Everything Is Rosie

Before the details get any more hazy I want to record a little bit, ooooorrrrr a lot a bit, about Rosie's birth story. She's already the most underdocumented baby of 2016 (I think she has like five pictures on Instagram) so this is the least I can do. 

 

The baby was due on February 15^th. President’s Day! But of course everyone knows that second babies come earlier than the first so I figured I’d have a baby in my arms sometime in the beginning of February. I had a lot of contractions throughout my pregnancy but in the last week or two I had so many that would start, get more consistent and painful, and then peter out.  At my 40 week appointment on Wednesday the 17^th, I got a NST and ultrasound which I not-so-secretly hoped would get me sent to labor and delivery. Fortunately and unfortunately the baby looked great. The heartbeat was strong and there was plenty of fluid so no reason to induce. We set my induction for my doctor’s next call day, Saturday the 20^th, and went home expecting to see her Saturday morning.  

On Friday morning the 19th I woke up around 7:30 and felt a contraction that was stronger than any I had felt before. Still manageable but I definitely had to focus to get through it. I started timing contractions on my phone but they were only coming every 8-12 minutes so I figured that if this was labor we had a long way to go. I woke up Adam and we decided to get the day started so we could take care of some last minute things (laundry, cleaning the house, etc) that we’d been putting off. I hoped to make it until my friend Erin got off work at 3 so we wouldn’t have to shuffle Anders around during the day. Around 8:30 my contractions started getting really close together and a lot more painful but they were only lasting for 30 seconds, not quite meeting the 5:1:1 requirement. I called the on call nurse to ask her if I was in labor and she was like, “um…you were dilated to a 4 on Wednesday and this is your second baby. You need to come in.”  No time to wait for Erin or even to shower or eat breakfast. Adam ran around getting things ready while I walked around the house crying like a bimbo, not from pain (although, ouch) but from the guilt of knowing that this was our last time as a family of three. Anders was being so cute and sweet and I hated knowing that he might have a rough transition with the new baby. And then, to add insult to injury, right before we walked out the door Anders threw up for the first time in his life (which we attributed to sipping out of an empty water bottle) but there was no time to worry about that now! We popped him in the car, dropped him off with his friend Sadie and took the looooongest car ride to the hospital.

When we checked in I was dilated to a 6 or 7. Lots of women would have rejoiced at that news but all I could think about was getting 4 hours of antibiotics before I delivered the baby. Curse you, Group B Strep! I think we walked into the hospital at 9:45 and I had an epidural and antibiotics started by 10. Epidurals. I can’t say enough good things about them. Once I was comfortable my only job was to stay still so my water wouldn’t break. The nurses and doctor weren’t optimistic that I could make it to 2:00 but thought that keeping my water intact gave us the best chance of slowing down labor. This also meant that I wasn’t getting checked very often and just chose to ignore any feelings of pressure or needing to push. Some women are very good at delivering babies but I’ve found that when I put my mind to it I’m very, very good at not delivering a baby.

Every hour I stayed pregnant felt like a victory and we began to relax knowing that Anders was having fun with his friends and assuming that if everything went smoothly we’d probably be out of the hospital the following morning. At 1:55 my doctor came in and decided that since we had hit the 4 hour mark it was time to break my water and get things moving! After she broke my water she gave me a  little while to really feel like I needed to push. I think I maybe started pushing around 2:30. I pushed for one or two contractions and then she told me that the baby was pretty much coming out on its own and I could relax. I actually watched the baby’s head come out in her glasses which was not really something I cared to see but it was pretty cool. We could see the baby had lots of hair and I was dying to finally know if it was a boy or a girl, since we really had no feeling either way. Finally, at 2:36, the baby slid all the way out and Adam did a happy laugh and announced, “it’s a girl!” with the biggest smile on his face. Since there had been meconium in the fluid the baby went to the pediatricians while I freaked out that A) I had a daughter (!) and B) I didn’t think she was crying enough. Adam and the doctor were trying to reassure me that she was fine but I really wanted to hear a louder cry. And boy, I got my wish. By the time they brought her to me she was really wailing and she cried for the next 45 minutes I had her on my chest (and the following eight weeks but that’s another story). Anders had been so calm when he was born so I really wasn’t used to this and kept asking Adam if she was ok. She didn’t really calm down until she got swaddled and passed off to Adam.  

I would really like to skip over this next part of the story but for the sake of posterity  and authenticity I should record that I had a really rough post-delivery. My doctor was having trouble getting the bleeding under control and had to call in another OB, an anesthesiologist and several more nurses to help. A couple of hours passed where they were trying to stitch me up and I was in and out of sleep. I just kept watching the number of used towels on the white board tick up and up and up (I think the final number was around 35), while my blood pressure went down, down, down (to around 70s/40s). There was talk of a blood transfusion but they were able to get the bleeding under control enough that they decided to let me wait it out and see if my body could take care of things on its own. They didn’t want my hematocrit to go below 21 and my lowest level was 21.4. Phew.

 

During the stitching up phase, we called our families and announced the birth of Rosemary Something Ottley. We later got in trouble for down playing the seriousness of my condition but didn’t want to ruin a happy moment by worrying everyone. We ended up staying in labor and delivery through the night and the following day we moved to post-partum where I continued to recuperate while they watched my hematocrit and gave me a couple of doses of IV iron. I think it was Saturday afternoon that we got the email from my Grandma letting us know that Rosemary not only shared a birthday with her uncle, my brother, Brian, but also her great-Grandma Joy, who I’m named after. We had been struggling to find a middle name for our girl and that pretty much sealed the deal. Rosemary Joy Ottley. 

 

On Saturday night Anders came to the hospital to meet baby Rosie and it was love at first sight. All of my worrying had been for nothing. He loved her right off the bat and was thrilled with the toy airplane she gave him.

 

The thirty minutes he was in the room with us were some of the happiest of our lives.   

 

On Sunday morning I told my nurse that my only goal was to go home as soon as possible. We pushed everything along and were able to leave around noon. 

I’ve never been happier to walk through my own front door! Adam’s sister Nancy had come the night before and stayed with us until Monday and then we were on our own. The recovery from this delivery was not quite as smooth sailing as I had hoped. I was very weak from the loss of blood, sore, and nursing was not really going much better the second time around. Oh and Postpartum PUPPS! 

 

That was fun. 

But all of that stuff worked itself out in the first couple of weeks and then all we had to worry about was the colic. Oh, the colic! I might write more about that in another post but I will say that the greatest gift of a second baby is the knowledge that everything is so temporary. You know it the first time around too, but now you actually believe it. And the newborn phase might never be my favorite but I'm a sucker for a baby passed out on my chest. Man, that's a total gateway drug to having a million more babies, but I'll probably settle for one ;)

And I guess that's all there is to say about that. Except that I kind of can't believe how ga-ga I am for this baby. She wakes up every morning coo-ing to herself and even though it's usually 6:00 and I'd love an extra hour or two of sleep I can't think of a better way to start my day. 

With a girl like Rosie, how can I be blue?