Desirae Helena

A triage nurse saved my baby. Well at least, we're pretty sure she saved our baby, too dramatic?  I wish I had paid more attention to her name, she is our hero and if ever I could love a stranger, I wholeheartedly love that girl.
Steve and I went into the hospital at 11ish on May 12th fully expecting to be sent home with false labor AGAIN. The nurse we had was awesome, she hooked me up to the monitors and checked my cervix right away- so we wouldn't have to waste any time there if we didn't have to. Love her. I was still only 2.5-3cms but she said she'd monitor me for 20-30mins and then we'd go from there. I was so mad about the state of my cervix. Seriously, I walked what seemed like a thousand miles in that 10 days since round 1 of false labor, and no changes?! I didn't feel like being pregnant for longer than 40wks, been there done that, no thanks. So in the 20-30mins that we were on the monitor the nurse would randomly open the door a crack and watch the monitor and then go back out, then come back in, etc... After 30mins she said she was going to call the doctor and find out if we should stay/walk/go home. So the doctor said walk 2hrs or I could have a shot of morphine to help me relax/sleep at home and then come get checked again in the morning to see if that relaxed things and got me progressing. We said we'd go home and the nurse looked at the monitor again and said she just wanted to keep us on it for a little while longer. I asked her why, because I was now pretty aware that she was watching that thing like a hawk and could kind of hear muffled conversation about it when she'd go back to the nurses station. So she explained that she was noticed random decelerations in heart rate that weren't corresponding with contractions whatsoever, which was kind of irregular and made her wonder if something was up. We were monitored for another half hour. She cracked the door and told us she was calling the doctor in. In my mind all that was was AWESOME news, Steve did mention that it probably meant something was going on that shouldn't be, but I was too distracted with the idea that I wouldn't have to be so uncomfortable much longer... Enter Dr. Logsetty, I'd met her before a few times at the clinic, so it was nice that the doctor on call for my actual doctor was someone familiar to me. She came in and explained that because of these decel's she wasn't super comfortable sending us home, so they'd start my antibiotics, then start some oxytocin to get things going, break my water, etc... Hooray for having a baby! Steve kept gently reminding me that something wasn't right, but I just kind've decided that I was just going to be happy about having a baby and focus on that instead of being worried...
1a.m. they started the oxytocin and broke my water, side note, how weird is that feeling? With the big girls, I always had my epidural before they did that, so this was new to me. Not a huge fan of feeling like I'm peeing myself for a few hours. My labor and delivery nurse was about 5'2" and maybe a buck 5, I wasn't super confident that she'd be a real strong help during delivery and her voice kind of grated on my nerves, but she was fantastic at chatting before the big event. I asked for the epidural around 4:30, I figured it'd help me get some rest now that things were starting to feel more uncomfortable. The anesthesiologist had just been in back to back c-sections and they had been slammed with laboring women just before I got there, so he was tired. He was really nice though, even when he nicked my nerve root, I still liked him, but that was my first clue that this epidural wasn't going to be taking as well as my others had... Turns out my right side was pretty frozen, the left? Not really at all, and I didn't get access to the plunger to top things up, so I was still feeling contractions, just only on one side, so it was tolerable pain at least... At around 5:30 my nurse was heading for her break, so she filled in her cover person on baby and me and that nurse said "These decels are nothing to write home about, baby's been happy ever since they got you over here, lucky you!" Yeah lucky me! I slept for a while and my nurse came back from her break and helped me get more comfortable with some extra pillows/wedges stuck around. She left the room for a bit and then my monitor alarm thingy went off, so I called her back. When she checked the monitor her eyes got pretty wide and she said "Wow, that was a huge decel, um, I'm going to stay here and watch this for 5mins, let's prop you up differently and see if baby is happier with us then." Sounds good to me. After 5mins she tells me she's going to send another nurse in to keep an eye on that while she checks on another patient. This is around 6:30a.m. This more senior nurse comes in and watches the monitor for a while and then tells me Ashley will be back in 5mins, is there anything I need? So I tell her that I'm feeling like the doctor could probably come check me and we could try some pushing, since I'm feeling some pressure. She was super happy about that and told me she'd let the doc know, etc... Awesome. 6:40. She had literally walked out the door when TRANSITION hit, I barely was able to hit the call button to yell "I need to push now" at the nurse who answered. I can pretty much promise that the epidural only froze my leg, I felt EVERYTHING this time, really truly. Steve was totally startled out of his recliner and I kinda freaked out and cried, a lot, I think because it hurt A LOT. It scared me and I don't have a tendency to get scared in this kind of situation thanks to effective epidurals, but I really had no clue it could go from 0-60 so fast. 4 nurses rushed the room, paged the doctor a million times, got me positioned and everything set up, reminded me how to push, because at that point I couldn't remember what to do because I'm generally a lot more calm... FOR SERIOUS. I was making all sorts of noises that I'd never made before, it was intense. They told me they could see the head, I heard someone asking where the heck the doctor was, did she leave the hospital? was she paged as urgent? Try little grunts Allison, just to relieve the pressure until the doctor gets here. I tried to respond to that one, but I think all that came out was a cuss word, oops. In fact, there was a lot of cussing, I had a potty mouth in grade 7, I may have reverted to that place during this delivery... Dr. Logsetty arrived, head came out, which normally would be a YAY, but then I had to try to not push too hard for some reason. My eyes were closed pretty much the whole time after that, opening them was traumatic. I thought they were slicing and dicing my lady parts to get her out it hurt so bad. They never dropped the foot of the bed and at one point I did kinda get a glimpse of the doctor up on the bed? Did I really see that? They finally let me push the rest of her out at 6:58 a.m., put her kind've on my belly, and told me to open my eyes and look at her, at which point I see them vigorously rubbing her on my belly, then I see them lift her limp little body up and besides the chatter of the nurses and hearing CODE GREEN STAT, I look at Steve and say "She's not crying or moving. Why isn't she crying? What's going on?" And now she's on the warmer beside the bed surrounded by people, but I can't see because Steve is standing there blocking my view, telling me she's absolutely perfect and fine, and everything's okay, and I did a great job, but I still don't know what's happening.
