Scott and Whitney: Kaylee's Birth Story

Kaylee Tracy Martin

March 25, 2014 8:30 pm

8lb 5oz, 21 inches

(The hospital measured her at 19 in but the pediatrician completely stretched her out a couple days later and she was 21 inches).

Here is Kaylee's birth story for those who care. It is pretty detailed and long so I won't be offended if you don't care and skip down to the pictures! :)

I asked my doctor around 33 weeks what he thought about inducing me a little bit early. My mom works at an elementary school and her spring break was starting when I was going to be 39 weeks. That way she would be able to stay a little longer and not have to worry about taking a bunch of days off. Since this was my second baby, he didn’t have any problem with it as long as my body was showing progression in the weeks prior. At my 37 ½ week appointment, I was 1-2 cm and 50% effaced. I saw the other doctor in the office because mine had just had hamstring surgery. She was very upbeat and didn’t think an induction would be any problem. My regular doctor saw me the next week and I was a little bit more dilated at a 2 and still 50% effaced. He felt comfortable with inducing me and so we set up an induction date for the next Monday, March 24^th. At that point, I would be 39 weeks, 3 days. I was hoping that I would go into labor on my own a little bit before then, but I had no such luck! My mom came into town on Saturday March 22^nd. Once she was there, I really wanted this baby to come. But at the same time, I was having a hard time with the thought of leaving Brooklyn to go to the hospital and her no longer being my baby. I was worried about how she was going to handle this new situation and I was worried about not being able to love this new baby as much as I loved Brooklyn - seems ridiculous now, but it was a legitimate worry I had. We filled our weekend with lots of cleaning/nesting and fun activities for Brooklyn. Sunday night rolled around and it was the weirdest feeling knowing that I could have another baby by the next night. I cried as I put Brooklyn to bed that night which really concerned her. She kept saying “Oh no, Momma, wet!” She would wipe the tears and say, “There, that’s better.” It was really sweet. My friend had had an induction at my hospital a couple months prior and ended up getting her induction pushed back a day since the hospital was too full and so part of me had a feeling that that would happen to me too. Sunday night I was super anxious, excited, and nervous. I slept terrible that night and woke up wide awake around 3 am. I tried really hard to fall asleep but couldn’t and so I read my book till around 5:45am and then decided to just get up and get ready for the day. We had an induction time for 7am but I was told to call sometime before then just to make sure they could take me. I called after I had showered and was pretty much ready to go and they said, “Sorry, we’ve been meaning to call you, we are super busy and are going to have to put you hold. Call back at 10 am if you haven’t heard from us, but it’s not looking like you’ll be able to come in today.” Talk about a major deflation. So I got back in bed and tried to get some sleep just in case they were able to get me in that day. They called me around 9 am and told me that I was going to have to reschedule for the next day, Tuesday, March 25^th, but that she had a good feeling I wouldn’t have a problem since I was the only one scheduled for the morning. I was pretty bummed but it was a gorgeous day and supposed to be raining the rest of the week, so I decided to just enjoy the day with Brooklyn and my mom. We played at the park all morning, went to lunch, and then went back to the park after dinner. It ended up being really nice having one more day with just Brooklyn. That night I didn’t feel nearly as anxious and was able to get a much better night’s sleep. The hospital had told me to call at 6am the next morning to see when I could come in. I was woken up at 5:30 am by the hospital calling me. I knew that wasn’t a good thing. The nurse let me know that I was going to have to be put on hold again but that she was still hopeful that I would be able to come in that morning sometime. She said they would call in a little bit to let me know one way or the other. Talk about a rollercoaster ride!! I decided to just get up and get ready in case they called and said that I needed to come in soon, which is pretty much what ended up happening. They called me at 7:30am and asked if I could come in at 8:30am. I excitedly said, “YES, I will be there!!” By that time, I was ready for the day and making everyone breakfast. I went and woke up Scott and let him know that it was “baby time!” The plan was for my mom to spend the morning with Brooklyn, have Brooklyn take her nap and play at my in-laws in the afternoon, and my mom would meet us at the hospital. I kissed Brooklyn goodbye, told my mom that I would keep her updated, and we were off! I was super impatient on the car drive there because I didn’t want to be a second late and have them turn me