4 and no more: Welcome Miss Ainsley

i'm finally getting a chance to sit down and write her birth story as i know everyone has been waiting on it. so let's start from the beginning...

last monday i fell while i was outside with maggie after a dog was trying to attack us. it made me start contracting and i went into L&D that afternoon. they kept me and wanted to monitor me through the night since i was still contracting off and on and refused anymore terb. around 2am on valentine's day i woke up from my lovely stadol nap with lots of pressure and started to feel contractions that weren't showing up on the monitor. i was having back labor. andrea gave me some more stadol to help with the pain and my legs started to shake, what they always do before my water breaks. and in just a few minutes my water broke. so on to an LDR room i go...

by 3am i'm in an LDR thinking we're going to have a baby. by 7am my contractions weren't steady enough and they gave me pitocin. i contracted all day long but still made very little change past 4cm yet were having contractions off the chart! so when they rechecked me they felt another bag of water. i had a fore bag broke just like with jaxon. UGH! how can this be happening again?! so they pulled all drugs off of me and monitored me through the night. i was so sore from all of the contracting so hard for so long i could barely walk that night. i still contracted for several hours after they pulled the pit from me. they watched me through the night and i had a few contractions here & there but nothing to jump start anything. so the next morning the midwife, rebecca (love love love her btw!!!) wanted to do another amniosure test to check and make sure my waters were or were not broke and i would be going home. the amniosure came back 'inconclusive' so as we were starting to walk out and leave the nurse stopped us and asked us to wait that rebecca wanted me to stay at least until lunch so she could recheck me and get a better result. she had to use the speculum this time to make sure she got a good, clean result and immediately walked the test over herself and waited on results. it was negative so home we go, empty handed once again. i sat up the entire night on tuesday crying my eyes out and i know the rooms beside me had to have heard me. i don't think i slept but maybe an hr or 2 that night. i came home and was just numb feeling. i felt like crap, still no baby and scared out of our minds that she would be born at home or in the car!

i go in for a follow up thurs with rebecca and she told me that if i thought i was leaking to put on a pad and if i wet it more thant twice in 30 mins to an hr then i had a leak. when i would stand up and sit back down i kept feeling trickles. i called the dr on call (williams) and never even got a call back!! so i told matt i've already wet 3 pads over 7 times in about an hr, call your mother, we're going in! as we started to turn out of harwood onto 73 i started to contract. i panicked and he called his mom and said to be standing outside waiting bc we had to drop & go. the closer we got to the hospital the more i knew i was contracting but i couldn't tell how close or how strong they were bc i had contracted so much earlier in the week i was almost numb. we were almost to the hospital and matt got freaking stopped by a cop! he had 'paused' at a stop sign but not come to a complete stop. we thought oh great we're going to get a ticket and this cop is going to have to deliver this baby. he asked why he went through it so fast and he said bc my water had broke and we had to get to the hospital fast. the cop leaned up and shined his light on me and ask if i was really in labor. i thought are you freaking kidding me?! i said "look i'm the one that had the baby in the car at city lake park 2 yrs ago we have to go NOW!" he asked if we wanted him to call EMS and have them come check me out, i thought no you friggin idiot i don't need them to check me out i know what the heck is going on! and if we wait then YOU could be delivering this baby or 12 house was going to again (haha) so he let us go and said be careful getting the rest of the way there. when we finally got to the hospital and parked we were half way across the parking lot and my water completely busted!! i was soaked to my knees and i was panicking even more now. matt tried to tell me to calm down bc we were at the hospital but i just felt like we weren't going to make it. everything felt all too familiar.

