Welcome Baby Lydia

Wow. I'm a mom. Somehow, looking back on my life, I always knew this day would come, but now that it's here I admit that it's a bit surreal. Although it was not my first choice, I did end up having the c-section. From this experience I've learned that every baby comes in their own way and comes when they are ready, and this was how Lydia needed to come. I'm still glad that I made the choice to wait and try for a vaginal delivery. I'm so blessed to have no regrets whatsoever!

On the evening of Wednesday April 14th I started experiencing terrible back pain in my lower back. It was so bad that I couldn't even get comfortable, let alone try to sleep. At 6am the next morning, I finally woke my husband and asked him to please call the doctor and see what we should do because I was in such horrible pain. The doctor told us to go ahead and come to the hospital just to get checked out. Four hours and an ultrasound later, they discharged me from the hospital, still in terrible pain. Luckily as the afternoon wore on, my back pain lessened to the point where I was finally able to get comfortable again. I decided that maybe this baby was just going to hang out inside me forever! I was wrong ...

I had just drifted off to sleep at 1:10 am on Friday April 16th when I was awakened by my water breaking. Having my water break was completely unexpected and it totally startled me. I turned and slapped my husband and said, "my water just broke! Go turn the light on and tell me what color the fluid is!" After he fumbled unsuccessfully with the light for several seconds I finally reached over and switched mine on, then leapt out of bed and ran for the bathroom. I contemplated sitting down on the toilet but then I could feel it about to gush so I jumped into the bathtub instead as it all came gushing out. It was brownish-green. "Great," I thought, "meconium." By this point I was totally freaking out trying to deal with the idea that within 18 hours come whatever, we were finally going to have this baby. And then there was the thought that went along with it, "there's meconium in the fluid ... the baby could be in distress!" Then I was trying to decide whether I should go ahead and shower because I was already in the shower and I was covered in amniotic fluid, and I'm yelling to my husband to call the doctor and tell them my water broke and to be sure and let them know there was meconium in the fluid! In the midst of all this my husband announces that my mom had arrived from New York and asked was there anything I wanted her to do. The only thing I could think of was how the bed and several of the pillows were probably soaked so I said, "I dunno, laundry?" I finally decided I should take a shower so I turned on the water and started to get clean. Then the contractions started coming and I knew I'd better hurry because I didn't know how long it would be before they started coming stronger. I'd always heard your contractions are stronger after your water breaks. Finally I got out of the shower, got dressed, and after saying good-bye and good night to my mom, we headed over to the hospital. Just as we were arriving at 1:45 am, a nurse was dropping someone off at the curb in a wheelchair. She offered the wheelchair to me and I gratefully accepted as my contractions were getting stronger.

After they got me settled into my Labor and Delivery room and I was all hooked up to the machines, they tested me to see if I was dilated any more from the previous day's 1cm. Yes! Nearly 3cm! Although I was planning to wait as long as possible to have the epidural I was already having a really difficult time coping with the pain so I said, "I'll take the epidural now please!" Unfortunately the anesthesiologist was a total jerk. I had always heard that the worst part of the epidural is the first part when they numb you before they put the needle in. Well, unfortunately that was not my experience. First the anesthesiologist goes through the whole drill of telling me how still I have to be very still during the whole procedure, which of course, I already knew. Who doesn't know that about the epidural? Then he tells me how difficult it's going to be because I'm overweight. Thanks for that, I'm in pain, you're about to put a needle in my back and you're telling me I'm fat. Well, I can't change that right now!!! So, he "numbs" me with the local anesthesia and then without telling what was next, he sticks me with the epidural needle. I felt a jolt of intense pain in my back so of course ... I jumped. "See, that's exactly what you can't do," he says in an extremely frustrated voice. (Of course, I know this already.) "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I cry out. "All right, I'm going to try just one more time. Don't move." He sticks me again, and again ... I jump. At this point I'm about to lose it and I whimper in distress because he said he was only going to try it that one last time. I was in so much pain I didn't know how I was going to manage without the epidural. "Sweetheart, if you do that again, I'm done. This is dangerous enough as it is," he says. Praying with all the faith I could muster, I hunched over and waited as if the guillotine was about to drop. This time, I felt the needle go in, but I didn't feel the sharp pain like the previous two times. Miracle of miracles, I managed to stay still. It was done. After the epidural kicked in, I felt much better. I wasn't throwing up any more from the pain, thankfully and we sat and waited while they came in every hour to check my progress.

