The Longest 10 Weeks

We are a family of four!  But I need to rewind a bit and write down the journey that we traveled to get our sweet Oaklee Rose to us.

I took fertility treatments to get pregnant with Coralie and did that again with this pregnancy.  We use femara and then the HCG trigger shot this time.  I know the exact date I got pregnant, that makes a pregnancy feel extra long!  When I went in initially for blood work the levels were not doubling which they are supposed to to show that things are going the way they are supposed to.  The dr thought I was probably miscarrying but had me come in the next few weeks to check them to make sure.  Each week things were not looking so great.  Finally by 12 weeks they said I had a viable pregnancy and my blood work was looking good.

Fast forward two weeks - I'm now 14 weeks and my water broke.  We were getting ready to go out for the night and through out the night it just kept leaking and leaking.  As I tried to sleep that night I still kept leaking.  I knew this was not a good thing but I also knew that if it was really bad I would be cramping and bleeding and that was not happening. I decided to call the on call dr in the morning which was a Sunday.  They said since I wasn't cramping or bleeding I could go to the hospital or just wait and see my regular dr the next day but that I should stay on bed rest that day.  I decided to wait and see my dr.  I called my dr in the morning and was told they were triple booked and would not see me and to go to the hospital.  I was livid!  I have a dr to be seen and should not be told to go to the hospital because they are too busy.  I called them several more times and said I needed to be seen that day or I would be seeing a different dr.  Hours later I finally heard back and they got me in and said everything was fine and sent me on my way, they didn't hardly do any testing and didn't do an ultrasound either.  Before hearing back from my dr I decided to call around and see if I could find another dr to get into soon.  I was able to make an appointment with Dr Bickley for the next day.

I went in and his nurse was awesome and so was he, they did several tests as well as an ultrasound and confirmed that is was my amniotic fluid that was leaking.  I had gone to this appointment alone which I wish I wouldn't have because we talked a lot and of course I was getting emotional so I can't remember everything he said.  All I know is that this early in pregnancy there is nothing they can do and most likely it will end in miscarriage.

I started seeing him weekly for ultrasounds to check my fluid levels and see how things were going.  He told me that generally when this happens you will miscarry within a week.  Each week my fluid levels were getting better and better.  By 16-17 weeks I was back to normal.  Had my fluid not built back up the plan was to go into the hospital around 23-24 weeks and get steroid injections to help baby girls lungs develop and then I would probably have delivered at 34 weeks.

The rest of the pregnancy couldn't have been more normal.  Each week that passed I think Dr. Bickley was shocked I was still pregnant, especially in those first few weeks after my water broke.  I saw a specialist when I hit 18 weeks and they said that if they didn't know I was pregnant they would have thought this was a normal pregnancy.  From there we planned on delivering full term and pregnancy went on.

I never felt worried about any of this but I really didn't feel like I was in the safe zone until I hit 24 weeks.  That was seriously the longest 10 weeks of my entire life.  If I started leaking again the plan was to deliver immediately and if that happened before 24 weeks there was nothing the doctors could do because the baby would be too small to put any tubes in them.

Pregnancy went on and on and on and was as normal as can be.  I thought for sure I'd start leaking fluid again the closer I got to the end of my pregnancy, but nope.  I was due Thanksgiving weekend and really hoped to have our sweet girl before then.  Dr Bickley offered to induce me the weekend before.  I was really worried about going to the full 40 weeks or passed because of how big Coralie was and Oaklee was on track to be that big too so we decided to go ahead and be induced.

BIRTHDAY TIME!

We went in on November 22nd to start the induction.  Everything was going smoothly and the epidural made me cry again just like it did with Coralie (so weird).  It didn't take on the left side this time though which was painful.  I was already at a 9 or 10 but didn't want to start pushing if it wasn't time for fear of pushing for 2 hours like I did with Coralie.  I was in a ton of pain though since I basically was having a half natural birth.  The nurse told me that some times pushing takes the edge off and we could try a few pushes and see if she starts coming.  She was right, it totally helped.  I started pushing about 1 in the morning on November 23rd.  By 1:28 I had my little nugget in my arms!  Whew!  What  relief to not push for so long!!!!  She weighed 7 pounds 14 ounces and had a head full of curly dark hair!

Not long after I delivered I started bleeding a ton and passing clots the size of baseballs (totally crazy).  The nurses were all really concerned because it wasn't stopping and also thought it was weird because my vitals were all staying the same.  I lost about 2 liters of blood which was about half the blood I had in my body.  They ended up taking Oaklee to the nursery and took me to the emergency room to do a D&C (still not even sure what that stands for).  The only good part about this is the post pardum bleeding was totally minimized because of this surgery.  I was fortunate to not need a transfusion after all this happened.

Oaklee is truly our miracle baby.  The power of the priesthood is real.  After my water broke early on in this pregnancy Dave gave me a blessing and the leaking stopped and never happened again.  In the hospital after I started bleeding he gave me a blessing again and the bleeding stopped immediately.  What a blessing to have a wonderful husband who hold the priesthood to help in times of need.  I'm so thankful for him and for our sweet baby girl.  She is such a sweet happy baby and we love her more than words can describe.