I guess you could say through Kimber's pregnancy, I knew something was up. Something just didn't quite feel right. But being a first time mom, I simply shrugged it off as first pregnancy jitters. However, now looking back there were signs that our little girl was going to be different. Kimber didn't move much and when she did it was very rarely the quick karate like jabs I heard other mothers describe. Instead, Kimber would often stretch out her little legs and hold them for a few seconds before returning to the comfort of the fetal position.
After going into preterm labor the beginning of April, I earned myself the label of a "high risk" pregnancy and had routine ultra sounds and non stress tests done. We always got a passing grade... but just BARELY. My amniotic fluid levels were high but still within normal range (barely) indicating Kimber was not swallowing well. During the non stress tests the doctor would anxiously watch for spikes in Kimber's heart rate indicating that she was awake and moving. We BARELY met the criteria and the doctor often commented that she just looked like a very sleepy baby. So yes, there were signs.
Sunday morning April 28 at about 3:00 am I woke up with very different pain than the tight "Braxton Hicks-like" contractions I had been experiencing off and on all month long. These felt more like cramps and so I got up and tip-toed out of bed to call the hospital to see if I should come in. I was told to take some of my medication and wait to see if that knocked them out. If nothing had changed in an hour I needed to come in. An hour later nothing had changed so I woke up Shawn and we headed in to Labor and Delivery once again.
The next 24 hours were spent trying everything the medical world had to offer to stop my labor but what had worked in the past was only managing to slow my contractions for a few hours. My doctor was on vacation but would be back on duty in the morning and so they decided to keep me overnight with the hope that she would be able to make the final decision on what would be the best way to proceed.
At 2:00 AM the nurse came in to deliver the "good news" that it looked like my contractions were slowing and there was talk of sending me home in the morning. I instantly broke down crying and insisted that she could NOT send me home like this! My contractions were WORSE and I was quickly becoming exhausted. She adjusted the monitor slightly and discovered I was indeed still contracting quite regularly. She checked my dilation, quickly shuffled out of the room and then came back moments later to inform me that they would be moving me into a delivery room "just to be on the safe side". Before moving me, they did a quick ultrasound to confirm that Kimber was still head down. She was. We were good to go.
In the morning my doctor came to my room as soon as she arrived at the hospital. At that point it was very obvious that labor was in full swing. After checking my dilation she told me I was dilated to a 5 and was 100% effaced but that her major concern was that she felt little feet, not a head. She called for an ultrasound machine and sure enough Kimber was now a breech baby. Dr C tried to manually flip her (ouch....) but we haven't been able to convince this baby to do anything she doesn't want to since the very very beginning. (I would be so grateful for this fighting spirit in just a few minuets) We were trying to decide if we should just wait it out and see if she decided to flip again on her own or if we needed to set up for a c section when Dr. C asked to see the ultrasound one more time. It was then that she noticed that her cord had prolapsed. She was ripping off her gloves as she told me, "Well, not only are we going to have a baby today but we will be having it by c section." Just like that people started coming out of the wood works. I honestly have no idea where they all were hiding but with in seconds the room was filled with people taking my blood, asking about allergies, and explaining what was all about to happen. Shawn changed into some scrubs and we were whisked away.
Everything seemed to happen SUPER fast after that. I had a spinal block done just before they laid me down on the operating table but there wasn't enough time for it to take full effect, so while I didn't feel any sharp cutting pain, I did feel a LOT of pressure. Like getting run over by a truck kind of pressure. To my surprise Shawn wanted to watch the whole thing. When I asked him to describe the process later he looked at me and thought for a minuet and then said, "It was a lot like skinning a deer, but then they pulled out a tiny human being?"
And a tiny human being she was! 3.95 or officially 3 pounds 10 ounces and 16 inches long. She had a full head of dark hair and later it would occur to me that I never imagined her any other way.
We had had a NICU nurse come talk to us when it was looking like the contractions weren't going to ease up at all and so I had thought I was prepared for a different delivery experience than I had been imagining for the last 7 months but when the moment came the reality hit. I was allowed a quick peak at my baby girl and heard only one of her squeaky cries before she was rushed off to get hooked up to medical equipment that would keep her alive for the first few hours of her life. I didn't even get to hear her measurements above the commotion of all the doctors and nurses doing their thing to make sure my baby and I were stable. It tugged at my heart and got those brand new mother emotions stirring when she was whisked away and I was left in a suddenly quiet OR with only the sounds of medical tools clicking as the doctor put me back together. From the time Dr C had started ripping off her gloves in the delivery room calling for a c-section to the time of birth was a maximum of 20 minuets. What a ride!
Kimber would spend the next 10 days in our local hospitals NICU. She was slightly smaller than they had predicted and lacked some of the reflexes that should be present at her gestational age, such as sucking, grasping fingers, and curling her toes when there was pressure on her feet, so the doctors started considering the thought that maybe she was slightly younger than they had originally predicted. Within the first few hours she was off all oxygen and seemed to be doing well every other way so they, decided to just give her some time to see if she might wake up a little more after recovering from such a stressful birthing experience.