For now, I'll give a shortened version without so much of the first-hand narrative.
I went into labor naturally - starting around 12:30 am, building up to regular consistent contractions about four minutes apart around 2:30am, went to the hospital around 10:30am, decided at about noon that I was going to need an epidural, didn't get the epidural until about 2pm, didn't start pushing until about 8pm, we took a 20 minute break around 10pm or so, and three sets of pushes later Mary was born. It was a very LONG labor. Typically these 'breaks' don't work this way (with the baby arriving afterward), but given the fact I hadn't eaten since the evening before and was going on about four hours of sleep it worked for us. The issue was the hospital staff and my doctor were planning for a C-section, not a delivery ten minutes after our little break. So, once Mary was finally crowning, the doctor was about 10 minutes away and the nurses instructed me to stop pushing in order to wait for her arrival. The issue was that Mary's heartrate began to drop drastically during those very long mintues. There was some discussion over delivering or not that ended with my doctor arriving at the nick of time and immediately delivering. Mary was born with meconium present, the cord wrapped around her neck, and she was not breathing.
She was 'bagged' (I'm no doctor so you're going to have to just follow along) and within minutes was breathing. By the time they moved her to the nursery she was fighting the tubes so they removed them and she was breathing pressurized room air within minutes of being born. Shortly after, she was stablized and everything appeared fine. Jamie ran to grab me food. My doctor came into my room to tell me there might be an issue with Mary - it appeared she was having a seizure and she would need to be air lifted to San Antonio. I got to make the phone call to Jamie to inform him to come back to the hospital as soon as he could.
The neonatal specialist came in to explain the details of her condition. Jamie got back just in time for this update. The short version of what was explained to us was her posturing and movements could be a seizure - the equipment to verify this was not available at the hospital we were at - if she was having a seizure it could be a sign of something more seriously wrong (brain damage). The procedure for minimizing organ damage called 'cooling' must be performed within six hours after birth for the best results. Mary's test results for pH and other indicators were borderline to indicate potential damage. The neonatal specialist decided it would be best to transfer her to San Antonio in order to perform the cooling procedure and where an EEG could be performed. Mary was brought into my room for about five minutes by the airflight crew before being flown to San Antonio - this was the first time I was able to see her. Typically you're able to spend a bit more time, but the weather was deteriorating and they had a very small window to get her back to San Antonio. An ambulance came to transfer me to San Antonio - we arrived around 4 am.
The NICU was still getting Mary hooked up and performing tests and asked that I wait to come to see her. Jamie had driven home given the fact that he had also been up for over 24 hours and could not be driven (by helicopter or otherwise) to San Antonio - it was safer for him to get some sleep and head up to SA in the morning. My sister, Heather, who had been at the New Braunfels hospital with me until midnight or one in the morning drove up to SA to meet me there and stay with me. We met up with her, checked into my room, and we slept for a couple of hours.
The order of things gets fuzzy from here (probably due to the lack of sleep), but I went home Sunday night and the next seven days were spent driving back and forth to downtown San Antonio (a 45 minute drive one way). It was very hard but we kept receiving positive news from each test. Her EEGs all came back normal, her clavical that was broken was healing very quickly, she was gaining weight back, she was responsive. We could see her improvements each day.
I cannot express the relief we felt when we finally got to bring her home. I sat in the back seat of the truck with her and couldn't help but cry from the overwhelming happiness I was feeling just by being able to bring her home. We were a family.
Now, we're adjusting to the craziness that having a little person brings into a household. We are extremely lucky however in that she is sleeping 8-10 hours a night already and eats like a horse.
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