Birth Story

I wrote out my birth story last year; a few days after the birth of my daughter, Abby. Her birthday was also the day I turned 30… also the day we learned Abby has Down syndrome. She is 13 months old now and continues to be the love of my life!!
– Melissa
babypelly.livejournal.com

and then there were three

Well I said I’d work right up until this kid forced herself out of me and that’s what I did… To start, I had come home from my 39 week appointment on Thursday, June 10 with absolutely zero progress and talk of induction sometime over the following week or two. Booo… So I went to work on Friday totally cool, laughing off everyone’s “are you still here?!” craziness. Came home around 5:30 and sat down for dinner that Matt had made for us. My 30th birthday was the next day so we talked about what we might spend the day doing. Finished up, stood up, and told Matt I needed to go chill on the couch cause the baby was moving around in there.

Wrote back to some “is the baby coming on your birthday?” emails with some “um ya, doubt it” replies. My mother-in-law had sent me one asking if I’d had any contractions and that when she’d had her kids, she thought they were just the baby stretching. I wrote back “I’ve been having contractions like crazy since I got home tonight but I think they are braxton hicks. It hurts a bit but not too bad. It does feel (and look) like she is stretching like you said! But there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the timing of them and she’s still really high in my belly so maybe she is just moving down? Time will tell I guess!”

TIme told! Turns out there was a rhyme and reason to them once I started timing them – every 6 minutes from about 6:30 until midnight-ish when I stopped timing to try and sleep. They went from barely noticeable to needing to stop what i was doing to needing to squeeze something with my hands to some pretty crazy pain. It was all in my back, too – I think she was sunny side up. Somewhere before crazy pain, Matt called the hospital nurses for me (this was around 11:30) and they said it sounded like we may have a baby in the next day or two but to hold out until they get to be 2-3 min. apart. I said OK cool because I was in serious denial – the hospital is nearly 40 minutes from my house and I didn’t want to go and get sent home. So around 4:30 when I couldn’t talk through them or focus on anything, I said Matt call the hospital, call the parents, let’s go.

The drive to the hospital was kind of like in the movies with us running red lights and everything – ha! We’d also stupidly brought my dog to my parents house (on the way) because she was visibly nervous watching me in so much pain. So anyway, we got to the hospital just before 6am… at this point it’s June 12 which is my birthday so all the nurses were like hey happy birthday! and I was like o thanks now where are the drugs?  One of the nurses checked my progress after I had changed into a gown, telling us she’d be impressed with 1 or 2 cm dialated. 10 seconds later she’s like wow you’re like 5cm. Now at this point I remember saying WHATTTT but Matt says that was accompanied by “the f…” So classy.

The next few hours are kind of blurry – I made BFFs with the epidural doctor and the nurses. Props to those who push their kids out without drugs but I had absolutely zero desire to join that club. Life was perfect for the next few hours… we watched HGTV for an hour or two and then got the show on the road. Pushing was kind of hard because I couldn’t really feel it so it took a few times to really get a feel for what worked. We pushed every other contraction for about an hour. Early on, abby’s heart rate went down and everyone (except me and matt) freaked out. They turned me this way and that, upside down practically to get her off her cord. They kept telling us not to worry… real easy when you don’t know what’s going on! Not for a minute did I doubt everything would be fine. And it was. Then we got back to pushing. I swear by this time, every single contraction was “the one.” Matt was the only one I believed – he kept telling me I was doing great and although I thought beforehand that I would get mad at him, he was the one that gave me strength to get our peanut out. But not without a vacuum and apparently multiple episiotomy cuts. Eventually, at 10:53 am, we got our little girl out.

She cried. I cried. Pretty sure daddy cried. They put her on my chest for a second when I lightly rubbed her little head and felt her super soft hair. After probably 30 seconds, they grabbed her back because she had meconium in her fluid when she came out. The doctors cleaned her out and cleaned her up. (I think this is the order it happened in… makes more sense that they cleaned her out before they gave her to me but I can’t quite remember.) Matt went over to take some pictures while they cleaned her up. I remember he was so nervous I kept telling him it was okay to touch her and talk to her. The nurses eventually weighed her – 8 lbs, 3 oz., and measured her – 21 inches. Then we got her back for some bonding time.