away. The second we parked, I grabbed the diaper bag and was practically running to the doors. Scott told me it was the fastest he had seen me move in months!! When we got to L&D, I was relieved when it seemed pretty quiet and the nurses were excited to see us. We were told to go ahead and make ourselves at home in birthing room #3. I immediately changed into my lovely gown and my nurse got my IV started pretty quickly because she said my doctor was already there and wanted to try and break my water right away. My doctor came in around 9 am and we chatted about how the induction would go and at 9:15 am he broke my water. I was 2cm, 80% effaced and baby was at -2 station. Pretty soon after my water was broke I started to have contractions on my own. The nurse wanted to wait about an hour to start the Pitocin just to see how my body was going to react. The contractions were coming but were irregular and not very painful at all so she came and started my Pitocin a little after 10 am. She started me at the lowest dose and said that we would slowly work our way up. It took a few hours of slowly increasing the Pitocin to get into a good contraction rhythm. My doctor came to check on me around 1pm and it was around that time that the contractions were really regular and starting to get pretty uncomfortable. I was able to sit and talk through them at this point, but I knew exactly where they were going to lead and soon. My doctor recommended that I stand up and walk around a little bit or sit in the rocking chair before I got my epidural to let gravity help guide the baby down. Luckily I wasn’t leaking too bad anymore and followed his advice. Moving around actually made the contractions more bearable as they were definitely getting more and more painful. My mom got to the hospital around 1:45 pm. My nurse came in around 2:30 pm and I told her I was conflicted on whether I should get an epidural soon or not. The contractions were getting really painful but I didn’t want to get it if I hadn’t progressed very far yet (not sure why it mattered to me at that point, but it did). She suggested that she check me and then we could make a decision. When she checked me I was 3cm, 100% effaced, and baby was still at -2 station. I decided to wait a while longer. Around 5:20 pm I told her I was in a lot of pain and asked her what she thought I should do. She thought we should call the anesthesiologist because he was on-call at home, about 15 minutes away, and she knew there was a c-section coming in a little later and he wouldn’t be available during that time. I was 4 cm and baby was at 0 station. We called him in and I’m so glad that we did because by the time he got there I was in lots and lots of pain and the contractions were coming around 2-3 minutes apart. The placing of the epidural was a million times better than last time!! I LOVED the anesthesiologist!! He was SO funny and really lightened the mood and helped me stay calm. The placement was so smooth and easy too. With the last one, the anesthesiologist was hitting lots of nerves, making me INVOLINTARILY move and then he would snap at me and tell me, “You have to hold still!” I had to have it completely replaced last time too. But I hardly felt anything this time and that warm tingly feeling was very much welcomed by me!!! At 6 pm, I was 5 cm. One of the only downsides of this epidural was that I only seemed to have complete relief for around 1 hr. At which point, I started to feel every contraction again. It was right in the middle and low in my pelvic region. I told my nurse and she instructed me to push the button on my epidural and if it didn’t get better soon to call her back in. The extra doses didn’t seem to help at all so she called in the anesthesiologist. He had warned me when he inserted the epidural that a lot of second-time mom’s progress very fast after they get the epidural and are in active labor and if that happened, it would become very hard for the epidural to mask all the pain. He gave me a full bolus of the epidural, and it took the edge of the pain away but it still wasn’t the pain coverage I was hoping for. I kept thinking, if I’m going to pay for this thing, it better last longer than an hour!! He really didn’t think it was displaced because the insertion went so smoothly, but since he couldn’t seem to get ahead of my pain with the boluses, he was pretty convinced that I was progressing very quickly. He called my nurse in and insisted (in a funny and friendly way) that I needed to be checked again. Both the nurse and I were kind of rolling our eyes, she had just checked me less than an hour ago and I was only a 5! I kept thinking (and I think my nurse was too) that there was so way I had made that much progression in so little time. But he continued to insist on me getting checked. Right when the nurse checked me, she had a smirk on her face. I knew immediately that I was further along than we both anticipated. At 6:45pm, I was a 9 and really close to a 10!! She said that she could feel the baby’s head move lower in the birth canal as I was