Audrey's Birth Story

Audrey’s Birth Story – June 6th, 2010

The day Audrey was born was the most amazing day. It did come with a little hard work and some road blocks but it was ALL VERY WORTH IT. On Friday, June 4th, I had a check up my OBGYN’s. She said that Audrey’s heart rate was perfect and then checked for progress. I was 2.5 cm dilated and 80% effaced. She said that she would be very surprised if I went through the weekend and was still pregnant. I had a really hard time believing that. I didn’t want to give in to false hope. I really honestly thought I would have to drag my ass in to work on Monday, June 7th- my due date. But, I was determined to do anything I could to meet my little girl on or before that day. So, I became active. Joey and I went for a walk every chance we could. The walks didn’t last for very long as I could not walk for more than 15 minutes without becoming short of breath or having ligament pain.

Saturday, we went to this little fair they have at my old grade school with my dad, Kara, & Gage. We walked around for that a little bit and watched Gage explore the activities. After that we went back to my dads and BBQ’d some hamburgers and chatted at the table for a little bit. At about 5:40pm as we were clearing the table I suddenly felt this little trickle of liquid and I looked down and it was running down my leg. I looked up at my sister and asked, “did I just pee my pants?” and she said no I think your water is breaking. She grabbed my hand and we ran upstairs to try to get to the bathroom toilet. As I was running up the stairs and headed into the bathroom I felt an even bigger gush. I got onto the toilet right on time. Joey ran upstairs behind us and we confirmed that my water broke. He got a big grin on his face and we realized what was finally happening. We kinda had a moment where we just looked at each other with such excitement because we would soon be meeting our little princess. Yes, our moment was when I was still sitting on the toilet waiting for the trickling of water to somewhat slow down. Oh well, it was special to us. Anyway, while I was trying to clean up a bit my sister was in search of another pair of pants for me to wear. Luckily my little brother still lived with my dad at that time so I stole a pair of his basketball shorts. While all of this commotion was going on, Gage started to get really concerned about me and insisted he come into the bathroom to make sure that I was ok. He asked, “Anna, Whatcha doing?” I responded by saying, “I’m havin a baby!!”

So after I was somewhat cleaned up, Joey and I headed home so I could take a quick shower and to add the last minute things to the hospital bag. About a couple minutes into the car ride I felt my first contraction. I believe the words out of my mouth were, “Not bad!” Then about 5 minutes later another one. This time it was a little more intense. I probably had about 3 more on our 20 minute car ride home. By the time we got home my contractions were starting to get painful. I took a really short shower, Joey packed what we could, he fed the cats, and then we were off. We spent probably 10 minutes at home before we were out the door again.

The ride to the hospital was probably the longest car ride of my life. The contractions were coming about every 3 to 4 minutes and were lasting about 45 seconds to a minute. We got on 164th in Mill Creek to head to the I-5 and what do you know…TRAFFIC. Not what I wanted to see. We literally hit every red light and everyone and their mom decided to be on that road at the exact same time. I was not a happy camper. It took a normal 5 minute car ride about 25 minutes to get to the damn freeway. Once we got on I-5 it was smooth sailing until we hit south Everett….TRAFFIC AGAIN! And the contractions were getting sooooooo much more painful. We finally get off the freeway and hit every red light to the hospital. Well, we didn’t really hit red lights, Joey ran through them (safely of course). Oh well, we got there and got checked in. It was about 7pm. Then we waited for the Triage nurse to come get us. We waited for another 10 minutes. I am not exactly sure why we had to wait, it wasn’t busy. I was super annoyed when the nurse finally came and got us. We got into a bed in Triage and the nurse was super slow at getting me hooked up to the monitor. I would have like to skip the whole Triage stage all together but they wanted to confirm my water broke and monitor my contractions. Standard protocol I guess. They monitored me for a bit and confirmed that I had meconium in my water. This just means that when Audrey arrives that she goes straight to the NICU nurses that will be in the room to get her lungs suctioned so she doesn’t inhale any meconium. Anyway, after about 30 minutes (7:30pm) in Triage, I finally got to go my own private room. Once I got there, I ordered my epidural. I was originally going to wait and see how far I could go without it. HAHAHA, yea right. That didn’t work out. I got my epidural at 3 cm and it was heaven.

When the anesthesiologist came in (8pm), he became my best friend. I was so happy to see him. He was very prompt in getting everything set up and within 5 minutes I was going to get drugged. I was so excited. Well, so I thought. When he started to give me the line for my epidural in my back, I started to get a contraction. He said, “We are going to work through this contraction, you are going to need to stay still.” I started balling my eyes out. Not only did the contraction hurt like hell, I think the fact that he was poking me with a needle at the exact same time made everything SOOOO painful. I believe I said, “PAIN!!!! EVVVERRRYYWHERE!!!!!!” And then two minutes later I was in complete heaven. Numb from the waist down. I could still wiggle my toes and kind of move my legs but I could NOT feel my contractions. So, I was able to rest.

