My Birth Story

Abigail Grace was born on January 12, 2010 at 2:18pm. She weighed exactly 8 lbs. and was 20 in. long.

After an exciting 9 months of waiting to meet her, I began to get very anxious once my due date of January 6th began to draw near. Then it came....and went. At my doctor appointment the day I was due, I was discouraged to hear that I had not yet begun to make any progress whatsoever and I was told to schedule an appointment to come back in 5 days to be checked again.

Since labor had not started on its own in the meantime, I had gone to my appointment the following Monday (January 11th) at 40 weeks 5 days. At that time, I was diagnosed with Pregnancy Induced Hypertension. After discovering that my blood pressure had shot through the roof, I was given a NT scan and was later told by my doctor that there were some issues detected with Abbey's heartrate. As a result, I was immediately sent over to Labor and Delivery at the hospital to be admitted for an induction. It was there that I waited 6 hours while hooked up to a monitor waiting for a room to become available for me.

These were the last pictures taken of me that day while pregnant:





At around 10:00 that night, I was given Cervidil to soften my cervix and hopefully cause dilation to begin. While the insertion was not utterly terrible, the intense cramping caused by the Cervidil led me to get very little sleep that night. At around 3 AM, I had requested some pain medication and once it was administered, I was sound asleep in minutes. When the on-call doctor stopped in around 7 AM to check my progress and start me on Pitocin, I was told that the Cervidil had failed and that I still had not begun to dilate. I was then given three choices - we could wait out the day in the hospital and try another round of Cervidil again that night, the doctors could start me on Pitocin anyway to see if labor would still progress on its own from there, or we could schedule a c-section. Since my body was refusing to cooperate entirely, I was told that if we proceeded with the induction, it was very likely that I would end up needing an emergency c-section. After much thought, Mike and I decided to move forward with a scheduled c-section as I was leery of laboring for hours with the Pitocin and then needing an emergency c-section anyway. The way I saw it, if my body had failed me this far, it was time to throw in the towel and get the baby out as quickly as possible. After all, my blood pressure was still spiking and I was terribly nervous at the distress the baby was begining to experience.

My c-section was scheduled for 2 PM later that day.

The surgery itself is somewhat of a blur as I was overwhelmed by a broad spectrum of emotions - excitement, fear, anticipation - and wasn't quite sure what to expect. All I remember is that it went very quickly and in a mere 18 minutes, I was starting at the beautiful face of my baby girl in the arms of my amazing husband. It was at that point, that I began sobbing at the sheer happiness I felt. All was perfect in my world.

Due to the issues I had experienced with my blood pressure in the days prior to delivery, I wasn't discharged from the hospital until that Friday (January 15th) after 5 long days away from home.

Looking back on that day, I can certainly say that my delivery was not how I had ever imagined it to be over those past 9 months. It was, however, the event that brought me to the second love of my life, my baby girl, and I can honestly say that I wouldn't have changed a thing.