My progress was slow, only about 1cm every other hour. Obviously I began to get concerned that I wouldn't progress fast enough to have this baby before the 18-hour preferred deadline. After several hours I began to notice that the feeling in my legs was returning. Shortly after that I also noticed that I was starting to partially feel my contractions. Then I felt that my back pain had returned. At first I thought my contractions were just getting stronger and that's why I could feel them again. But after a little while I realized that in fact my epidural had completely worn off and I was in the suddenly middle of full-blown labor and I thought I was going to die of pain. My contractions were very strong and very close together. There was almost no relief from them. As soon as one stopped, another one started. The nurse came in and they got another anesthesiologist to put some more drugs into my epidural but they didn't take. My epidural was clearly dead. The doctor then came in and asked me if I wanted to have the epidural re-done. Oh man, there was nothing I wanted less, but the pain was too great, and if I ended up needing a c-section, I would need that epidural. They told me they would give me 5 minutes to think about it if I wanted, but just as they were getting up to leave another contraction started and I said, "I want another epidural!" Thankfully, this anesthesiologist had a MUCH better bedside manner than the first and was able to get the epidural in successfully on the first try. Within 20 minutes the pain from the contractions was completely gone and I was mercifully at peace again. Unfortunately my blood pressure had skyrocketed during this period and they discovered that I had developed preeclampsia during labor. Lovely. They had to put me on medicine for that which made me feel really really hot, so I had to turn the thermostat way down but I was still hot.

At 3pm they checked me for progress and I was only 6cm. They also noted that the cervix was starting to bulge which typically means that it's not going to dilate any more. I asked if I could have some pitocin or something to help, but they said that my contractions were strong enough that I should be dilating. At 5pm I was still only 6cm. Since I hadn't made any progress for 2 hours and it didn't look like I would dilate any further, and with the preeclampsia and the fact that I had already been in labor for 15 hours, I decided enough was enough. I was ready for the c-section.

They came and prepped me for the c-section and it all went fairly quickly. The anesthetist got me completely numb and he and the nurse wheeled me back into the operating room while Ben got dressed in the blue paper suit. Obviously I didn't feel them cutting me open, but I did feel all the pressure when they got the baby out. Ben was at my head up until that point, and then he was gone. I could hear my baby crying, but I couldn't see her or my husband. The amazing anesthetist stayed by my head for the entire time, coaching me through the stitching-up process. "You're doing great," he kept saying. Thank heavens I had someone there coaching me through it. All the tugging and pressure was very uncomfortable. Eventually they brought the baby over to me, after they had siphoned as much of the meconium fluid out of her lungs as they could. They put her right on my chest but I was so shaky that I said, "someone else better put a hand on this baby or I'm going to drop her!" For a few brief moments I was totally distracted by the sight of my baby to even think about the fact that I had been cut open and was now being stitched up. She was all bundled up and all I could see was her little face, but it was crazy. I couldn't believe this was my baby. This was the little creature that I had been carrying for 9 whole months? So weird. They took her away after a few moments and of course Ben went with her.

When I was all stitched up they wheeled me back to the same Labor and Delivery room and I got hooked up again to the IV and blood pressure monitor. After about 15 minutes I still had not seen Ben or my baby, but my father-in-law poked his head in and I told him to tell Ben to stop hogging my baby in the nursery! Finally, an hour after she was born, they brought her to me and I got to really hold her for the first time. She was so beautiful--it was amazing.

I'm so grateful that she came the way that she did. A c-section was not what I wanted, but in the end, I think it was the right way for her to come. I found out later that she'd had the cord wrapped once tightly around her neck. That combined with all the other factors that developed during my labor lead me to believe that despite what we want, sometimes the Lord simply knows best. I am so in love with my little girl and am so excited to be her mommy.

Lydia Hart Welch
born 4/16/10 5:48pm
9 lb. 4 oz. 21 in.