It's A Girl!

March 4th 1997 is a day I will never forget, every detail is burned in my memory, it's the day my first child made her entrance into this world, and what an entrance it was!

I was late, 5 days not terribly past due by all accounts but I was done.  I had gained a whopping 70lbs with this first pregnancy and high blood pressure had set in over the past week so ya, I was ready to have what we thought was our son...

It was March 3rd a little before midnight, I had been having light contractions all day and after a brief visit to the hospital and being told, nope not yet and sent home I was sure this kid was going to make my body it's permanent home.  After a day of waiting and wondering we decided to go for dinner at our favourite Mexican restaurant on Commercial Drive.  A little spicy food might do the trick.

After wards we stopped at our close friends house for a visit and they happened to be watching Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vanessa Williams, not necessarily the funniest movie but there is one scene where Arnie falls from a plane and lands on top of a car in a wrecking yard. He's discovered by two young kids, brother and sister, and when he asks them "Where am I?" the little girl replies "Earth, welcome."  I laughed so hard I think I broke my water...I still chuckle when I think of that scene.

I say I think I broke my water because there was never the gush that most women experience.  The baby's head was fully engaged and blocking anything from doing more than a trickle and when we were at the hospital I was told, if my water turns green to come in right away...

Well at about 11pm that Monday night my water turned green.  Basically what that means for anyone who doesn't know.  Green water is a sign that the baby has had it's first bowel movement which should occur after being born but in some cases it happens in utero and it's dangerous to the baby because if they inhale it on exit it can gum up their lungs and cause problems such as infection, so not a good thing.

At this point my contractions were a little more frequent but not unbearable if it weren't for the green water we would have waited.  I wasn't about to take a risk on this one so off we went to BC Women's Hospital, a twenty minute drive from our house.  So my official check in time at the hospital was 11:30pm more or less.  The triage doctor was impressed by my enormous belly suggesting the baby would be five feet tall at birth.

We spent some time in the triage area until a room was available, once we were in and settled we were inundated with doctors and their students...it's a teaching hospital, somehow I missed that on the tour.  Didn't matter having 13 doctors along with a handful of nurses in the room was comforting. 

And so began Tuesday March 4th, me hooked up to an IV being pumped full of antibiotics to ensure the baby doesn't develop an infection and for a way to give me the anticipated pain medication or any other drug to make this process tolerable.  The hours passed and nothing.  My labour was sporadic stopping and starting, nothing regular so in goes the oxytocin to regulate my contractions, it worked and by 12:00pm I was in full labour...

Not fun! The doctor decided that after 15 hours of up and down I needed to rest or there would be no way I could push this baby out, enter epidural.  Child birth is a cake walk compared to having a horse needle stuck in your spine.  Not to mention they want you to bend over so your back is curved well good luck with a beach ball attached to your front!  So after much discomfort and pain from the garden hose sized needle in the spine not to mention the flexible one they leave in, I'm numb from the waist down, more or less, I can at least relax enough to sleep, so I did.

Drugs are a funny thing they either work or they don't, after about 45 minutes of much needed deep sleep I recall dreaming I'm pushing a school bus up a hill.  The next thing I know I'm wide awake and NEED to push.  Panic sets in, the epidural is wearing off and the tube has slipped and there's no time to put another one in.  The nurses are yelling at me not to push, I'm yelling at them I HAVE TOO! They're trying to explain that they need to be sure everything is ok with the baby, they had earlier in the day attached clamps to the baby's head to monitor it's heart rate but they kept coming off so they relied on the monitor strapped to my belly, not as accurate but good enough. 

Ok, so it's probably about 2:30pm now and I'm on my side because the epidural site is too painful to lay on, the IV in my hand is in the worst possible spot we discover because I can't bend my wrist to push myself up so I'm one handing it, thank GOD my mother-in-law was present she helped hold my back when the time came to push.  My ex stood next to the bed holding my right leg in the air and rolling his eyes for having the task...ya, that's right it was an annoyance for him, his arms were tired.  His mom gave him crap, I was otherwise preoccupied trying to get the alien out of me. 