once we got into L&D they put me in a triage room and the more i moved the more water came out. the girls started hooking me up, checking me, doing an amniosure to make sure my water broke. 5 mins later sandra popped her head in and said "it's positive, we'll move you in just a second" i said are you sure, she smiled and said yup you're having this baby. i cried! i thought finally this is it, we're here, we're safe in a hospital, all of this is finally over! i get moved into an LDR (again) and get everything going. my contractions were regular but i still couldn't feel them unless they made it up into the 70s bc i was still so numb. they would go every 2 mins, then 3 mins, 2 mins, 4 mins but never would get regular for some reason. around 3am i still couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep and got more stadol ( i love that drug btw if you haven't noticed haha) at 7am they hooked me back up to pitocin and bumped it up every 30 mins. around 1140 my contractions started coming every 2 mins and getting pretty big. they hit 80, then went to 90 and by 1145 they were reaching 100 on the toco. i had 3-4 of those and they started taking my breath. i had tears streaming down my face and matt knows when i cry with a contraction it's go time and i'm in serious pain. i told him if i grabbed the side of the bed one more time and shook it he better hit the button and call for me some drugs. the next contraction came and i was shaking that bed so hard and he was trying to remind me to breathe. cindy literally ran to the med box, got the drugs, ran down the hall and ran into my room and i had already had 3 contractions before she got there. they were 1 min or less apart! i could barely even talk to her to tell her to call for anesthesia bc the pain from earlier in the week still wasn't gone and new pain on top of it i just couldn't handle that. had it not been for contracting so hard sat, mon, tues i could have dealt with it but i just couldn't take it anymore. i felt like my hips were going to rip apart. she shot me with stadol/ phenergan mix which was one more drug than i had been having. half way through the contraction i passed out. this was 1147am exactly. cindy called for aneshesia but when melissa came in to check me she said welp no time for that cancel them. baby was already crowning. everything was such a fog all i remember was the curtain flying back, people running into the room, lights coming on, things flying across the room, bed parts flying off and dr little running in. she sat down at the end of the bed and asked me to scoot to the edge of the bed. i looked at her and said i can't move, i can't do anything. she looked at matt like oh crap what am i going to do. matt reached over, grabbed me by the hips and legs and pulled me to the end of the bed. i didn't even notice. he said it might have hurt but he had to get me there. then i remember curling up to push and saying it was burning and melissa saying in my ear that dr little was going to give me a shot to help numb me. i remember seeing her hand come back and back across in the shape of holding a needle but i didn't feel it. matt said it was really really long and skinny and i didn't act like i felt it. umm honestly no i didn't. 3 pushes and she was out. 26 minutes from the time my first contraction hit to birth. when the nurses called for delivery in room ### dr little said 'no you mean ###' she thought someone else was going to go before me bc there were 4 in active labor and we were all about to go at the same time. i was the first. we she came out she was very white and wasn't crying. i remember asking her to cry and then she let out a little cry. i think as soon as she came out i laid back down and closed my eyes. i could hear everything that was going on, just couldn't see it. i heard dr little ask "dad do you want to cut the cord?" matt got to cut the cord :) then they took her to the table in there for her and she was just screaming like crazy! i heard a nurse ask matt if he wanted to hold her before they took her back. i barely opened my eyes to look and see him standing on the left (i think) with his back towards me holding her and then i was out.

i woke up almost 6 hours later and she still wasn't in there with me. the girls got me up and let me go to the bathroom, unhooked my iv and took it out and i showered. they let me stay in my LDR room until i could eat and get somewhat woke up. but then i had to move bc another girl was coming in. there were 6 in labor with 1 more coming in. busy day much? it's 7pm and i have still yet to see her. they kept her in the nursery bc she had rapid breathing which they think was a side effect from the meds i was given and had to give her something to counter act it. we went walking down the hall to try and see her but the nursery curtain was closed so we walked to the gift shop and came back. the curtain was still closed and we started to walk back to my room when my nurse (& friend) melissa asked what was wrong. i told her i hadn't even saw ainsley yet and the curtain was closed. so she called back and we went straight into the nursery to see her. i couldn't hold her bc she was hooked up and i couldn't stand there long bc as we started to walk back to the room i almost collapsed. i saw her one more time the next day at lunch when i took momma back to see her and still didn't get to hold her until almost 6pm on saturday! that was really hard. i felt so awful too. all the contracting, all the bones separating over the last week i just didn't feel as good as i did right after the boys. after them i was up practically running around but this time not so much. i've really had to take it easy. today is the first day i've actually felt somewhat normal. but thankfully she's here, this is all over with, my kids can have their normal lives and schedule back, matt got to be there and be very involved and we can start life as a family of 5.