The birth story of
Danielle Rosemary Virginia
Dan and I were together for 6 years before we had Danielle.� We had tried and tried to get pregnant, and we weren't having any luck at all.. it was so frustrating for me.� I would hear stories about 15 year olds with no jobs and no husband that were having a baby and I wanted to cry.
I had been trying to avoid going to the the doctor, but I finally broke down and went to the gynocologist.� He was so helpful, and he finally said that my problem was that I didn't ovulate, and he gave me a prescription for one month worth of chlomid (5 pills) and said he'd see me next month and I'd probably be pregnant.� I couldn't believe it.� It was very scary when I went to go take those pills.� I felt like I was on the top of a roller coaster hill looking down... I couldn't believe they were really going to work, and I would get to have a baby, too....
��������������������������������������������� Two weeks later, I was pregnant.�
Pregnancy was pretty good, except what I remember most is it was HOT. Someone should have warned me since I was having control over things that I was going to have to look like a hippopotamus during the hottest part of the summer.... I didn't think of that...
One thing I do remember was that I didn't have that "triple check" test done.� I had several other girlfriends that were pregnant at the same time, and one of them had the test done right before me.� The doctors told her that her test showed the baby was going to have cerebral palsy and down syndrome.� She cried for weeks.� She had two amnio's and full genetic testing was done on the baby.� The doctor even asked her if she was related to her husband!� Her son came out COMPLETELY NORMAL, so she was upset for nothing.� I talked to my doctor about it and he told me that 60% of the results of that test come out that something is wrong with the baby, and of that number.. 90% of those are WRONG.� I told him I wasn't comfortable taking the test with those kinds of results, and he said, "If something was wrong with the baby, what would you do about it?" and I said, "nothing", and he said, "Then would you want to know about it and worry about it for the next five months?".� So, I skipped the test.�
I had five ultrasounds... the first one was at 10 weeks so they could count "how many" babies we were having... since I was on the fertility pills, they wanted to make sure I wasn't "high risk".. (thank Goodness!)� The second was at 17 weeks, but it was killing me to find out what sex the baby was, and she kept pulling her legs up to her chest,� so they let me schedule a "gender scan" at 24 weeks .� Then we found out she was a girl.. (HOORAY!! That's what I wanted!)��� We had another at 37 weeks to find out her position, and I got some bad news... the baby was in a breach position with her legs "indian style" and her head was up in my ribs.. The doctor said he didn't think she was going to be able to turn with her knees like that, so he gave me three options..� The first was to find another doctor to deliver her naturally, because he refuses to deliver breach babies that way. The second option was to try and turn her, which meant that they would give me muscle relaxers in my abdomen, and they would try and push my stomach to move her.. but the chances were that the cord would wrap around her head and she would go into fetal distress... (not a good option either)... or third, I could have a c-section.� I was terrified.� I guess I really was so excited to finally be pregnant, it never ocurred to me until then that this baby was going to have to come OUT somehow, and although any of the ways don't sound FUN... the thought of a cesarean had me HORRIFIED.... They were going to cut me open while I was AWAKE!!!!� I couldn't sleep for days.. I would wake up sweating in the middle of the night and cry... (I think it was a bad thing for me to find out about it so early because I had too much time to think about it.. I think most people have a c-section after hours of pushing, and they are so tired they just want the baby out.. )
I scheduled the surgery for the Tuesday after Labor Day... Dan and I had a wedding to go to the Saturday before, and I really wanted to go, since I got the choice.�
The wedding was fun, and then Sunday, i did some chores, and relaxed a little...
my last weekend of not being a parent........ it was a weird concept.��
Sunday night at 3am.. Dan started coughing in the bed, so I leaned over to get him a glass of water off the nightstand, and my water broke.� I said, "oh_____!!" (censored... hee hee)�
We drove to the hospital a little while later, and called our family when we got there.� The nurses told me my doctor wasn't scheduled to come in until noon, so I had my choice to wait for him, or have another doctor do the surgery.. Since my doctor had been so wonderful to help me GET pregnant, I wanted him to be there to deliver her... so I decided to wait..
At the hospital, we had 11 family members waiting with us... it was like having a baby in the middle of Grand Central Station. I had to stay in bed since my water broke because the nurses couldn't tell where the cord was, and it was pretty simple to lay there and wait, until my contractions started.� I wasn't planning on having contractions! This birth was supposed to be SCHEDULED.. and it had been everything BUT!� The whole family was standing around talking like they were at a party, with me in a bed in the middle of them... and then every few minutes someone would look at my monitor and say, "OOOOOHH, here comes another one!" and everyone would become silent and stare at me to see what kind of faces I would make.� How embarassing!!!� Finally at 1pm, my doctor arrived.� The nurses took me over to the surgery room, and left Dan behind for a bit.� They told him, "You should wait here until we get her started. We want to make sure there are no problems with her or the baby. If there is, we don't need a hysterical father on our hands. We'll be back in about 5 minutes to get you."� They wheeled me down the hall, and they gave me my spinal, and started the operation. I was laughing and joking with the doctor, and I was much more calm than I thought I was going to be.� A few minutes later Dan came in looking like he saw a ghost.� He had tears in his eyes.� I didn't realize it, but I found out later it had been 20 minutes that he sat waiting in that room for the nurse to come back, and he sat there alone and started thinking that something horrible had happened to one of us. (How sad!!!) About three minutes later I heard, "Here's a foot!" "And another foot!" "And a butt!" (She was feet down, remember??) and then I heard her SCREAMING!!!! The doctor was laughing... he said, "I'm glad she's going home with YOU!" and I laughed, "Put her BACK!".. She was a loud one!
������������������������ And that's the story of how my princess came into the world!!
