Tessa's Birth Story

After several heart breaking attempts at pregnancy, Brian and I were finally going to be parents. In the whole process we went full circle. We started the adventure as a standard pregnancy with monthly visits to the OB/GYN office but around 30 weeks of pregnancy we decided to switch to the care of a midwife and have a homebirth because the philosophies better matched our own. However, the powers that be had another plan for us and our little girl as we completed the pregnancy circle with a hospital cesarean section delivery and all of the medical fireworks you can think of . Don't get me wrong- I am not disappointed in the way things turned out. Hopefully through my birth story you will see everything happened just as it should have. Enjoy!

Warning: I know for some of you many of this is going to fall into the "More Than I Wanted To Know" category. Labor, delivery and post partum is not clean and neat but I want to make sure I get all of this down. I think someday Tessa will thank me for being so thorough.

The day started pretty much like all the others had in the last few weeks of pregnancy. I had been doing pretty good about getting up and going to work but for the third day that week I decided to stay home. The next day we were off for Veteran's Day anyway and Brian was supposed to have the day off as a flex day but ended up going in to work to help clean-up another mess made by an e-mail virus in the system. I got up at 7:30 when Michele called to see how things were going. Since nothing was going we made plans to meet for lunch downtown later. I decided to use the time alone to get some other things done too. I cleaned the apartment, returned some things to Target, and exchanged some diapers at Fred Meyer. Since we had been told the night before that Tessa was going to be 9 pounds, I thought I'd exchange a package of newborn diapers for something a little bigger.

I had contractions all day just like I'd been having for weeks. In hindsight (I'll probably use that phrase a lot in this birth story) I guess they were a little stronger than previous days contractions. I had also had some bloody show that morning that looked like more mucus plug was coming loose. Since I had thought I had lost some weeks ago and nothing happened, I didn't really think anything of this either.

Later in the evening I was still having contractions and they seemed stronger and were falling into a pattern. I decided to start charting them around 10:15 and was surprised to see they were every 6 to 7 minutes apart. Was I going to be bitten by the false labor bug again? I wasn't going to get excited just in case. I lost another big chunk of mucus plug just after 11 pm. I thought I better get up and do some things to make sure this was really labor. They say if change of position and activity doesn't make them go away, it could be real. I folded some laundry, straightened up the nursery and did other odds and ends that needed to be done. Amazingly they stayed very steady and did not go away.

Since the next step in the "Is this really labor?" process was to try going to bed and see if they stop or keep up, I decided to head for bed about 12:15 am. It had already been a long, 17 hour day so I thought the rest would do me good. I tried to doze between contractions but they almost immediately picked up to 4 minutes apart as soon as I got into bed. Time for the final test, a shower. I turned over the charting sheet to Brian and every time I'd have a contraction in the shower I'd yell out to him, "another one!" so he could record the time. 3 minutes apart. I headed back to bed at 1:10 am and called one of my midwives, Debra. She said it sounded early and to call her again when the contractions were longer in duration and I really needed to concentrate on them to get through. I was supposed to eat something light and try to get some sleep because we still had a ways to go. Had I known then just how long we had I would have made more of an effort to get some sleep.

I lost the last big chunk of my mucus plug about 1:30 am and I once again tried to doze between them. I called Debra again at 2:55 am because the contractions were now one minute long and I was having to stop and breathe through them. She said she would call Beverly and Julianne and they would head on over. She lives about an hour away so I was to keep trying to get some rest in the meantime. Now I know that those contractions in the early hours of the morning were nothing compared to what they were going to become. I really had no idea what to expect or what to expect of myself during this whole thing.

I called Michele just after I got off the phone with Debra to let her know the day we had been waiting so long for had FINALLY arrived. She was on her way. I also e-mailed all my friends on the October Mom's e-mail group to let them know things were finally happening. I don't know if it was ever confirmed but I think I was the last woman in the group to have her baby. Michele arrived about 3:40 with breakfast Danishes so I sat on the birth ball in the bedroom and talked to Michele and Brian and ate a little bit of Danish. They noted I still had my sense of humor so we couldn't be too close. I called my parents at 4:15. Since they arrived at 5:20, I guess Mom was right. Dad was flying down the freeway. I wish I had waited a few more hours before I had called and drug them all the way down here.