I really wanted to take a nap at this point, but I just couldn’t. I was way too excited. From about 8:15pm to about 12am I just rested. No sleep!! But how could I when I new I would meet my daughter very soon. Throughout that time the nurse came in periodically to check my progress. By about 10pm I was 6cm and started to get a fever. It was consistently over 100. They gave me meds for my fever but don’t recall what it was. At 11am, we got a good scare. Audrey’s heart rate was going down. I think it got down to 50 bmp from 150 bmp. I called the nurses station and two of them came rushing in and repositioned me. Audrey’s heart rate returned back to normal. I think I was just lying on the umbilical cord. By 12am, I was fully dilated at 10cm and still had my fever of over a 100. Audrey’s heart rate was still very strong so we decided that I would labor down and start pushing at about 1 am.

So, 1am came very quickly and I started to push. My contractions were coming about every 2-3 minutes and would last for about a minute each. So each contraction I would push for 10 seconds rest for 10 seconds…etc. By about 1:45am I could start to feel the contractions on my left side. With each contraction came more pain and less efficient pushing. So the nurse calls down the anesthesiologist and he determined that I had a one sided epidural. He also stated that the reason why it wasn’t caught earlier was because the narcotic was still in my system from when they gave me the epidural in the first place. So he moved my epidural line by 1cm and we were back in business by about 2:15am. I started pushing again while doing the same rhythm as before. By about 3am I started to get lower stomach pain to the point where I wasn’t pushing efficiently again. So the anesthesiologist came back again and adjusted my medicine. Before he did so he gave me this stupid speech of… “ya know, your mom and grandma did this all naturally.” I believe I yelled “I don’t give a shit about what they did, give me the damn drugs.” So he ignored me and spoke to Joey. At this point I don’t know what he said. I think he was explained to Joey how he was going to adjust my meds. He also said that I could push my medicine button to give me more medicine when I needed it. I told him that it was not working. I guess he was just trying to avoid upping the dosage if he didn’t really have to. But dammit he had to so he did. So by about 3:30am I was back in business and started to push again. The doctor came in at this point to check to see how I was doing. The nurse gave him the progress that I was at +1 station and needed to be at +3 station before we really needed him to come back. I still had a long ways to go and I was starting to get exhausted. By 4:30am I had this side pain and AGAIN it got so painful that I wasn’t pushing efficiently so the anesthesiologist came back. He said that it was defiantly a blind spot with my meds and that he could give me something that would temporally help but it wouldn’t help for long. I was so discouraged at this point. I felt like I was getting no where and Audrey would never arrive. Joey was really great and kept encouraging me the whole time. He was a great coach and I defiantly couldn’t have done this without him.

At 4:45 am I was pushing once more. The doctor came in at 5:30am and said that he would like for me to have this baby by 7am (the end of his shift). He stated that he would come back at 6:15am and that if I wasn’t having the baby any time soon that I would have to discuss c-section, using the vacuum, or the forceps because I have been pushing WAY to long and we need to get this baby out. Even though her heart rate was still strong, I was defiantly running out of steam. But those 3 options scared me and I all the sudden got a second wind. I pushed like a mad women. My dad and sister said they could hear me from the waiting room. I grunted and pushed so hard. At 6am the doctor and the NICU nurses arrived and prepared for birth. 15 minutes later, here came Audrey Kathleen at 6:15am. She came out blue, not breathing and the cord loosely wrapped around her neck. I was soooo scared. I said, “She isn’t breathing!!” The doctor said that it’s a good thing that she isn’t breathing because of the meconium that was in my water when it broke. The NICU nurses immediately took her and started to work their magic. They suctioned out her lungs and got her breathing. Joey was watching them work on her and he too was scared (he didn’t admit this at first) by their procedures. Once she was stabilized and breathing on her own (she of course started screaming), he reached his finger out and she immediately grasped his finger. It was the most breath taking thing to watch. I will never forget that. It was her way of saying, “I’m alright Daddy!” Joey also got to cut the rest of the cord which he really wanted to do all along. After about 45 min of working on her and getting her examinations and me delivering the placenta and getting me all stitched up (I had a 2nd degree tear…not bad) I finally got to hold her and I could not keep my eyes off her. She was (and still is) the most gorgeous little baby I had ever seen.

Audrey Kathleen Amaral- June 6th, 2010 at 6:15am – 7lbs 8oz 19.5 inches long.