I had a regularly scheduled OB appointment, and I went in hoping to be dilated and ready to have this baby! Nope, not dilated, seems a itty bitty bit of scar tissue was keeping me from dilating. Go. Figure. However she pops in and asks me to come back to the nurse's room to retake my blood pressure. Turns out the dipstick was showing protein in my urine which is an early sign of the big nasty pre-eclampsia. She retook my blood pressure and it was slightly elevated, but within norms. At this point my doctor has taken over and pretty well decided it is baby time. We aren't in any trouble or danger at this point, but if left alone we could get there. She said there is no point in even risking it. At 39 weeks, frequent contractions (I didn't think they were excessive or painful though,) the fact that these contractions were doing anything likely due to that sliver of scar tissue, early early indications that we **might** be heading down the road to pre-eclampsia, and the simple fact that I was ready and willing to have this little one enter the world. Pause there.
Remember this isn't my kiddo. So instantly I'm nervous. I know baby is fine. I know I am fine, but this is were being a surrogate changes things. I now needed to call my IM and let her know what was going on. In the previous week we had talked about inducing at 39 weeks and she decided she didn't want to do that, and that we should wait a little longer to see if baby would come spontaneously. I was upset. I was ready to plan this 39 week induction and to have it not be 100% my option was really hard for me since I had been expecting this to be my finish line all along. I got over it of course. However now I have to call her and let her know we really should do a 39 week induction, and I was worried she would think I was in cahoots with my doctor in getting this baby out on my timeline. My lovely IM being the awesome person she is took it in stride. She said that her and my IP would be flying in that evening. She spoke with my doctor to get an idea of what was going to be happening while they were flying down and I was sent over to Labor and Delivery.
My hospital is AH-MAZING. I walked over, got checked in (by the way, they redid the dipstick in Labor and Delivery and it was perfectly normal!) They started the induction process pretty quickly. I had already decided to hold off on any medications as long as possible (really until fear took over.) By lunchtime they had the cervix softener in with the hopes that it would soften that sliver of scar tissue and let my contractions take over. Well, my body knows what labor is, and pretty quickly caught on to what was supposed to be happening. I started have contractions 30 seconds apart within a couple hours of starting the softener which was supposed to stay in for 12 hours. We had to pull it out by the 6 hour mark to slow things down a bit. My IPs arrived that evening and we spent some time enjoying each other's company and chit chatting. All of us amazed that this time had come already. We were soon joined by Mary (she's AWESOME!!) who was our case manager through Growing Generations. It was so nice to sit and spend time with everyone. My hospital set my IPs up in the room next door so they would go next door here and there. 11pm or so and I'm still having plenty of contractions I decide I'm going to go hang out in the shower for a while. I know they're going to want to start pitocin in a little bit which will mean staying hooked up to the IV until after delivery so I took advantage of the time I could move around freely. Once I showered I spoke with my nurse and asked that we didn't start the pitocin until morning or we would have a baby tonight and I REALLY wanted my doctor to be the one to deliver. However at this point I'm ready to get some sleep so after some back and forth I decide to take the stadol my nurse was offering. She said I would pretty much just sleep through the happenings of the rest of the night.That stuff is preeeeetty awesome. However I'm known to fight through pain meds and anesthesia so I still woke up anytime someone came in the room, but I was definitely not feeling a lot of pain and felt kinda like I was in the twilight zone.
Morning time came and about 6am they started pitocin. I was going to try and wait out my epidural for a while longer, and pain wise I could have. However I knew my doctor was going to come in and the first thing she would want to do would be to break my water. With that in mind I went ahead and agreed to the epidural and by 6:30 my epidural was in place. Sure enough when my doctor (have I mentioned she is AMAZING???) came in around 7:30-8ish she broke my water. Said we would have baby this afternoon. She was scheduled in the OR today, but would come down between procedures and told my nurses to call her instead of the on-call doc for delivery. She left for the OR and we settled in for the day. Or so we thought...
Around 9:30ish my doctor comes back to my room,we chat, she checks me, I'm only 5cms dilated at this point. I'm uncomfortable, but not in any pain so I told my nurse I don't want to turn over to my other side yet. We chat for a bit longer and the nurse, my doc, and I all guess which afternoon hour this baby will arrive. My doc then goes next door (my IPs always left the room during checks, I'm modest all the way) to update my IPs on the progress. By now it's about 9:45 and my super cheerful nurse whizzes in the room and she is ALL. BUSINESS. She's very calm, but she says I need to turn over. I asked her if the baby was in distress and she BARELY nodded her head yes as she is checking all the monitors and getting a reading on baby. I turn over, she threw the oxygen mask on the bed, hit a button and said she needed hands. The CALVARY arrived. I swear every nurse on that floor was in the room within SECONDS, I actually took a second to count at least 7 of them. My doctor comes back in, and I found out later they asked the parents and Mary to wait a moment as we were just going to be moving around. My IF and Mary decide to run downstairs to get a bagel....of. course. My IM must have had a sense of things happening as she decided to go ahead and poke her head in, I'm so glad she did. My doctor asks for the OR to be readied and it's is looking a lot like we're going to have an emergency c-section. My doctor was able to feel babies head, and that the cord was wrapped around babe's neck which was causing the decels due to the cord being compressed. When she checked she also let me know that I was now 10cms dilated. Going from 5cm to 10cm in those few minutes saved me from the OR. My IM was by the head of the bed and I'll never forget how she repeated my name as her baby was being born. Three pushes and baby arrived. Baby took a second to cry, but pinked up and looked perfect. My IF made it in the room within 60 seconds of baby being born, he threw the bagel bag on the floor, and the look on his face was priceless as he met his new baby for the first time.
During all the excitement everyone always forgets that the placenta needs to be delivered. Of course my doctor being the pro she is was being watchful and thankfully so as my uterus decide to join the freakin circus for a minute and attempted to flip inside out. I say it with jest because she caught it and kept it from happening, but it's a big big deal if it does manage to completely invert. Have I mentioned that my doctor is a ROCKSTAR??
They took care of baby in the room and things settled down my IPs and their fresh little one sat down in my room and we all just looked at each other. I think we were all a little stunned. The rapidness of baby's arrival, the dramatic flair baby decided to throw in the mix, the fact that my IF toasting my IMs bagel twice because that's how she likes it caused him to miss the actual delivery. I had my room pretty cold, and suggested that they take baby next door where it was warmer, and I was going to attempt to get up and move around a bit. One bonus to a super fast delivery is that the epidural wears off pretty quick when you haven't had it in for very long. I was able to get up and walk much sooner than anyone expected.
My IPs came back over right about the time the nurse came and said they had two rooms ready for us over on the Mother Baby unit. Holding a baby and taking the ride over the Mother Baby I was pretty darn proud as I looked to my side and saw these two beaming parents. I could have gone home the same evening of delivery, but decide to stay so we could have some extra visiting time.We spent the evening and next day visiting and ooooing and aahing over baby. My mom came to visit and held baby, and my kiddos came to see the tiny human I had been growing for the family far far away. 24 hours after delivery we said our goodbye for nows. It was all so special, but so simple. Just perfect.