Debra and Beverly arrived at 5:00 am. They did an internal exam and found I had made a little bit of progress and was at 3 cm. Once again, I was advised to get some rest. Since it was still really early, Beverly went home for a while and Debra took the first "shift". Everyone crashed on various couches and the extra bed about 5:45. I couldn't really sleep and just dozed. The contractions actually hurt more when I was lying down so I got up about 7:30. I had now been up, with only small cat naps between contractions, for 24 hours now. I tried to lie back down every once in a while but I didn't want to wake up Brian with all my movement in and out of bed.

About 9:30 I sent a quick update to the October Mom's group as everyone began to wake up. The six of us (Debra, Michele, Mom, Dad, Brian and I) decided to go have breakfast at IHOP around 11:00 am to see if a change of scenery would either help the contractions to pick up or stall out. I had several contractions in the car on the way there and even had to stop on the sidewalk outside the restaurant for a pretty good one. Hard ones seemed to be coming every third contractions. Those were definitely more uncomfortable than the others. It was really strange sitting there in a restaurant full of strangers while in labor. Brian sat across the table from me and I'd close my eyes and hold his hand through contractions. I ate about half my ham and cheese omelet and a few bites of pancake but that's about it. It was almost 1:00 by the time we got back to the apartment. Debra wanted me to try and rest some more since the trip out didn't seem to change labor at all. Still contracting about every 3 or 4 minutes but they weren't really any stronger than they had been earlier in the morning.

Debra had to go to Yelm to meet with a realtor about a new office space, Michele went home to shower and mow her lawn before the first frost hit, and Mom and Dad went home to get the motorhome since it looked like it was going to be a long night ahead of us all. Brian and I had some quiet time alone for a few hours. I think everyone was back at the apartment around 4:00. The next several hours are kind of a blur to me I guess. I tried sleeping between contractions and according to the others here I did just that since I was snoring. To me it felt like there was no build up to the contractions, that they were just peaking and tapering off. Now I know I was sleeping through the beginning of them, moaning and breathing hard and only waking up as the peak of the contraction hit. Technically I had been awake for about 35 hours and in labor for almost 18 hours by this point.

I'm not sure what time Beverly returned. I remember the midwives taking my temperature (which was slowly on the rise) and my pulse (which was elevated) and trying to get me to keep drinking fluids and get up every once in a while to go to the bathroom. Internal exams were showing very little progress. I think at the 8:30 pm exam I was still only at 4 cm or so. The worst pain was when they would do an internal during a contraction. They wanted to see what the cervix was doing during contractions and make sure Tessa's head was applied to the cervix properly but it hurt so bad it made me cry. Those exams were the closest I came to screaming. I remember my mom coming in to take pictures and when Brian would need to get out of the bedroom to go to the bathroom or just take a break, Michele let me squeeze her hand during contractions. Mom rubbed my back during contractions for a while and I remember Julianne offering me sips of Gatorade and offering cool washcloths for my forehead. Beverly mixed some blue and black cohosh into some Gatorade to try to help labor along. It tasted terrible but I drank it. Julianne made me some catnip tea to sip to try and bring down my fever but it didn't seem to help much and tasted kind of weird. I was so tired but things seemed to be progressing as they should be.

I think it was around midnight that the first signs of something being wrong started to show. For one thing my heart rate was up around 116 and my temp was above 101 most of the time. Cold compresses on my head and lots of fluids didn't seem to be bringing it down. Then the midwives started to notice that every time I would have a contraction, Tessa's heart rate would pretty much fall through the floor. Her baseline heart rate throughout the pregnancy had been between 138 and 145 but during a contraction it would fall to about half that. Not good. I remember being very worried but I knew the hospital was so close so I don't think I ever felt panicked. It was around 2:00 I think that the midwives stepped out of the room for a few minutes so Brian and I could talk. We both pretty much agreed at that point that we wanted to be safe and transfer to the hospital. It was obvious that since I was only at 5 cm at the most after approximately 27 hours, it could possibly be another 27 before I would fully dilate to 10 cm. I was already exhausted and Tessa's heart rate had us all concerned.

