Needless to say it was 10am, I was at my physical therapy appointment and Chrissy couldn’t help me. In fact, she couldn't touch me without me screaming. She said "Marian, I am afraid that you might be experiencing back labor, have you called your OB?" I am not sure why I didn't think of this at 4am as I had experienced a lot of back labor with Stella. I will assume that the horrific painful experience was repressed from my memory! So I walked to my car and paged my OB, Dr. Wood.
Once I finally reached Dr. Wood, he told me to head to Maternity Triage at the hospital and that he would be down to see me (since his office is in the same building as the hospital). But first I had to head home, meet Todd and grab my hospital bag. Now that I look back on it, I am not sure how I even drove home. Yikes! I seriously shouldn't have been behind the wheel! Maybe it was the adrenaline but somehow I got home safely. I grabbed my hospital bag, my pillow and the camera bag and we were off. While in the car on the way to the hospital we called our family and filled them in on what was going on.
When we finally arrived the hospital around noon, we registered and headed up to the Maternity Triage where I was hooked up to the fetal heart monitor as well as a contraction monitor. I was having some contractions but not in regular intervals; but they were pretty big contractions nonetheless. At this point I was 60% effaced and only dilated 1cm (not in active labor by any measure). However since I was having contractions and quite uncomfortable, Dr. Wood didn’t want to send me home so he ordered IV fluids. If I was even a little bit dehydrated (as I was 2 weeks prior and admitted for a night), then getting me rehydrated could eliminate or even reduce the contractions…………… but NO SUCH LUCK!
Finally at around 3pm, Dr. Wood came down from his office (between seeing patients) and he decided to pull the trigger and to go ahead and do the c-section. Unfortunately, there was a c-section already scheduled at 3:30 so we would have to wait until about 5pm before we could even get into the OR. Thankfully Teta was already off duty by this time and was able to come over from the main hospital to the Barry Womans Health Pavilion (this is where Labor & Delivery is located). She was able to stay with me while Todd ran to the car to grab the camera and more importantly get food for Todd from the doctor’s lounge as he hadn't eaten all day. Funny story: on the way to the hospital Todd said to me “you realize they are probably going to send you home today…” Well apparently little Miss Layla had a different plan...
At 4:30 or so we headed back to pre-op. There they were able to start giving me meds thru my IV and get me preped for my c-section. My sister Sarah had arrived by then and was intregal in helping me make arrangements for Stella and Jonah etc.
Todd got all decked out in his scrubs, I was rolled back to the OR and it was SHOW TIME...
and at 5:23 Layla Marie Langley graced us with her presence! She weighed 6lbs 4oz and was19.5 inches long.
Holding my baby girl for the first time!
The benefits of having your mom as a physician at the hospital you are delivering at...she got to be in the OR with us!
"Hi there, I'm Layla!"
Dr. Wood- the BEST OB ever!
Here's Layla after her first bath and assessment.
Coming into the world is tiring and can make you very hungry! Nom, nom, nom....
Once I was back in post-op, Stella and Jonah were able to come back and see their sister for the first time. Stella loved her and couldn't wait to hold her and Jonah was simply clueless as to what was going on. Gido, Nana, Papi, Mikey and Sophie also were able to come back to post op (they took turns because only 2 were permitted back at a time) and visit and meet Layla for the first time.
Although Layla's arrival wasn't on May 1st as we had initially planned, I couldn't have imagined it any other way! I'm not even sure how to describe my delivery. It was fun and laid back- probably 2 words that are never used to describe childbirth. In post-op, Dr. Wood said that in all of his years as an OB he had never experienced such a delivery. Teta was texting in the OR and showing all of her friends (nurses and delivery staff) pictures of her other 3 grandchildren from her phone and Facebook. She was even comparing Stella and Jonah's baby pics to Layla trying to determine who Layla looked more like. I even tried to convince Dr. Wood to give me a tummy tuck while he already had me on the table but that was a no go. Apparently, I'm not the first or the last to make that request! It was an all-around memorable moment that I will never forget and I feel so blessed.
Welcome to the world Layla Marie Langley!
No comments:
Post a Comment