Annabella's Birth Story

Easy pregnancy....easy labor....not so easy recovery.


My plan was to work all the way up until I gave birth and that's exactly what I did. On the first day of my maternity leave, I went into labor. I had actually been feeling great the whole day. The reason I started my leave was because I was going to start on a Monday, but slept awful the night before so decided just to be done with work. At around 3:30 pm on Feb. 18th, I started getting contractions. My friend Annie looked up signs of labor and I was having all of them! Andy got home around 5:30 to find my contractions even stronger. This is around the time that things start to get odd to me. When I went to the restroom, my urine was cloudy. Obviously not normal. After this happened a few times I called labor and delivery triage and they were not concerned at all. They told me to drink 6-8 glasses of water and observe my urine and call them back. Andy and I decided to have dinner and watch a movie while I drank my water and observed my urine. Still no change, so I called them again. I kept asking if I could be leaking amniotic fluid and they assured me that I would know if I was. Finally around 11:30 pm, they got tired of me calling and had me come in.


When we got there, as we were walking up to the counter, we heard the nurses talking about how they didn't believe I really drank all that water. They most certainly thought I was making things up. Yes, I did defend myself to them. Anywho, we got put into a room and was all hooked up with monitors. When the doctor arrived, she was talking with me when all of a sudden something warm came out of me. I told the doctor that I don't know if I just went to the bathroom or if my water broke but something is for sure happening. She checked me and what do you know, my water had broken. I was quickly taken to labor and deliver to be induced. When my water broke, I was only dilated to 1 cm and my cervix was still long (about 2 or 3 in and it needed to be as thin as a piece of paper). I still had a long way to go before our Annabella was going to come.


The doctor came in and put a cath into my cervix and then blew up a balloon inside of me. They said that when the ball comes out, I'd be 3 cm. They started the pitosin. Between the contractions and that balloon in me, it made the contractions awful feeling. Several times, it felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach. In fact, when they finally were able to take it out, I had several large contractions afterwards and I barely felt them. The pressure with the balloon against my cervix was making the contractions hurt so much more.

When I was at 5 cm, I asked for an epidural. We weren't sure when he'd be able to come because he was in a c-section, so I received a small dose of a pain reliever to take the edge off a bit. It made me feel a little loopy more than anything. After that epidural, I didn't feel anything and labor was pretty smooth. I went from 5 cm to 8 cm in 2 1/2 hours. Because my water broke, the doctor wasn't checking me very often to prevent infection. After another hour and a half, I was fully dilated. Pushing for an hour and nine minutes, which by the way was so painful, Annabella was here.

This is when things go wrong. She came out with her cord wrapped around her neck. This must have happened at the last minute because she showed no signs of being in distress. It was actually my main fear. Never in any of my thoughts did the rest of the events ever occur to me. After giving birth, her oxygen was low, her breathing was erratic, and she had a temp of 102.5. She was also not crying but grunting. I also had the same temp. A large number of people all of a sudden were in the delivery room. Were all the nurses and docs came from, I don't know, but it was concluded very fast to take her to NICU. I saw her for a quick moment, gave her a kiss and Andy, the nurses, docs, and Annabella were gone. It wasn't for about an hour until I had a little bit of an update. Things were not clear at the moment. They decided to treat both of us with an antibiotic because we most likely had an infection of some sort.

After four hours of waiting, I was able to see Annabella. She was hooked up to all kinds of things and had a huge IV in her arm. This is not how I had imagined our first few hours. But things rarely go the way you expect them to.

In the days to follow, it was decided that we indeed had an infection. I was treated for 48 hours. Initially, Annabella was going to be treated for 48 to 72 hours. That then changed to maybe 5 to 7 days and then possible 7 to 10 days. In the end it was for 7 days. We stayed at the hospital with her the entire time. She had to get a total four different IV's put in her arms and hands and her breathing was closely watched. She would receive one antibiotic at eight in the morning through her IV. It would last around 45 min. Then at eight and nine at night, she would receive two more antibiotics. She'd be gone for about two hours. The nurse would slowly push the medicine in through her IV. We had a great team of doctors and nurses working on her.

Finally, the day Annabella got discharged, we were in a tsunami warning. So the hospital kept us there for a good part of the day before the governor finally said the threat is over. What a week for someone who is so young. I know there are a lot of families that go through worse, but to us it was scary. I still can't believe she had to go through all of this. In the end, she is healthy and that's the important part.