The midwives returned to the room and it was probably two contractions later that I felt a "pop" inside and a pretty sharp pain. My water had broken. The first trickle was clear and I felt a little bit of renewed confidence because after the water breaks, labor typically goes faster. I thought maybe we could pull this off after all. But Tessa's heart rate was still slow during contractions and seemed to be taking longer to recover after each one. About 4:00 Debra decided to start me on an IV to try and combat my apparent dehydration. It was shortly after the IV was in that I felt a big gush of fluid. I knew it was bad when Beverly rushed from the room to get Debra. The water had been stained with meconium (when baby has their first bowel movement in-utero) and is a sign that the baby is under stress.

It was now 5:00 am. Things moved pretty quickly at this point and surprisingly it is the part that I remember most clearly. I didn't have a hospital bag packed so Mom helped me into the other room and Michele held my IV bag while I told my Mom where everything was that needed to go into the bag. I had a list and I had actually had the bag packed on Wednesday night when we went in for the biophysical profile but I had unpacked it when we got home. Debra called ahead to the emergency room so they would know we were on our way and the rest of the group was busy rushing around getting the car ready and stuff. I don't think I had a contraction the whole time we were getting ready to go, I was too focused on just getting out the door.

I put on my robe over my nightgown and slid into Michele's Birkenstocks for the ride to the hospital. They put a chux pad down on he car seat since I was still leaking amniotic fluid. Mom got in the back seat and held my IV bag while Brian helped me into the front seat. I had a contraction on the way to the hospital and another one as Mom ran into emergency to get a wheelchair. I had to wait a minute for it to pass before I could get out of the car. Since they knew I was coming in they had everything already for us. I had to sign the stupid form giving them permission to bill my insurance, they slapped my hospital bracelet on me, and a security guard escorted us down to the Family Birth Center. I had another pretty good gush of amniotic fluid while sitting in the wheelchair so I sat in a puddle most of the way down the hall and in the elevator.

It was about 5:20 am, when we arrived in room T-3 (T is for Terrace but we would later joke it was for Tessa). They got me out of my now wet nightgown and robe and into a hospital gown. I thought I was going to hate the thing but it was actually a lot easier to nurse in later in the day when I could just unsnap the shoulder and breastfeed. Up on the bed I was hooked up to every possible machine. They left in my IV and just changed the bag, put one of the automatic blood pressure cuffs on my arm, put an oxygen saturation monitor on my finger (monitors the amount of oxygen in my blood), put the contraction and fetal heart rate monitor belts around my stomach, and put an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose. Contractions were still quite painful and now even scarier because I could watch the monitor and see Tessa's heart rate drop as my contraction would build. Dr. Sprake arrived and checked to see how far I was. He said it felt like I was at about 6 cm which is how far the nurse had thought I was a few minutes earlier. We discussed our options. I immediately asked what our c-section option was. I just knew no matter what they tried, I was going to end up with a c-section anyway and I didn't want to waste time. I was worried about Tessa. Dr. Sprake wanted to try a few things before they just blindly wheeled me into surgery.

Before they tried anything, I wanted an epidural. Avoiding an epidural was one of the reasons we were going to do a homebirth because I didn't want anyone sticking a needle in my spine. But by this time I was so tired and I was dreading each contraction as it approached. Everyone left the room except for Brian and the anesthesiologist came in. I did my best to curl in a ball on my side and push my lower back out like he asked but every contraction made that difficult. Plus I think I kept falling asleep. It seemed like it took him forever to finish but Brian said that part of the reason was he would stop working during contractions since I was not really lucid enough to remember not to move. I remember feeling the pressure of the needle as it went in and the cold medicine as it made its way through the tubing. He sprayed my back with an adhesive to keep the tubing in place and I almost immediately felt the effects of the medicine. It was great. I thought I would feel like a failure because I had an epidural but it made the rest of the labor so much easier. Now the only way I knew I was having a contraction was if I was watching the monitor. If I wasn't watching, Debra would tell me to take big, deep breaths from the oxygen mask because the extra oxygen seemed to make Tessa's heart rate recover faster.