Two and a half hours of pushing and on the second to last push the baby's heart rate dropped as expected but this time it didn't recover, the nurse yelled at the doctor words that still ring in my ears.  "Baby need to come NOW!" The doctor was lightning fast he had the scalpel in one hand a needle with freezing in the other and told me, "I'm going to cut to get the baby's head out and I'll freeze you at the same time, he did and yes it hurt like hell but only for a moment.  Out popped the baby's head, the umbilical cord was wrapped around it's neck not tight but none the less not a good thing either.  So it was cut right away. 

Then the worse possible thing happened, in my opinion anyway.  The baby was stuck.  Once this was discovered, the fact that there were several extra doctors in the room along with the chief pediatrician I was in good hands.  Three of the doctors jumped on the bed and literally popped the baby out by forcefully pushing on the top of my belly. The time was 5:00pm on the nose.

The baby was whisked away to another area of the room and surrounded by what seemed like a million backs, because that's all I could see.  No sound yet, no cries, I don't even know what I had, a son or a daugher?  We wait for what seems like an eternity for that first sound...

Not only were we concerned about heart rate but this is when disasters can happen, not enough oxygen to the brain and the baby can be inflicted with Cerebral Palsy, we knew that.  We also knew that if the baby inhaled before the air passages were suctioned out that would not be good either, so we wait...and pray.  At least I know that's what I was doing.  My ex just stood in shock, later I would find out that because of his vantage point he saw the whole show including the vision of a grey lifeless creature seconds before it was whisked out of sight.

Then miracle of miracles, a squeak, then a real cry, only a few short bursts but strong none the less.  And now..."It's a GIRL!" from someone off to my left it didn't matter, she was alive!  I looked at her dad and said "You ok with that?" dumb question but we were so sure it was a boy I didn't know if he was disappointed.  He was fine with it, phew, I couldn't imagine putting her back until the extra parts grew.  That was kind of the joke for a while.

I got to see her briefly I didn't get to hold her, they wanted her in the NICU in an incubator and on antibiotics immediately.  So I stayed behind to get stitched up and eat, finally, my last meal had been Mexican the night before.  I was starving! All they had was toast and peanut butter.  Oh well I was happy to have the whole ordeal over with.  We waited in the delivery room for what seemed like hours, I was anxious to get upstairs to see my daughter, I didn't even have the stats on her yet, the room cleared pretty quick once she was taken up to the NICU.  I knew she was in good hands, there were enough of them.

Another reason they waited to move me, I had hemorrhaged, a common issue in my family, my mom hemorrhaged as did my sister with their first so the floor looked like a war zone and I'm guessing they didn't want me seeing how much I had lost.  Of course it looked worse than it was so I'm told because the rest of my water came out afterwards too and there was allot of that.  I remember looking at myself in the mirror the next day and being shocked at how grey I was.  Startlingly grey. When I asked the doctor how much blood I lost he said about 700cc's so a fair bit.  Didn't matter, my baby girl was fine.

So much so that she looked strange amongst the pre-mees.  My daughter entered this world at 9lbs 12oz, that's right, 4oz shy of 10lbs!  21inches long. She looked like a one month old and didn't fit in the sleepers I had brought.  When we went to see her she practically filled the incubator, and had her leg up resting on the side, a very thick leg at that.  No skinny chicken with this girl.  She had a full head of jet black hair, which later we would learn was from the meconium (first bowel movement)  the nurse had shaved the top of her head for the IV and cut a little pill cup in half and taped it over the needle because she kept knocking it out.  She looked like a little old man...my dad to be exact, he was balding the same way.

We spent the rest of the week in the hospital.  She was in NICU until the 6th and the last day with me in my room.  I had to travel to her to feed her and the nurses were supplementing her with formula because I hadn't started to produce milk and she was starving all the time, and made sure they knew it!  I heard allot of comments about how big she was and why was she in with the pre-mees?  My only explanation, "She got stuck".

Today my daughter is 14! She's 5'10" tall, a straight A student who has just been accepted to the International Baccalaureate programme for grade 9 next year and is drop dead gorgeous with her golden brown hair, creamy complexion, big brown eyes and a killer smile.  She is my pride and joy, every day I am in awe of her, she is all I had hoped for in a daughter and more.  My wish for her on this day is a lifetime of success, happiness and the world in the palm of her hand.  She may have come into this world grey but now shines bright like the sun.

With much love, light and birthday wishes,
Mom.