Warning: This is long and is written in detail as it's meant to be my record of her birth.
Well it's been a long time since I've blogged. Life gets busy and it's hard to keep up. However, I found myself wanting to record the details of Hazel's birth story. She's already 4.5 months old and I am finding that I am starting to forget small things. I want to write them all down before I forget. So here I am, sharing our story, so that I can remember and share it with her someday.
Hazel Anne Power joined our family on September 3, 2017 at 8:40 pm weighing 7 lbs 5 oz and 19.5 inches long. She is my smallest baby. She's 6 oz less than Brooklyn and 1 inch shorter. She is just darling and we are so glad she's a part of our family.
So I guess I'll start at the beginning. I found out I was pregnant right after Christmas time and was able to share the news with my family that was in town for the holidays. We return home from our trip and I start back up playing volleyball with my friends. At the end of January I broke my ankle at a game one evening. I wish it was a glamorous fall or that my sacrifice led to us winning the game but that wasn't the case. We were getting killed and I was just trying anything to help. A couple of weeks after breaking my ankle I was standing washing my hands at the kitchen sink with Owen and I felt blood come rushing out. I started to panic and I cried hysterically for a long time. I had a drs appointment the next day and we did an ultrasound. Everything looked great. The bleeding lessened significantly and lasted about a month on and off. I received a blessing from Derek and in it it talked about how she was ok but that it wasn't over yet and to be open minded when it came time for her to be born. Thankfully I broke my ankle so my pregnancy wasn't very active and as I look back that was a huge blessing. We were definitely being watched over.
Fast forward, everything is going great with the pregnancy after that. It was the most painful one to date. I was the most fit I had been since I got married but I was in a lot of pain. The last week or so I had to sleep sitting up on a chair. My back just couldn't take laying down anymore. At 40 weeks 1 day I woke up to get ready for church and I noticed blood in the bathroom on the toilet seat and the ground. I had bled over night and didn't know. Anyway, I find that it is bright red blood and nothing like loosing your mucus plug. I call my mom and she worries and tells me to call the doctor. I told her I was just going to head to church and call them afterwards. Well she continues to call me at church and text me to see if I had called. I told her my friend, who is a postpartum nurse, was at church and I would ask for her opinion. After the first meeting ended I did just that and she tried not to sound too worried but strongly suggested I call the dr. I got a call back within a couple of minutes and told the nurse what was going on. She didn't even ask the doctor and told me to come right in. I guess seeing bright red blood late in pregnancy isn't a good thing. I was planning on taking my older kids with me because I thought they would send me home and that it was no big deal. My nurse friends knew better and insisted on taking my kids and told me that I wasn't leaving the hospital today and I was going to have a baby. I am so grateful for her medical knowledge and her taking my kids. I was in denial but she came to pick them up. Then Derek and I said a prayer and he gave me another blessing and we headed to the hospital. Side note: Mothers always know best. Next time I'll listen to her more quickly.
Up to this point I had never really had any active labor and I was only at like 2 cm. My OBGYN was thankfully on call that day because only she knew how to kindly tell me I had to stay. She told me that I was having placental abruption. I guess where my cord was placed it was severing the placenta from my uterine wall. I needed to be induced right away. At that point I was overwhelmed and mad. I had hoped to labor at home as long as possible like I did with Owen. I hate pitocin and didn't want to get it. My recovery was so much better with Owen because I didn't have anything like that. Anyway, they broke my water and hooked me up to get pit and I started having contractions almost right away. I tried to get comfortable to labor but it was impossible since they had broken my water. There was just always fluid, all the time. I couldn't move. I know...gross. I guess i should mention at this time that Hazel was also a posterior baby. She was that way at 36 weeks and they told me she still had plenty of time to turn around and get in the right position. She never did which is why I had so much back pain. After laboring for a couple hours (?) I just turned to Derek and said something like, "Forget this. I just don't want to do this anymore. I wasn't planning on having a baby today and I am just not mentally prepared to do it. I am ready for my epidural!" I just couldn't relax on those pit contractions and I wasn't progressing very fast. I received my epidural and my blood pressure dropped super low, super fast. I just started bawling and telling Derek that I was so sleepy and felt like i was slipping in to death. Finally the anesthesiologist came back in and gave me some stuff and I was back to myself. They ended up having to do internal fetal monitoring on Hazel because they couldn't find her heart beat very well because of how she was positioned. I just count my many blessings that I had an epidural to push out my sunny side up baby. I don't think I would've enjoyed the other option. I could feel she was ready to come out and I told the nurse I was going to start pushing. Dr. Moore came in and the baby came out with one contraction after she got there. I didn't push very long at all. Hazel came out covered in blood and crying. They handed her right to me and I was in love. Derek didn't really want to touch her while she was so bloody so eventually a nurse came over to wipe her down. I held her while the stitched me up. She pooped on me twice and nursed right away. She came out with a fist in her mouth and is still that way today. She just can't get enough of her hands.
After they wheeled me to my recovery room I just kept telling my nurse I was in so much pain. I was thinking all of it was from where my epidural was. I could barely walk and the nurse was sweet enough to get me a heating bad. The night I come home from the hospital I get up from going to the bathroom and there is something hanging out of me. I freak out! I call Derek and he has no idea what it is or what to do. I call the on call doctor and she said she doesn't know what it is but if i am not passing a ton of blood to just call the doctor in the morning. I did that and when I got there I found out that I had two placentas. The one came out in full at birth and the other one fell out of me. That's why I was still in so much pain. My body was trying to get rid of it. They never saw it on the ultrasound because it must've been too close to the other one. She guessed that some of my early bleeding in pregnancy was caused from the two placentas starting to separate. It was a crazy. She cut it out of me in office, which was a terrible experience right after giving birth, but as soon as it was out I felt like a new woman! Then a couple days later I got an infection from who knows what and had a high fever and body aches and I was back in the doctors where I received a couple forms of antibiotics. Once that healed I had a pulled muscle that caused me a lot of pain for a week and then I was finally feeling more normal. It was definitely an exciting sequence of events! haha
So there you have it, my long and eventful birth story!
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