Madilynn's Birth Story

My labor with Reagan was very long and arduous.  My doctor, Dr. Stone, was not present for the birth, so we decided that we would schedule an induction.  Inductions can be scheduled at the 39th week for women who have had successful vaginal deliveries.  Because I fit into that category, I trusted that everything would go as planned.  Boy was I wrong! 

I went in for my induction on Friday morning, February 18, at 5:30. I should have known that things were going to be rough when the day started with the nurse blowing my vein in my hand trying to put in the IV. Next, the nurses started me on pitocin and broke my water (incredibly painful since apparently I have cervix that hides behind my pubic bone). Madilynn wasn't tolerating the pitocin very well and her heart rate kept dropping, but the nurses got everything under control.  Shortly thereafter, I received an epidural. It's a good thing I received it when I did, or I would have had to be put under later on.

 I told the nurse awhile later that I could feel something like a twinge down below even with the epidural. She said I should be able to still have some feeling, but she would check. She checked my cervix and acted like everything was normal, but within minutes the anesthesiologist arrived to give me more medicine, which I found strange since the nurse just said she wanted me to still have some feeling. A few minutes later Dr. Stone arrived, and I could tell she had been rushing. She checked me as well and then told me what the nurse had found a few minutes earlier--apparently little Madilynn's hand had already come out of my cervix. As Dr. Stone put it, when she checked me she literally was shaking my baby's hand. I was only five centimenters dialated though and by that point her heart rate had dropped to 60 and wasn't rising.

Dr. Stone stood up from checking me and told me I needed an emergency c-section. From that point on, everyone was running. My mom was standing in the hall and said the doctor ran from the room, followed by a bunch of other nurses. They were literally tearing wires out of the wall so they could get my bed out of the room and into the OR. They told Trey to wait in the room and they would come get him. I was terrified for my baby and for myself. Things moved so quickly that they had started cutting me by the time Trey came back into the room, and Madilynn was born within minutes. She came into the world at 1:23 pm weighing 6 pounds 4 ounces and measuring 20.5 (long and lean is how the nurses described her).

Recovery was very different from Reagan's birth.  I was in a lot of pain for days.  But in the end, of course it was worth it.  Madilynn was safely in our arms, and our family is complete.