On Tuesday June 18th at around 5:30 am Kristy started having mild contractions. At first she was unsure if they were contractions or just tummy problems but they continued and she determined that they were contractions.
At 1:30 pm we had our final doctors appointment. Kristy was dilated around 4cm so she was progressing but was not ready yet to go to the hospital. At that point the contractions were still bearable so we returned home. It took only 3 hours for the contractions to be too painful for Kristy so we packed up our necessities around 6:00 pm and headed to the hospital.
Kristy was having contractions every 3-4 minutes for about 50 seconds. Upon arrival at the hospital they took us to the 14th floor for triage. They hooked up a heart rate monitor and contraction sensor so we could monitor the baby. Kristy did not want any touching or talking (which for me was fairly impossible) but I was able to hold her hand. I did find that I was able to watch the contraction monitor and tell her when they were reaching their peak and when they were almost done and she took some solace in that. It took about an hour for them to fully triage us and move us to the 12th floor to a labor room. Amie arrived during the triage and was able to help and ask questions.
By the time they moved us to our labor room Kristy was ready for her epidural. The contractions continued to get stronger and more frequent. During a contraction after the move she wanted to know if the contraction was almost over but they had not hooked up the monitors yet which didn't go over too well. The anesthesiologist came in and gave Kristy her epidural and suddenly things were great!
At about 8:30 pm Kari and Leslie arrived at the hospital and Amie went to get me some food. They monitored her labor and checked her dilation every 2 hours. Harper's heart rate dropped unexpectedly to around 60bpm and they initially thought it was due to the sensor coming off but they determined the sensor was correct and had to roll Kristy to get Harper's heart rate up but it took a little longer than desired. At around midnight they determined she was ready to push.
She pushed for about 4 contractions and there was no more forward progress. Harper was not moving forward like she should and her heart rate dropped to as low as 60bpm and it was not recovering. They called the on call OB and she came to assist in the delivery. She elected to use the suction cup on Harper's head rather than taking Kristy for an emergency C-section. It took one contraction and 4 pushes with assistance from the suction cup and Harper was born at 12:34am on June 19th.
The rest of the delivery was un-eventful. They got Harper cleaned up and finished with Kristy before they had to take blood from Harper to ensure she did not have any abnormalities that caused her heart rate to drop during labor. We finally got to sleep around 3am.
On the following morning Kristy had some extra bleeding but we were told it was normal. They changed her pad and things went on as normal. We were enjoying our new little girl. It only took about an hour before Kristy got up to use the restroom and nearly passed out on the toilet. They had to get ammonia to keep her awake and the toilet was full of blood clots. The nurses said this happens occasionally and got her back to bed and changed her dressings.
In less than 30 minutes she had soaked through her new dressings and had blood on her gown and I started to worry. The doctors called in an additional doctor for a consult and they determined they needed to do an exam. They examined her and determined they needed a more thorough exam to determine the cause of the bleeding. Kristy and I went to the 14th floor and left Harper with Kari so they could determine if Kristy would need to go into Surgery. During the exam the doctor found a small tear inside Kristy but he was unsure if this was the cause of all of the bleeding. He didn't think such a small tear could be the cause of so much bleeding. He repaired the tear and said they would check in several hours to see if the bleeding had slowed or subsided....after 2 hours she barely had any bleeding so the repair must have worked. After 2 more hours and nearly no bleeding we were grateful that the repair was a success.
We spent Wednesday night in the hospital and Kristy still didn't get much sleep as Harper was up a lot asking for food. Thursday was mostly wrapping up necessary paperwork and tasks so we could get discharged and come home to rest. Kristy's blood work was still not good but she was not feeling faint or dizzy and the bleeding was still minimal. They discharged us at around 5pm and we headed home. We stopped for Chinese takeout and pizza for dinner.
