the OB said, "well, I don't think we have to section you right now..." not exactly what we were expecting to hear! We had an ultrasound and had continuous monitoring all night to watch baby, and everything ended up looking good. Bleeding stopped, baby looked good, so we were sent home Monday afternoon.

Tuesday I had my regular OB appt and had another non-stress test just to make sure baby still looked good, which he did. He was moving actively and everything seemed to be going well.

Wednesday I woke up and our little boy wasn't moving very much. I (obviously) had taken the day off work, and was just laying low resting, but our baby wasn't moving like he normally did. I called the office to talk to a nurse and was advised to come in and have more monitoring. My mom came over to watch Kate and we headed it around 3 for another non-stress test. This time, baby boy wasn't looking as good on the monitor. He had a decelleration of his heart rate once, and my OB wanted me to be monitored further. So we headed over to L&D triage (again!) for more monitoring. We had more ultrasounds and monitoring. The ultrasound did not look very good--they score babies on breathing, tone, activity and levels of amniotic fluid--and we only got 4 out of 8. So again, we had the discussion of c-section now, or wait and see. Baby looked better on the monitor, so after a discussion with a perinatologist, we decided to wait for the morning and have another ultrasound to look at baby.

So Thursday morning we had another ultrasound, and while our baby was looking better, my amniotic fluid levels had dropped significantly. They decided that we needed to get our little guy out, but since he was just 36 weeks, decided to do an amnio to check his lung development(this was around 10am). If it came back that his lungs weren't fully mature, then we'd try to do some more watchful waiting and let him grow a few more days. Luckily, the amnio showed his lungs were mature and we then scheduled our c-section for 5:30pm.

We spent the rest of the day getting ready...my mom brought Kate in so that we could see her before and get some last pictures of our family of 3. I was feeling so emotional at this point--it was such an up and down week, back and forth about delivering this baby or not...ugh! I had really been looking forward to another vaginal birth (yes, looking forward to it!), but this was one of those times where you are glad that c-sections are options.

So around 5pm, everyone started to come in, prepping me for surgery. We headed down to the OR and got started. The surgery itself was straightforward and without any problems and our little Miles was born at 5:58pm! It was hard not to be able to immediately hold him, when they took him over to the warmer, but Todd was able to stand right next to him and be close. Finally Todd was able to hold him and he immediately brought Miles over to me so that I could meet our son too. It was so emotional--I was crying practically the whole time, and yet I didn't cry at all during Kate's birth. Such different experiences!

We headed over to recovery and after awhile my parents & Kate were able to come in and meet Miles too. Kate was tired as it was bedtime, but she was excited to see Miles and give him kisses. So precious.

We stayed in the hospital until Saturday evening (about 15 minutes longer than the required minimum of 48 hours!) and came home to get settled. Miles had difficulty with nursing for the first couple of weeks and I had to pump after feeding for awhile, but now he's nursing like a champ! We're all adjusting well, and life seems to have gotten back into a (new) routine.

I'll work on getting some new pictures up soon!

love, Julie