When I thought about writing this post as I was still pregnant, ready
to deliver, I never imagined the post would entail such a story. I had
everything planned, from the induction date, my mother-in-law in town
to watch my other babies, how I wanted my epidural and labor to go,
everything was set perfect. We were going to schedule this delivery,
deliver another perfect little girl, bring her home 2 days later and
start our life together as a family of 5. Little did I know what the
Lord had in store for us.
So because I kept facebook
pretty updated through the whole thing I have decided to mainly just cut
and paste from my facebook posts as to write the story of our Pyper's
birth and development since. But, because facebook didn't get much of
my pre-labor and labor I will begin at that. Pyper was born on a
Wednesday. But the Saturday before was eventful in itself. Everything
was normal until I had to sit on the stairs with Danny for a time out.
As I stood up while holding him I had a horrible pain. That then
started contractions for about 3 hours. BUT then the contractions
stopped. However it was very evident that she had dropped
significantly. Ryan said a good 4 inches and I would agree. After that
I was able to relax and we went about the rest of our night. However I
didn't feel her move at all. The next morning as I lay in bed I still
didn't feel her move, which was very different because she always moved
in the morning. So after eating breakfast and laying on the couch to
get her to move, but still with no success, I began to worry. I didn't
really say anything to Ryan though until we were in the car and on the
way to church at 1PM. He felt strongly that we needed to get it checked
out so because of an amazing ward we were able to drop our other
children off at church then head to the hospital to get everything
checked out. At this point I was only 37 weeks 3days. They monitored
me for a while and of course as soon as she got on the monitor she began
to move. I still felt there was something significantly wrong but
after a while our heart rates were good and they didn't have a good
reason to keep us. So we headed back, picked up our kids, then headed
home. If you could ask Ryan how I felt for the next few days, the only
answer I could give was "off". That was the only way to describe it.
On Wednesday I had my weekly Dr appt and she checked me and said I was
barely dilated, and she thought I would probably make it 2 more weeks to
my induction date. All I could tell her was that I felt really "off"
and horrible. As much as she felt for me, she can't induce based on a
mom feeling "off". BUT after she checked me and I left I began regular
contractions. Since I had a babysitter still I decided to grab lunch at
Taco Bell and relax. I could barely eat anything though and the
contractions continued. This was 11AM. By the time I got home and took
the babysitter home, my contractions were still going. Because I had
never actually gone into labor before, because I was induced with my 2
others, I kept waiting for them to stop. However, they actually never
did. At 1PM I text Ryan at work saying the kids were taking a nap but I
was getting into the shower to do my hair in case this was the real
thing, even though I felt they would stop at any time. As much as I
tried to talk myself out of it, my contractions continued, and continued
to get stronger. By 2:30PM Ryan got home and we called our babysitter to see if she could come back. She was able to right away and we headed to the hospital. Surprise to me, they told me that I was definitely in labor and was going to be admitted. At about 6:30 my water broke and they saw that it was "Meconuim stained", which means that Pyper had pooped inside me. Because of this they prepared me for a birth where they put her on me for 1 second but then take her, suction her and then stimulate her to breath. At 7PM they checked me and said I was ready so they called the Dr and by 7:22PM the Dr was there and I was then told to push. After 1/2 of a push Pyper was here and I was told to stop and she was put on my chest, perfect, but not breathing yet. They grabbed her and began to suction. After a couple suctions they tried to stimulate her, but with every breath she tried to take, she pulled up more meconuim. Hence after a while she was essentially drowning in her own meconuim. The Dr tried to tell us for about 5 min that it was normal, but slowly we watched more doctors come into the room and the faces of everyone get very serious. As I lay there and Ryan held my hand, we then watched our daughter "Code" which is the medical term for die. We had to literally come to the realization that our daughter might have just come to this earth to take one breath but then go back with her Heavenly Father. They proceeded to do CPR and after about 17 min they finally got her intubated and her heart beating again. Her color slowly began to come back and we felt like our daughter wasn't completely gone after all. From there, I never held her and they took her to the nursery and called St Vincent Women's hospital where the best NICU in Indiana is located. They had respiratory specialists drive in and transport her to the NICU there. Before she left we did get to see her and Ryan was able to lay his hands on her head and give her a special blessing. Then we weren't going to see her until I could walk, shower and get out of there so we could drive the 40 min to the hospital.
So I initially was going to do this as one post but I will conclude tonight with this, a couple pictures and then continue the story of our 5 week NICU stay and all that that brought with it.
