Flashback Friday (On Monday...hmmm...)

Four years ago today I was very very very pregnant with Emily. I was discussing with my midwife, Susan, the possibility of delivering Emily early because my gall bladder was about to explode and I could not keep any food down. I was MISERABLE, and to top it all off in a few days our air conditioner would go out and I would have to be the one to meet with companies to replace it. Before she would finally come we would have spent a couple of days in a hotel, about a week at Chris' mom's, and I would have been to the hospital for pre-term labor and gall bladder issues twice.

Then on the morning of July 26th I would go into the hospital to be induced only to find out that I had been labor all night. I didn't know because I was taking pain medication to be able to survive the gall bladder pain I was experiencing. My mom drove up to be with me for the day and my midwife spent the whole day with us during labor. Chris helped me through the pain with hypnosis. I walked the halls endlessly, sat on the birth ball, and did countless other things to manage my pain. FINALLY at about 11:30pm she decided that it was time to come out. I pushed about seven times and out she came. No stitches, nothing.

Now let me tell you if you don't already know, when you have one healthy uncomplicated birth, you really expect that the next one will be exactly the same. She was out about five minutes and it was clear that there was something wrong. These pictures are in the wrong order, but if you scroll down to the bottom you will see what we saw when she came out. She was whisked away to the NICU and the longest seven days of our life began.

When Emily came out she took a VERY DEEP BREATH. This caused all the capillaries in her lungs to burst and newborns' blood does not clot. So she just kept bleeding. From the outside we could just see that she was purple and she had this very weak cry. Susan told me that she was just not adjusting well so they were going to call the NICU and take her up there and we would see her soon. Well, when I got to my post partum room they came down to tell me that I could go see her. We walked to the NICU and were greeted by pediatrician on call and told that it was a freak thing and they were still trying to stop the bleeding.

We were terrified and spent the next few hours just looking at each other not knowing what to do. We had never even considered that our baby wouldn't be healthy. Then to make matters worse the surgeon came down about 7:00am to tell me that I would be prepped for surgery. OH YEAH, my gall bladder had to come out, I had totally forgotten. So Chris had Emily and me to worry about. So I went into surgery and everything went fine. I was in and out so quickly. After recovery we were allowed to see Emily again. They wheeled me down there and we saw all the tubes coming out of her. It was almost too much for me to take. They explained that she was stable and they were still sucking blood, but that she had stopped bleeding and they were going to have to take out some blood, and give her a transfusion most likely.

They sent me home two days later, and I was devastated. How could I leave my baby in the hospital? Then I started going up to the hospital everyday and pumping to feed her. There is much much more to the story, but that is enough for this post. These pictures show you her first few days of life. It is hard to remember, but since her birthday is coming up I thought I would try. I was also inspired by My Sister's Keeper that I saw last week. Ever since I saw the movie I have been thinking about how lucky we have been. It has not felt lucky most of the time, but we have been SO lucky! More tomorrow....