I fell in love in about 1 second. She was perfect. Before she was born, coworkers and friends had told me they didn’t feel a connection to their baby at first, in fact they didn’t even like them for months. I had been so worried about that but as soon as they gave her back to me for a real good look, those fears were gone. She was perfect… we took pictures on our phone and sent to all our friends, so proud of our peanut. I must’ve said (and even now more than a week later, am still saying) “I can’t believe this perfection came out of my belly” a million times. Matt held her and kissed her too and our little family was born.

Then the nurse came back and took her for some tests because she said Abby wasn’t breathing very well. The drugs in me kept me from worrying too much about it but I remember thinking she looked fine and being worried that I couldn’t tell she wasn’t breathing well. Weird but okay nurse, please do what you need to do!

Saturday night, the doctor came in and told me (Matt had gone out for a sandwich with my brother Ron) that Abby has a few features that are reminiscent of Down syndrome. And that because both level 2 ultrasounds we’d had at UConn over the winter that basically ruled it out, he wasn’t sure (yes he said he wasn’t sure… what??!!) so he was sending her blood out for chromosome testing. There are different degrees of this syndrome and he said if she has it, she likely has a really slight version as she has very few indicators – but enough to raise the flags. Surely this had to be wrong, I thought, because hello – the baby that came out of me was perfection. But let me go look at her. The nurse wheeled me next door to the nursery where Abby was in a baby warmer. I looked at her, touched her, and asked the nurse what it was they saw. She said her eyes are a little almond shaped, her grip isn’t strong, and she has a little marker on her ear. Hmm… okay.

I looked up and my parents, Matt, my brother and my aunt were looking at us from outside the nursery, super eager to come in. We called Matt in and the nurse told me to let the doctor tell him about her down syndrome. That was against my better judgement but I did as I was told. Matt nearly passed out – they had to sit him down and give him some water. I knew he would be okay and tried to stay strong telling him that it doesn’t matter and they weren’t even sure so we’ll wait and see what the tests say. At this point, my parents came in and I told them. I told them it would be okay too.

They told us we’d have to wait until Friday to get the test results back so we kind of floated through the rest of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday (what day is it now?) in this weird, horrifying limbo. This child has been SO perfect – she’s sooo chill, sleeps really well (knock on wood), has only really cried a handful times (I’ve cried like 800x more than she has in her nine days of life), and lets you do pretty much anything to her without a fuss. That and she’s stunning if I do say so myself. How can this perfect child possibly have anything wrong with her?

Wednesday night, we were spared the extra day and a half wait – our pediatrician called to tell us that the tests came back positive. (insert more mommy/daddy crying here.) We called our parents and cried but they stayed strong. They offered to tell our relatives for us and we took them up on it. Within an hour we had a handful of super supportive, touching emails. (A format for which I am extremely grateful as we had enough trouble just telling our parents.) Friday, we took Abby to the pediatric cardiologist for an EKG and echocardiogram where they gave us a clean bill of health for her heart. That was a HUGE relief. Our pediatrician also had her thyroid tested – the results of which were normal as well.More sighs of relief. We have to take her to a geneticist soon to find out what aspects of it she has, what she doesn’t, and what it all means in terms of her development and her future.

All of that said… with all of the uncertainty and fear ahead… I have to say (especially to those without kids) that this child is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to us. She changed my life the second they put her in my arms. I always thought it was kind of lame how new parents would talk about how their lives were instantly changed with the birth of their kids but it’s so true. Suddenly, everything that ever mattered doesn’t matter anymore. Anything I used to worry about suddenly seems so trivial and stupid. Everything I thought I knew about love was so… incomplete.

So where do we go from here? Same place everyone else with a newborn goes – to the next day and the next day. Lots of pictures, lots of kisses and lots of love. I want to freeze this child in this perfect newborn stage but at the same time I can’t wait to see what a little pip she turns into. She looks like her daddy but I think she’s got her mommy’s determination in there. Time will tell.