On Christmas morning I had a baby. Her name is Jayne Terri Richardson and she is beautiful and perfect and I love her! It is a bit ironic that we named our first daughter Noelle and then had our second daughter on Christmas, but what can you do?! On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I had an appointment with one of my midwives, she checked me, I was dilated to 4cm and 80% effaced, she swept my membranes (again) in hopes of getting something going since I was already a day past my due date and was very anxious to meet my sweet baby girl. Well, it worked! That evening just after putting Noelle down for bed at 8, I started having contractions, which started out 2-4 minutes apart. After an hour I thought I should go get my bag together, call the midwife and head to the hospital. We left Noelle with my wonderful mother-in-law Marianna. I was a 6 and 90% when we got there. The pain wasn't too bad though, so I wasn't in a rush to get any pain medication. It was strange because shortly after we got to the hospital my contractions slowed way down, so after a few hours walking the halls and bouncing on a birthing ball I was getting pretty bored and asked my midwife if there was any way to speed things up. She suggested a few things, like aromatherapy, bringing in a breast pump to do some nipple stimulation, breaking my water, or even starting pitocin. I thought that breaking my water would be a good idea, so that's what we did. Well, I had no idea how effective that would be! She broke my water at midnight and immediately my contractions were incredibly intense and only a few minutes apart. I told her I was ready for my epidural and to hurry it up! Well, of course it took forever for the anesthesiologist to get there! Or so it seemed. Getting the epidural was rough because I was shaking uncontrollably and having so many unbearable contractions so close together that it was hard to stay still enough, long enough, for him to do it. He finally got it in and I was so relieved... Even though it didn't fully work and I could still feel pain enough to make me shake uncontrollably during each contraction. I was still relieved because it was so much better than before. Well, at 1:45 am I started pushing. I pushed for 8 minutes and at 1:53 there she was! My beautiful baby Jayne! It was amazing! David and I just looked at her and at each other in amazement. We make beautiful babies. Apparently, I had an artery tear in my cervix which caused me to bleed profusely, causing a bit of panic among my midwife and the nurses who called in like 10 extra people including a doctor to come stitch me up because they couldn't get the bleeding to stop. Well, they eventually got it taken care of, I didn't worry too much, I just held my baby and ignored all the people between my legs ha ha. Jayne was 6lbs 14oz, 20 inches long and beautiful as could be. Best Christmas present ever!
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| Jayne and I about an hour after she was born. |
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| Little Jayne, less than a day old. Christmas day 2014. |
Everything was great afterward, we were all exhausted, but we were getting ready to move over to the mother/baby unit for the rest of my stay at the hospital. So the nurse wanted me to get up and try to go to the bathroom before they moved my rooms. She helped me get up and was helping my walk to the bathroom, since I had had an epidural she needed to help me. We were walking really slow and she started asking me if I felt faint or light headed, I said no, then she asked me again, and then it hit me... I said "Yes, I don't feel well, she got me over to the toilet and sat me down as fast as she could, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the way in and I pretty much looked like a ghost! I got dizzy, I almost threw up, I couldn't see, everything got dark and really distant sounding like my ears were covered or muted or something, I was going to pass out, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and lay down on the floor. Next thing I knew there were about 6 nurses in the room touching me, holding me up, putting cold wet clothes on my face and neck, trying to talk to me... It was all kind of blurry. They somehow got me in a wheelchair, my nurse kept telling me to open my eyes and look at her, but I didn't want to. They got me back in bed and started me on IV fluids, I started to feel way better as soon as they laid me down, but man, that was scary. They kept me in bed for another few hours before trying to move me again, and they went straight to the wheelchair from the bed this time. I guess I had lost so much blood that my body couldn't handle it, luckily I didn't fall and get way more hurt though.
The rest of my stay at the hospital was good I guess. I of course was really sore and exhausted and crampy, and I missed Noelle terribly, I had never been away from her for more than a few hours, and it was awful. She was only allowed to visit once (because of the bad flu season this year), so I didn't see her until the day after Christmas. Noelle cried and cried when she saw me, she didn't want anything to do with me, it broke my heart. I cried my eyes out. I bribed her with candy and cartoons and she warmed up to me again. I'm sure she must have felt quite abandoned by me, I've never left her before and then I just disappeared for a day and half. When she had to leave and I had to stay we both cried as they walked away down the hallway without me. We postponed Santa and opening Christmas presents until I could be home. The nurses made a small exception to the one time only sibling visit and let Noelle come with David and my mother-in-law to pick me up and bring me home. I think Noelle really liked that. We got home with little Jayne on Saturday afternoon. We opened presents after Noelle woke up from her nap, it was a good day. Noelle is a great big sister to Jayne, she loves to give her hugs and kisses and help take care of her, it's very sweet. She is very gentle (most of the time) and very affectionate.
