Adele's Early Arrival ~ We are now a family of 4 (if you include Pippet :)!

First off I just want to say what a journey parenthood has been so far!  Nothing from what I expected or what any new mom wants to expect. Pregnancy was great and healthy as far as I knew and the doctors are saying that my reason for pre-term labor is unknown and that we may never know. Part of me is worried about having the next baby early, but the other part of me has seen how faithful God has taken care of us through what seems to be devistating. It is amazing to see how HE has working through what HE has already planned.  He has put so many familiar faces here at the hospital during tough times, prepared my body with extra amniotic fluid so that Adele wouldn't get too stressed out from my water breaking so early, and allowed so many great family members and friends to rally around us to support us physically and in prayer.
Here is my last belly picture from the week prior.  I miss her in there, but it is so sweet to know what she looks like and to be able to hold her.

Adele's Arrival:
It all started with me calling a few friends on Tuesday, 1/4/2011, afternoon asking them if they peed on themselves a lot during pregnancy. Yes, what a crude start, but it's honest. I thought I was peeing on myself all day. Just a few spots here and there, but after work we went to our first pre-baby counseling sessionof what was supposed to be three sessions followed by a "babymoon/anniversary trip" (the one session was great!), came home and cooked dinner, and I was cleaning to prepare for guests the next night for our church small group to come over. I was sweeping the porch around 8:30 PM when all of a sudden there was more than just a trickle down there...and I thought, "this cannot be pee." I called Cecile Gray and asked her if that was normal - she said no, so I called the doctor to call me. Meanwhile, I called Luke to come help me pack for the hospital just in case they told us to come in - I don't think he took me too seriously. My doctor (Dr. Mestemacher) was not on call, so her other partner in crime (Dr. Miller) called me back at 8:45 PM and told me to go to the hospital right away. I asked her if I had time to pack my bags and she said no, but of course I already had a list of things I needed printed off and some things washed, so I threw some things in a bag (all the while still "peeing" on myself very heavily). Luke was not in such a hurry - I don't think he really thought this was the real thing, but I was pretty sure (even though I didn't want it to be).

Here is a picture of her first load of baby laundry :)  Good thing those maternal instincts kicked in and I went ahead and washed some clothes/blankets!

We got to the hospital around 10:00 PM and I had to get a towel to sit under me after going to the bathroom. I wasn't contracting quite yet, but felt tight. Once they finally got me in a delivery room they did a test with something that looked like litmus paper to see if my water had indeed broken.  That first test was positive, so they called the on-call hospital doctor in there to see if I was dilated and to see if my "bag of waters" was for sure ruptured.  I hadn't been to the doctor since I was 31 weeks pregnant because she said I had a healthy pregnancy and since it was the holidays I could just come back in 3 weeks.  Well, the day I was supposed to see her again was the day I delivered, so I had never been checked for dilation or anything.  The on-call hospital doctor came by around 11:30 and said that my water was definitely ruptured and that I was 1cm dilated and 90% effaced, so we called the grandparents to come into town!   My parents were driving from Nashville and Luke's parents are in Jackson, TN.  The nurses prepared for Adele's early arrival.

 Contracting...ha!

I was starting to feel contractions by this point, but they went ahead and started me on pitocin to speed up delivery so that we wouldn't risk infection.  After your water has been broken for 24 hours, infection is likely due to the membranes being open to the outside world air.  Because my water was broken and they had me on pitocin to make everything shoot more powerful/quicker the contractions were pretty intense, but I wanted to wait as long as I could to get the epidural so that I wouldn't slow the process down.  I made it through them just fine, but then asked for the epidural - not sure how long after that.  I was contracting very closely and shivering TONS while she was trying to put the epidural in.  I now know I deal with pain in silence and breathing deeply.  I think I handled it pretty well! I was 6cm after they were done with the epidural.  Boy was that epidural amazing! 

 Ice chips - face full of fluid!

The grandparents arrived around 3:00 or so. I was feeling good just laying on my left side so the epidural would take on the left. As I was laying there talking to all the grandparents I was feeling the contractions somewhat, but they didn't hurt at all, but then I began to feel shoots of warmth down there (maybe fluid?) and knew that she was really ready.  I'm so glad the nurse came back in to check me.  She was thinking she would find me at 8, but I was already at 10 with the head right there, so she immediately called the doctor in. 

I had to wait quite a few minutes for the Dr. to arrive and get prepped.  I pushed for less than 10 minutes.  I didn't think I would be that mom that wanted a mirror, denied it at first, but then after the nurses started saying, "look at all that hair!" I decided that maybe I should take a peak since I was in no pain.  Wow!  That was such a neat experience even though it wasn't long lived.  I pushed her out at 5:36AM making that about a 6-7 hour labor?  Not sure when you want to count the start time since I wasn't really contracting until they put me on pitocin.  After pushing her out, the nurses took her over to the warming station to immediately check her vitals and weigh her.  They wrapped her up for me and I got to hold her for about a minute.  She grabbed my finger with her tiny hand (tears again).  Then daddy got to hold her for a bit...then she was whisked off to the NICU.  She was 5lbs. 1oz. 17" long. 

After such a great delivery, it was a shock to hear about her going to the NICU under respiratory distress and that she could be there 7-14 days.  However, what a blessing that I knew the NICU nurse practicioner that was there at the time to take care of Adele!  Nurse Elizabeth Ivy :)  She is best friends with my cousin, Stacey, here in Memphis and I had met her/babysat her precious children before.  She was able to break the news to me about the respirtory distress either being because of pneumoinia, lack of serfactant released due to gestational age, or a disease.  Regardless, I was  heartbroken for my newborn baby, but so glad that God placed Elizabeth there at the time for me.  About 2 hours after delivery, I finally got to wheel up to the NICU to see her, but it was such a mixed emotion of happy to see her, but so sad to see the state she was in.  I can still cry when I think about listening to her breathe so labored and seeing her laying there naked with what seemed every cord possible stuck to her.  She would breath in and grunt on her exhale.  When Luke and I started talking to her she opened her weak eyes and looked at us ~ making us feel so special (tearing up right now writing this) even though we knew she was concentrating so hard on breathing.  Ugh!  I cannot stop crying!

Well, let me move on.  I was exhausted from delivery and the news but just couldn't sleep the rest of the day even though I had been up all night in labor.  We didn't accept visitors that day because I was an emotional mess.  I was so heart broken and devastated that my new baby girl couldn't be in my arms and knowing that she was hurting downstairs and all I could do was lay in bed upstairs and try to rest.  Not easy.  I was glad to have a few visistors to pray over us.  I will continue to blog about her stay here at the NICU in a separate post :)  Meanwhile, our first child was still enjoying pregnancy...the pregnancy pillow that is (sorry Stacey! I'll wash well!!)