A C-Section for the Soul

It seems a little silly to post two blog posts a day for me, but I really felt compelled to give a single post to the incredible experience we had in the hosptial with our newest little family member. So we say a big, "Welcome to the world Little Miss Triple B". You have been a new and unique experience for this momma from the moment we knew you were coming into this world.

From my post before I explained that due to a slight complication with her umbilical cord, we chose to deliver our third baby by C-Section. While this was not too surprising for me since I have had two previous Caesarians, I was a little heart broken. I was going to try to convince my Dr to let me attempt to go into natural labor and attempt a V-Back.

For previous years I was told that they highly discouraged it and I was going to have to attempt one at home, or with a private hospital costing me a whole lot more then I was going to be able to afford. So when this third pregnancy rolled around I was thrilled to find out that my hospital and Dr. of choice all have shifted to more of a natural way of delivering babies and were allowing for repeat "C" mommies like myself to attempt in hospital V-Backs.

Yet fate threw me a different set of cards, and we opted for what we felt was going to be best for our little miss. That decision was going to lead to the most gentle birth story I have had with all three of my children.

Enter into an experience that my Dr. calls a "Gentle C-Section".

All my mommyhood life I can tell you I have felt a little left out of the birthing experience. Due to my first little man being projected to being bigger then my smaller body could handle, I was scheduled early into my pregnancy for a C-section. He never dropped, I never experienced contractions or my water breaking, I never could connect with the other mothers about what an experience labor was. I was the mom who walked into the hospital with my bags packed and all chipper saying "Apparently I am going to have a baby today." 

His birth story was a little more traumatic for me then I would have liked it to be. All in all it was a routine C-Section other then a few hitches. I was given my spinal and prepped to go into the operating room when I was all of a sudden pushed back to a later time. This was due to the fact that since I was a scheduled "C" and not in any type of active labor, I needed to wait because my Dr. had an emergency C section he had to take care of.  So there I was numbed up not able to move, attached to a cold I.V. drip waiting for an extra two hours to have my little man. Finally it was time to have him. So there i was laid back on the table arms stretched out and strapped down because I started to shiver and shake. Little man took some convincing to come out because he was so high in my rib cage still, but when he came out he was a little cold and slightly blue from the extended cold I.V.s I was given that they rushed him and my husband out of the room. I was then left alone, while everyone in the room talked about hiking and cars, and the only contact I was given was a pat on the head and your doing fine. This was almost 10 years ago and in a completely different state with a different doctor.

Then almost 4 years ago  I had my first daughter with my second C-Section, I had a much better experience with my new doctor.  Dr. Newman at Premier Care for Women here in Arizona. Even then Dr. Newman was pushing the boundaries of what was allowed during a C-Section. He managed to allow me to hold my Daughter with one arm, after she was cleaned and wrapped for about 5 minutes. This ladies and gentlemen was the best experience in my mind. I was able to hold my Daughter for a whole 5 minutes before they took her away while they finished putting me back together and were physically reunited in the recovery room. I was extatic that this had happened and that I had some bonding time with her. I had decided then and there that that is what I wanted from then on out. To be able to just hold my baby on the operating table.

Well little did I know that my experience could get SOOO much better.

When we started talking birth options with our third little "B" baby, Dr. Newman explained to me the possibility of what he calls the "Gentle C-Section". How can a C-Section be Gentle you ask. First off let me say, you still are having a major surgery. You still have your stomach flayed open and your innards moved around. Sounds pretty gentle right? Ha....Not really but here is how it is gentle.

During a Gentle C-Section you are given the opportunity to have your baby placed immediatly on your chest after delivery, and if all goes well to try to attempt to nurse as soon as possible.  This is what women who labor "normally" are given the opportunity to have. To immediatly see and hold their baby before anything else happens to mom or baby. 

The day we went into the hospital I was oddly terrified. I started thinking about how I was going to handle another C-Section. I was quite honestly sick to my stomach with trepidation and fear. Admittedly I wasn't sure about some of my feelings. How I was going to handle seeing my baby in all its icky baby glory. I have always been handed a clean, bundled baby. How was I going to feel trying to nurse right away, when from my past two babies nursing was a beast of a thing to get them to eat within the first 24 hours.

 Yet from the moment I was admitted the staff at the Banner Dell Webb Labor and Delivery Unit were incredible. They had so much joy and respect for my feelings and choices. It was an odd experience to be able to say "I have a birth plan" to express to them what I did and did not want done. A unique experience that in my experience most "C" mommies do not really have a chance to have.  I told them right away what Dr. Newman and I had discussed, that we were going to be doing a "Gengle C-Section".

And to my surprise everyone was excited and right on board to make the changes and shifts that needed to happen in their routine and steps to accommodate this birth plan. During the pre prep process things are pretty much routine and the same. You get your wonderful moo moo and fashionable yellow socks on. Then you wait on fetal monitors while they start you on I.V. fluids and give you whatever medicines you may need to prep yourself for surgery.

The most sexy outfit you have seen, right?