Finally she cries, and I cry and the doctor finally brings her to us- that 10mins was probably the longest of my life. At this point all I know is that she's alive and from what the nurses were saying to each other "aw her face is so bruised". So the doctor hands me the baby, congratulates us and lets me know she's looking for tears, etc... Cue my awesomeness "Um, you mean you weren't massacring my lady parts that whole time?? " Dr. "Nooooo, I had to cut the cord from around her neck" "What? I thought you were destroying me down there!" Laughter! Actually I think I was laughing and crying huge tears of relief! After all that I actually didn't really tear at all, so that was great news. Dr.Logsetty hugged me twice before she left the room, no joke. What I know now, is that the cord was wrapped so tight around Desirae's neck that the doctor couldn't get her fingers in there to loosen it at all. She hopped up on the bed to literally cut the cord from around Desirae's neck, which is why it seemed like it was taking so long, she was being fast but careful. Here I was hoping to have a delayed cord clamping, haha, my plans never work out. She had Desirae resuscitated before the team of people who normally do that had any time to get to our room. Desirae's apgar score was 3/9/9, her face was pretty swollen and bruised and her left eye has a broken blood vessel that  still looks pretty gnarly, all from the events of her birth. The decelerations were very likely happening because of the cord situation in there, we really have no idea how long that was going on. If we had gone overdue we might've had a stillborn baby. So like I said, I really love that triage nurse who paid attention to what was going on with my baby and responded to that quiet voice that told her something just wasn't quite right.
Birthday: May 14  Time: 6:58 a.m.  Weight: 8lbs 2oz  Height: 20 inches
Hair: Dark brown, mostly in the back  Eyes: Dark blue so far

So far we're really enjoying having Desirae in our home. The girls love her and fight over who gets their turn to hold her first every morning. They're fascinated by her diaper changes and love to make faces and say how diapers are so gross, babies are gross and wiping bums is gross- I agree with diapers and wiping bums being gross, but I think my baby is pretty much not gross at all. She's still learning how to work her mouth/tongue, so nursing is it's own adventure. I'm pumping and the girls have an odd fascination with that too, I hate to think what Kalea tells her teacher/friends at school! Desirae is still pretty sleepy, but she is starting to wake up more during the day and she goes some longish stretches at night. There were a few mornings where I actually woke her up because I thought she'd slept too long, which is ridiculous, why did I wake her?!
Steve is loving this baby just as much as the other two, he is such a baby-man. I have to laugh whenever he talks to Desi because his voice goes so high and he sounds so mushy gushy, totally not the usual Steve voice. It's fun to see him bond with each of these girls though and he is definitely loving all the baby snuggles that he's getting, we both are. The big girls never cuddle us anymore- unless it's totally inconvenient, like when I'm trying to nurse Desi, that's just so much fun...
Anyways, we are getting somewhat back to normal. I'm getting used to less sleep finally- I felt like a zombie for the first 2.5wks of Desi's life, poor kid, it's no wonder she slept so much! She's much more wakeful now, finally figuring out the nursing thing and hopefully happy. I haven't quite figured her personality out yet, and I honestly can't remember this stage with the other two, except very vaguely, so I have no clue if she's happy/content or what, but I'm loving her. We're starting to see smiles and she's starting to make some cute baby noises now, so maybe she's warming up to us too!
I probably won't post anything else for a while, but I'm still alive!