Welcome Adelaide Quinn | A Birth Story

It has officially been one month since our sweet Adelaide (Addy) made her debut! To say time is flying by is an understatement and I wish I could just freeze time so she didn’t get another minute older. Every day she’s learning new skills and it’s such a blessing to experience. I can remember so many nights for so many years longing to experience what is currently my reality. If you missed our infertility journey, click here! Grab a snack because this post is a long one!

Addy’s due date was February 16, 2018, but for the final few months of pregnancy I had a major feeling she wasn’t going to make us wait until then. February 7 (Wednesday), I went to see the midwives for my 38 week appointment where we agreed upon a membrane sweep because I was so uncomfortable from the amount of fluid I was retaining. The sweep was uncomfortable, but super quick. The next 24 hours were uneventful, but I started to feel super unwell Thursday evening and was having contractions every five minutes. By Friday, I was experiencing a low grade fever and was told to go to labor and delivery, so we did. When we got there, we were hooked up for a fetal monitoring, which showed Addy in as much distress as I was in. Both of our heart rates were really elevated (hers 170’s, normally 135 and mine in the 120’s). We spent about 6 hours Friday being worked up for the flu and uti, which thankfully both were negative. I ended up receiving half a bag of iv fluids which did help bring down our heart rates. At this point I was still 3cm dilated and 70% effaced, the same progression as my cervical check on Wednesday. The midwife offered to induce me, but we both agreed I wasn’t in any condition energy wise to deliver. They finally released us that evening to go home and instructed us to return if my fever increased.

About 3am that Saturday, my fever did in fact increase to 102.4 and I had developed a rash on my torso, which is typical of my body when I’m fighting a viral infection and have a fever. I took Tylenol and went back to bed because I swore I wasn’t going back to the hospital until I was in real labor. That day around 4pm I realized I hadn’t felt Addy move since 10am and I began to panic. I called labor and delivery and they instructed me to come back in. Needless to say I was frustrated but wanted to be safe. They monitored us for about four hours and had us walk the halls in an attempt to accelerate the contractions I had been having for several day that were 3-5 minutes apart. We went home about four hours later and I was feeling much better than I had felt Friday.

Sunday ended up being a typical day and I got a lot of cleaning done around the house. Brent had rented a redbox movie that night that we watched. When I went to the bathroom around 11:30pm Sunday, I felt a small gush of fluid that wasn’t urine, but I wasn’t convinced it was my water breaking. So I put on a pad and went to bed. Around 5:30am I woke up and immediately upon standing felt that same gush, but again it wasn’t a gush like you see in movies, so I wasn’t getting my hopes up and laid back down. Finally around 7:30am it happened again and I decided to call the midwife on call who WAS convinced it was my water breaking and told us to head to the hospital.

We finally got to the hospital around 9:30am Monday morning and got a triage room around 10am. They did a paper test to see if in fact I was leaking amniotic fluid and I was. Because you only have a 24 hour window to deliver a baby once the amniotic sac is ruptured due to increased risk of infection, we knew we were having a baby within the next 12 hours, since it had technically ruptured the evening before. If Brent and I had to leave the hospital a third time without a baby, we would have totally lost it. I was still having mild contractions at this point, but they weren’t strong enough to cause me to progress on my own. Around 12pm, we were moved to a delivery room and pitocin and antibiotics were started. I should mention that the practice of midwives I go to have about seven midwives and the midwife on call was one of the two I had never met in the office, so I had no clue what I was getting myself into. It was great being able to skip medications like cervidil because I was already dilated. Contractions were gradually intensifying, but I was determined to do a natural birth. Around 5pm I began getting frustrated and tired, so my midwife agreed to do a first cervical check. We needed to keep the cervical checks to a minimum because my sac was ruptured and I was strep B positive. I was only 5-6cm dilated, which was frustrating to hear, but at least I knew where my progression was. About every 30 minutes the midwife would have me change positions, which was super helpful.

Around 7pm I had finally had enough and began asking for something for pain other than the nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The use of nitrous oxide does nothing as far as pain relief, but did provide me the ability to focus better through the contraction pain. I had been using it because it was the least likely of my options to transfer to the baby. Even if the machine had been giving me regular old oxygen, the idea of the gas gave me mental relief. After asking for something multiple times and both Brent and the midwife talking me off the ledge numerous times because they knew how important a natural birth was to me they finally agreed and ordered anesthesia to our room. Unfortunately, anesthesia was tied up in another room so they did not make it to our room until 8:15pm. By this point I was having a continuous contraction that was over five minutes long with no end in sight and was in transition (yet no one but me knew because a cervical check hadn’t been performed since 5pm. The midwife ordered the pitocin be stopped since my body was producing enough oxytocin on it’s own to keep labor going. At this point I was seated with my feet hanging off the bed, hunched over while anesthesia prepped my back. I felt two sticks in my back over the course of a few minutes, but no relief. I finally realized what was happening. An anesthesia resident had missed twice and I could feel the tension in the voice of the head anesthesiologist and then the resident stormed out of the room. Within seconds the anesthesiologist finished my epidural and immediately I was saying I needed to push. All the staff geared up and the pediatric department was called to be present in the room because Addy did pass meconium (her first poop) inside of me which meant there was a chance of aspiration while being delivered.

Once I started pushing, it wasn’t long before she arrived. Less than 30 minutes after the epidural and only pushing through 4-5 contractions, Addy arrived at 8:47pm on February 12, 2018. She weighed 7 lbs, 8 oz and was 20.5” long. She hadn’t aspirated on any fluid and showed no signs of jaundice. I absolutely could not have asked for a more supportive midwife during labor and wish it hadn’t taken me so long to meet her because it would have changed my whole experience prior to delivery. We ended up being discharged two days later on Valentines Day morning. Addy was the best Valentines Day gift we have ever received.