Camille Lydia Cropper (Birth Story)

I had my 38 week appt on Thursday January 8 and my dr tried to be hopeful for me that I could go before my due date, but he wasn't fooling me that our chances of going to 41 weeks were pretty high.  So, I honestly thought I still had a lot more time to go.

Friday morning I was just doing the usual stuff when I had a gush of a lot of bright red blood that really scared me a lot.  After calling my OB, they told me to go into Labor and Delivery to get everything checked out.  I got a sitter for my kids, but honestly thought I'd be going back home after a non-stress test.  By the time I got to the hospital, I had stopped bleeding, and they hooked me up for monitoring.  The nurses were concerned about the placenta with the bleeding, but we didn't see anything else.  I had a non-stress test for about an hour, and then they sent the charts over to my dr.  After he had looked at them, they came back and showed me some things that were concerning to him.  Baby's heartrate was good and she was very active, but every time she would have a big movement, they noticed her heart rate would drop down for a little bit. This could be a sign with something be wrong with the placenta or her cord.  With me being 38 weeks, my doctor's gut instinct said we should deliver the baby that day. He said at the moment everything looked good and waiting two weeks until my due date, what did we have to gain?  Not a whole lot.  But what did we have to lose? Possibly a lot more than that.

 The idea was startling to me, but my first thought/feeling was that I have chosen this doctor for a reason, and I 100% trust his judgement.   I started to panic a little bit, because I was not mentally ready for this.  I called Darrell and he was quick to agree that this was what we needed to do.  My cute nurse, Annette, just let me talk and cry for a few minutes while I just processed everything. The doctor and nurses were all very open that they wanted to let me stick with my natural birth plan. If anything seemed to go very wrong during labor than I would need a c-section, but the doctor had confidence that I would be able to have a natural vaginal delivery.

Before admitting me, they took me in for a Bio-facial Profile - which is a detailed ultrasound just to check a lot of things.  My placenta looked great, and baby looked great. It looked like her cord might be around her neck, but that's hard to see, and lots of healthy babies are born with cords around their necks all the time so they weren't concerned at that time.  My doctor said his gut instinct was still to induce, so we geared up.  

They admitted me at about 2pm and I had actually started having contractions so we hoped for something to happen.  The dr finally got over to the hospital at about 4 pm and broke my water to see if that would get anything started.  We then walked, and bounced, and lunged, and did lots of things to try to get labor to progress, but at 8 pm I had made no progress, so they wanted to start pitocin. We started pitocin at about 8:30 pm, but I honestly didn't start feeling any contractions until about 10 pm.  They would up the pitocin every half hour, but I felt like I was able to gradually get into a good labor pattern, and we were still able to walk, labor in the tub, bounce on the ball, and still have quite a bit of control over everything.  At 12:30 am I was at a 4, and I was doing good. Contractions were good and strong, but bearable and I was feeling optimistic. I asked them to check me again at 1:30 am and I was at a 6. They called my dr at that point and I warned them that once I hit a 6, my body goes quick.  Sure enough, my body took over, but combined with the pitocin labor started to get rough.  But at 1:40, I was at an 8, 1:50 I was at a 9, and the dr came in.  I told him I felt like pushing, he checked me, and said "Go ahead!"  I was so excited to get towards the end :)  At 1:59am our little lady, Camille Lydia Cropper, was born and she is perfect!  She was 7lbs 5 oz and 19 inches long and looked great.

Looking back I am grateful the way things turned out and I don't regret a thing.  I'm so grateful for all the help we've received from neighbors, friends, and family in making this transition amazing!