Where the differences start is in the operating room after you are given a spinal block. All the vital monitors the Anesthesiologist uses are moved to one side of the body leaving your arms and your chest free for movement and for placement of the baby skin to skin.You are then prepped for surgery.

Typically from my experience,  you are laid down on the table, arms outstretched to the side and a sterilized sheet is erected up by your chest. The difference with the "Gentle C" is that you have two sets of sterilized sheets erected. In my case when our little girl was born they were able to let the cord pulse for a while, to allow for as much cord blood to be pumped into our little baby "B" as possible. They then passed her under the first set of sheets to the labor and delivery nurse to do a quick assessment on color and health, then she was instantly passed under the second set of sheets directly onto my chest, skin to skin and all baby ickied up, and do you know what? It was one of the most precious moments of my life. To be able to hold this screaming, squirming, beautifully icky little miracle on my chest, To hold her and instantly look into her eyes , instead of staring at the ceiling tiles or at the blue sterile sheet hung in front of me.

The one thing that was a little different, and I totally get it for insurance reasons and things such as safety of the baby, yada yada yada, is that the labor and delivery nurse had to have her hand on the baby at all times. She was extremely respectful though and allowed us the ability to hold her and touch her as we wanted too. In fact she was the one that noticed that our little "B" was rooting right away and asked if I would mind if she attempted to get her to latch, and amazingly she latched almost instantly. Amazingly she is our best nurser out of all three of the "B" babys which I attribute to the immediate latch and nursing as opposed to waiting for hours to attempt to nurse with a traditional C-Section.

 We were on cloud nine as we basked in the glow of the cutest chubbiest face, as we listened to the staff around us share their feelings of being apart of this C-Section, and offering advice to each other about how next time they can tweak this or tweak that to allow for even more skin to skin contact among other things.  We held this little bundle the entire time they pieced me back together and all the way back to the recovery room.

There was nothing but a quiet peacefulness (aside from a screaming bundle as we passed from the O.R. into the recovery room) for the next hour and half as we sat together in the recovery room together. And as I sat there knowing that as soon as the "good meds" wore off I would be in a lot of pain from the procedure, I contemplated the term "gentle C-Section". I realized that while it was not gentle on the body, it was gentle on the soul.

Count down to the big day!

I have come to the realization that I am a horrible blog mommy. I neglect the creature that is supposed to link you all to our lives so you never miss out on a single morsel of crazy that ensues in this blessed life of ours. Yet here I am brushing off the cyber cobwebs to express some feelings and experiences I have had over the last couple of weeks. 

We have been quite busy over the last 9+ months, by cooking up a new addition to our "B" family. Our second little girl.

What an experience we have had with this little miss already. From early on in our pregnancy we had a very strong willed daughter. We found out on our 18 week ultra sound that she was diagnosed with a relatively common condition called a two vessel cord. For those of you who are like me and had no clue what that was, meant that instead of having two artery's and one vein in her umbilical cord she had only developed one artery and one vein. Ultimately what this boiled down too was a giant pile full of ultra sound pictures from monthly ultrasounds and weekly non-stress tests.

Oh what fun those non-stress tests were. They put me on a cushy couch and hooked little miss up to monitors to gauge her heart rhythms for proper oxygen and blood flow. She seemed to love giving us a hard time about these tests, always fighting against the monitors and nearly every time being stubborn enough to have the threat of being sent into the hospital for extra monitoring.

Maybe that is the sign to come that it will take an ultimatum to get her to finally cooperate, because literally every time we were given the ultimatum, within minutes this little stinker would give them the exact information they were wanting.

But the most interesting thing about this experience with our little Triple B, was that because of her condition, we had decided that we would be doing a C-Section as her form of delivery.

This was originally against what I was hoping to achieve with this third pregnancy. I had come into this third one super exited that our Dr., and our Hospital were encouraging more of a natural type of child birth experience. Allowing for the possibility's of v-backs after multiple repeat c-sections.

So I hiked up my big girl pants and started prepping myself for my third C-Section. I am a big girl, I can handle the pain, and the months long recovery it takes sometimes to feel like your innards aren't going to fall out.

We will fast forward to the week of the big day. I had been so consumed in the last two months of my pregnancy to make sure that "I was going to be as comfortable as possible", so I made plans. I planned to get pictures done with my baby belly, get a pedicure, nails done, hair done. Or in other words, drive my husband crazy with my "I wants".

And that is exactly what I did. My mother, sister, and best friend (who also is adoringly pregnant) all went and spoiled ourselves with pedicures and a night full of girl comradery. Something I highly recommend all mommy's to be go and do!

I have to say even though I was close to kicking my pedicurist if she demanded that I hold my own leg up during the pedicure one more time, I have been impressed that my pretty pink polish is still going strong.

I will say though that I thoroughly enjoyed the whole mad dash to the finish line, specifically the 20 minute picture rush my wonderful sister and I took upon ourselves to do 30 minutes before I had to leave for the hospital.

