So after talking to a friend of mine in Kentucky the other day, I realized that I never really documented my pregnancy and Miss Abby's birth. So here goes:
Abby was a surprise to say the least. Trav and I had discussed when we thought we would want to have another baby and decided that we wanted to wait for a few more years. Well...the next month, on the morning of my youngest brother's wedding, we found out I was pregnant. Guess discussing it was all it took! When we moved to Arizona I was about 4 months pregnant and we didn't have anyone to help us move in for about 3 hours after we got here. Needless to say I did alot of "heavy lifting". A few weeks later during an ultrasound to find out the baby's sex they found two tears in my placenta. No more lifting Xander, which was all but impossible and began Xander's decent into the terrible twos!! Shortly after that I started having what I thought at the time was braxton hicks. I'd had them before, but these were way more frequent and stronger than I remembered them being. My doctor here expressed concern that if they became too strong then I could possibly hemorrhage from the past three c-sections. Enter the partial bed rest. One Sunday morning they were coming on a somewhat constant basis and after calling the doctor he urged us to go to the hospital. I was at 28 weeks, and our hospital here is TINY!! Five O.B. rooms and a nursery that holds only ONE baby at a time. When they hooked me up to all the monitors they noticed that my resting heart rate was 135! Slightly too high. The drugs they gave me to slow the contractions not only didn't work but raised my heart rate to 154. Blood work also showed that my d-dimer was high. That has something to do with how the cells break down coagulation products. They eventually sent me home and said to drink tons of water and stay down. A few weeks later the Doctor referred me to a cardiologist here in town. Did I mention that we live in the middle of a RETIREMENT COMMUNITY??? As you can guess, I was the only person in the waiting room under the age of 65. I was diagnosed with Sinus Tachi-cardia. Which basically means that I had a quick heart beat with a normal rhythm. The Cardiologist sent me to the hospital for an Echo cardiogram though just to make sure that everything looked right since Heart Disease runs high on my Mom's side of the family. It all looked good. The morning Abby was born I went for a quick check up at the Cardiologist and my heart rate was 133 after sitting in the waiting room for 30 minutes and never dropped below 110. He decided to put me on a mobile heart monitor to try and figure out what was making it spike so high. I looked so sweet with all the wires and pads sticking out. Then I made my way over to the OB for a checkup. I was having contractions as usual and an ultrasound showed that Abby was behind in development by over a week and that she was currently only in the 7th percentile. My Doctor was very concerned and decided to contact a High risk OB in Mesa. He told him that since my d-dimer was high and I was having regular contractions that it was time to deliver. Not exactly how I pictured my day. I made it home by 1 pm, called my Mom and Trav and I cleaned the house and packed. We called everyone to let them know what was happening and found a family to watch the boys. Had a blessing from Travis and the Bishop, and was at the hospital by 3pm. They wheeled me into the OR at 6 and after 45 minutes of being prodded by the resident Anesthesiologist who was missing teeth and smelled...interesting. He couldn't get the needle into my back to do the spinal block and ended up having to do it really low. It's not much fun being slumped over huge pregnant for 45 minutes while your back side is exposed to everyone and an old man is poking all over with a needle. Because it was done so low they laid me with my head slanted towards the floor so that the medicine would move upward. He said to let him know when I could feel it in the lower part of my chest. I had been coughing so much before they took me in so my voice was hoarse and the guy had his back to me, so by the time he could hear me say that it was to my chest it had made it's way to my collar bone. I started to panic because it felt like someone was sitting on me and I couldn't breathe well. The nurses tried to calm me, but I was having a hard time focusing and then my already low blood pressure started to drop and my vision was going dark. I'm not sure where it was at or what was happening but all of a sudden I hear one start saying, "Get her up!" and they started shoving things under my side to turn me to the left. After that I was fine and Abigayle Rose made her appearance. She was so tiny and full of fluid that she had a hard time breathing. They let me see her for a minute and then took her to my room where they worked on her for quite a while. Around 10pm they decided that she wasn't improving enough and told Trav and I that they were going to Care Flight her down to Mesa since Payson isn't equipped to take care of a preemie with breathing issues. Our Pediatrician, who helped with my c-section(??), just watched us for a bit and decided that he didn't want to separate us so he made a call to Mesa and talked to the head of the Neo-natal ward and they decided to keep her on Oxygen and slowly turn it down to see if she could recover on her own, but if she wasn't totally off by 3 am then they were sending her down. They took her to the Nursery, which looks like more of a closet, and came in at 1am to let me know that she was off the oxygen and holding her own. My testimony of prayer was increased so much that night. I don't think that I've ever prayed more than I did that entire day. My doctor came in that next morning to let me know that the cord was wrapped around her little neck twice and that my incision was so thin that he barely had to touch it and it tore open. He said that although it wasn't ideal to have Abby come an entire month early, it was for the best that she did. Anything could have happened to either of us with those circumstances. She has just been great since. No problems. She is so beautiful and happy and healthy. We are truly blessed to have her here, and thank our Father in Heaven every night for her health.
