Mya Claire
Born Dec 17, 2009, 2:06pm
4 lbs 8 oz, 18 inches
Born Dec 17, 2009, 2:06pm
4 lbs 8 oz, 18 inches
It wasn't all that unexpected when I woke up at 10:30pm on Dec 16 having contractions. Just 4 weeks earlier I'd had the same experience. The contractions were fairly close together (4-5 min) but not very strong. I stayed in bed a while longer trying to ignore them but they were not going away. By 1am they were every 3 min but still not that strong. I decided I better call my midwife and just check in. Her advice was to continue resting and call back in an hour. I had not even made it back upstairs when I felt my water break. Now we knew this would be the real deal. We were going to meet our daughter in the next 24 hours and she would be coming 5 weeks early. We headed to the hospital and after an assessment with the midwife tried to get some sleep. The baby was doing great and since it was 3 am our midwife thought better to rest til morning. At 6am I started walking all over the hospital trying to get the labour going. I still had plenty of contractions but they were not very strong. I spent hours walking but nothing was changing.
There is increasing risk to the baby the longer the labour when your water is broken and even more risk when the baby is early. They like to deliver all premies within 12 hours. They gave us until 10am and then they would have to induce labour. By 10am nothing had changed. I even drank a concoction made by my midwives (that was disgusting) to try to speed things along. At 12pm my contractions finally started getting more painful. At 12:30 they gave me some oxytocin and within minutes I was extremely uncomfortable. Only 90 min later our baby girl was born.
It was awesome having midwives. They put Mya right on my chest and just let us snuggle. They don't fuss with the baby at all, no suctioning, cleaning or weighing. Mya did great for the first 20min of her life and I feel so blessed to have had the time with her. At this point she started losing her pink color so was taken to be assessed. She was put on oxygen while we waited for the NICU doc to come. He did a quick assessment and then Mya was taken over to the NICU. Matt was able to go with her, that made me feel so much better. My midwives quickly helped me get cleaned up and then wheeled me over to see her. It was a bit startling to see her all hooked up to IVs, wires and on a breathing machine. They assured me she was fine and would just need some additional support.
Mya spent exactly one week in the NICU, learning to breathe on her own, stay warm and learning to feed. There were many ups and downs but on Christmas Eve we go to bring her home.
She is with us and is doing great. We have many pictures to share and I will try to keep up putting them on the blog.