I was going to add in Triple B's birth story here but I wanted to take the time to fully express what an incredible experience it was. So look forward to the next post coming soon.

Scardy Cat Wanna Be Brave Face V.S. the Invisible Hole Digging Creature

I was ready for a showdown of epic proportions. Oh what a movie I could have made. There I was standing with the hose in one hand and a stick in another. Prepared with my good running shoes and a girly scream waiting on the edge of my voice......

Are you sitting on the edge of your seat yet? I guess I should give you some back ground information before I continue. For close to 4 months now I have been noticing small, almost perfectly round holes in the dirt next to the side of my house. Now these weren’t ordinary holes they were holes what were surrounded by A LOT of loose rock and dirt. So being the girl I am I kept telling my loving husband that I thought we had something burrowing in the ground and he needed to go take care of it. My deepest darkest fears of some snake ridden den lurking under my house kept surfacing in my mind. Well the days went by, then weeks went by, the holes remained and my fears grew. I kept thinking about those stinking holes and what hideous things lying in wait to come out to get me. I grew to fear taking the garbage out at night and kept giving excuses to get out of dragging the can to the curb (that is the husband’s job, right?).

After waiting and waiting and waiting for something to be done I decided to consult the all mighty know everything oracle I call the Internet, and do you know what I found? NOTHING!!! Ok I shouldn't say "nothing", I dug and I dug and I dug throwing in every sequence of words that I could think of to find what sort of hideous mutant creature would be creating these voids of dirt in my yard. Finally I found a few posts suggesting that they could be caused by a swarm of ground digging bees, or they could be caused by spiders, and to my fear there was a mention of SNAKES. All of this information freaked me out even more. After months of trying to decided if I had a snake problem I now have spiders and bees to jam into my already nightmarish dreams. Maybe I have some sort of freakish hybrid of snake that has wings and hairy legs. 

I pledged to read on and finally I found a post that suggested flushing out the tunnels. Did I really want to go there? At this point I had three choices I could call the pest guys in and they want $$$$$, I could wait and let the man of the house deal with it, or I could suck it up and stop being such a pansy girl. I can expect that you have figured out which choice I have made by now.

So there I was prepared to do battle with Sniderbee. I carefully snuck up to the largest hole I could find and gently, oh so gently stuck the hose into gaping mouth of darkness that was sure to be my doom. I then raced back behind my fence gate and plastered myself along the wall. Calling on my powers of chameleon like camouflage I tried to blend in with the stucco while keeping my eyes peeled for any ominous movement coming from the lair. With my senses on high I turned the hose on high, feeling a sense of glee that I have been able to sabotage my enemy’s fortress. I broke the cardinal rule I thought the war was won before it was even fought. To my horror as I was starting to smile I watched the hose rise out of the hole and flop on the floor. I had turned the hose on too high too quickly and my sneak attack was being lost before my very eyes. I had to make a decision, do I turn and surrender or do I sacrifice myself for the good of all man kind. I bravely ran in and shoved the hose down into the hole as far as I could.

As I stood I knew something was amiss. I turned to retreat to safety when I saw movement in the corner of my eye.  I froze in fear for a split second as I had a vision of death by Sniderbee. At that precise moment the creature I had been fearing ran straight across my foot, and into the safety of the nearby tree clippings. What had I seen was it Sniderbee, or one of his other more hideous cousins....? To my chagrin he was just a harmless little ground chipmunk. It was with a heavy heart that I took on the sad task of collapsing his tunnels. I could not take the risk of a real Sniderbee moving into his newly vacated luxurious home. The battle was fought and the war was won. I wish my new chipmunk friend the best of luck finding a new home to live in. (just as long as it is not mine) And I abid you ado as I return home victorious and full of pride in my ability to be a Scardy Cat Wanna Be Brave Face.

Here we go!

I guess it's about time that I jump in with both feet. I was trying the scardy cat version of putting my big toe into the water to test the temperature, followed by the foot, then the calf (well you get my idea), until you finally get the courage to put your ribs in the water. There is something oddly funny about how we all turn into Kangaroos when we enter the water. Great now I am thinking of Kangaroos. Dragging my thoughts back to the post I have realized that this toe testing Kangaroo wannabe is not who I am. I am a jump in the deep end and swim like a mad woman kind of person.

 So here I am the for better or worse, love me or leave me kinda gal. Finally jumping into the world of blogging! 

There are so many things I can start out with, or not start out with I guess. What to do, what to do....I know I will start out with everyone's favorite topic ME!!!! *snickering in the chair* Well I factor into it but my I am talking about my children, my babies, my little man, my little princess. I have been blessed with two of the most incredible children on this planet. Oh sure you can call me a little, no a lot biased, but they are my world.

 There is nothing more enjoyable in this world than watching my children light up when they see each other.

There may be a 6 year gap in between them but they are the best of friends.

 Believe me when I say that she knew him from the moment she was born. They are two special spirits that knew each other in the pre-mortal existence. I have felt that when they first met each other it was as if they were welcoming back their best friend.