laughing so it wouldn’t be long until I was ready to push. We had a good laugh with the anesthesiologist as he gloated about being right. He gave me another bolus of pain medication which finally took the pain away but the downside was that I was completely numb now and couldn’t feel any pressure the way that I could with Brooklyn. This epidural was a combination epidural which meant that it had a couple different pain medications as opposed to one. The side effect of one of the pain medications is that it can cause you to itch-which definitely happened to me!! But I’ll take itching over pain any day. Around 7 pm, my nurse called my doctor to have him come in. My doctor got there around 7:20 pm. The baby was still a little high in the birth canal so we chatted in my room for awhile as I rested and descended. Around 8:10 pm I started to push. It was a lot harder to push this time since I was completely numb and I just had to trust the nurse when she would tell me I was pushing well. Kaylee was born at exactly 8:30pm. The moment she came out was just as amazing as with Brooklyn. There is no greater feeling in the world than to see our new baby for the first time and realize that the previous long 9 months were more than worth it! She had the cord wrapped around her neck and so she looked pretty purple-ish when she came out but they placed her immediately on my chest for skin-to-skin. Around 10 minutes after she was born and I was getting stitched up, I started to feel really weird. My eyes were twitching and I started to feel really light-headed. I’m the type of patient that doesn’t like to complain, so I waited a few minutes until I told my nurse that I wasn’t “feeling very good.” She took my blood pressure and it was pretty low at 75/35. So they laid me flat on my back, put an oxygen rebreather mask on me at 10L flow rate. They called the anesthesiologist in and he opened my IV fluids wide open and gave me about 2L of fluids and he gave me some ephedrine through my IV. After about 5-10 minutes, my blood pressure got back up to an acceptable range and I felt much better. By that time, my doctor was all done suturing as well. I didn’t tear as bad as I did with Brooklyn and had a 2^nd degree tear, he said it was probably 60% less tearing. My cyst that we had previously drained had come back and he found another one so he surgically removed both. My recovery has been much easier than with Brooklyn and Kaylee has been an awesome nurser (just having a hard time keeping her awake at this point) from the start which I have been very, very grateful for!! She looks A LOT like Brooklyn's baby pictures but was born with an adorable (at least I think so) birthmark/mole-(we have yet to have that confirmed) right by her eye. It is so random and I kinda feel bad because I know she will probably hate it when she's older but I'm sure it can either be lightened or removed down the road if she/we really want to. But I think it adds character and is endearing to me. My hospital stay was smooth and my mom stayed with me both nights. Scott and I both decided it was better for Scott to go home and be with Brooklyn so that she had a little more stability and so that Scott could actually get some sleep. We have all been doing really well since being home. We had a rough first week with Brooklyn because she definitely was a little thrown off. She wasn’t sleeping or eating like normal, throwing fits like crazy, and was super clingy to me. She has always LOVED Kaylee though. She is always concerned with where she’s at and is always giving her lots of kisses. She is a great big sister already. She seems to be back to normal as well. She still has her tantrums, but I think that’s just part of the terrible twos! :) I have felt nothing but pure gratitude for my little family. I have been blessed with an amazing husband who is always willing and ready to help me with anything and two beautiful daughters. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

I had my mom in the delivery room so that she could take pictures (from the head down!) of the experience because I felt like we hardly had any from Brooklyn's delivery. Don't worry, I have spared you from seeing anything too graphic!!

Last belly pic! 39 weeks, 4 days...

I'm pretty sure this is when I started to not feel very good but hadn't told anyone yet...

Ah, feeling much better now...

Love that little face!

I forgot how little they are when they are born and thought for sure she was only a 6lb-er because she seemed so tiny to me!! But she weighed the exact same as Brooklyn at 8 lb 5 oz!

Trying to take a cat nap while we waited till the wee hours in the morning to switch rooms, I was exhausted!

Brooklyn was kind of freaked out when she came to the hospital the first time. I don't think she felt comfortable at all and didn't like how I was in that weird bed. We had Kaylee give Brooklyn a present and she loved it! My mom took Brooklyn to the gift shop and Brooklyn picked out a stuffed animal to give Kaylee and it was so cute to see how proud she was to give it to her.