It took two nurses three tries to get a blood sample out of me. They even referred to me as a turnip. I was so dehydrated they couldn't find a vein. They finally found one they could use in the back of my left hand. I think it was around 7:00 am that Dr. Sprake had the nurses put me on a pitocin drip to see if they could get my contractions closer together and stronger and they inserted the intrauterine monitor and attached the heart rate monitor to Tessa's head so they could get a better idea what was going on in there. They decided to try an amnioinfusion where they replace the amniotic fluid I'd already leaked out with saline. Not only would this dilute the meconium in the uterus and hopefully help Tessa avoid swallowing any, but they were also hoping it would "float" the umbilical cord away from whatever body part she was squishing it with. After they got that tube in they also inserted a catheter into my bladder since I was hooked up to way too many machines to make it to the bathroom. By the time they were doing all of these things I was just numb enough from the epidural that none of tem hurt or were even uncomfortable going in. The next few hours I spent drifting in and out of sleep and talking with my guests.

By 9:15 am nothing had changed. My contractions were closer together and stronger according to the monitor, but Tessa's heart rate was still really low during contractions. The only thing that kept me from freaking out was the fact that it would recover back to baseline fairly quickly. But the amnioinfusion seemed to have done nothing and there was no way Tessa was going to be able to stand the stress of me pushing her into the world. I was also still at 6 cm (maybe 6 and a half) and my cervix had started to swell. I think that happened before I got my epidural because I would tense up as a contraction approached instead of relaxing. The pressure of her head on my non-relaxed cervix made it swell. It was time to change course once again and prepare for a cesarean section. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Kelly, was called and other preparations made. Dr. Kelly was really nice. He came in and explained exactly what they were going to do in the operating room and he said my Mom could be in there for the delivery (it's his call how many people are in the room). Since I am allergic to amoxicillan, he had made other arrangements for antibiotics that I would be given after delivery. Mom, Dad, Michele, and the midwives had gone out to the waiting room to give Brian and I some time alone. After Brian put on his operating room scrubs, he went and got my Mom so she could put on hers. We had to wait a little bit while everything was arranged but at about 10:15 am, they wheeled me down the hall and into the operating room.

They showed Brian and my mom into the recovery room where they needed to wait while they got me all ready. Once in the operating room I remember feeling helpless because I couldn't help the nurses very much when they were getting me off of my bed and onto the operating table. I was able to move my upper body over but everything from my belly button down felt so heavy I couldn't move my legs at all. Dr. Kelly increased my epidural medication so I would go from heavy feeling and kind of numb to completely numb so they could make the incision. He had me put my arms out to the side. He did put straps over my arms but they were loose and I could still move my arms pretty well. He said they were mostly just a precaution so I didn't break the sterile field and try to help Dr. Sprake with the delivery. After a few minutes I could still feel it when Dr. Sprake would pinch my stomach so Dr. Kelly increased the epidural a little more. Brian and my mom were allowed in the operating room. Mom was busy taking pictures and Brian held my hand.

I didn't even realize Dr. Sprake has begun the c-section. I could feel him pushing on my stomach but I thought he was still just checking to see if I was numb enough yet. I was a little shocked when I heard him ask the nurse for the vacuum to help get Tessa's head out. I felt him kind of push her back up into my lungs because she had worked her way down into the birth canal quite a ways. Suddenly I felt a little lighter as he pulled her out. I remember looking at the clock and seeing it was 10:48 am. I think he said something like, "What a big girl!" The nurse asked Brian if he wanted to come over and see her. Brian looked at me and I told him to go be with her. It seemed like forever before she cried but as soon as she did I burst into tears. I was a little disappointed that the sterile screen was in the way and I couldn't watch them cleaning her off and stuff across the room. During the operation, the theme song to "Peanuts" was playing on the sound system. Now every time I hear that piece of music I think about Tessa being born and I have taken to calling her Peanut.

Not only had the umbilical cord been wrapped around her neck but it was also looped over one shoulder. This is what was giving us so much trouble. The loop around her neck was loose but as she pushed her way into the birth canal, the loop around her shoulder was being compressed and completely blocking her oxygen supply. No wonder she didn't want to stay down below my pubic bone. She was smarter than all of us. I guess the $135 spent at the chiropractor was kind of a waste. Maybe he'll give us a refund. Yeah right.

While Dr. Sprake began sewing me back up, they were assessing her and gave her Apgar scores of 8 out of 10 for the one minute check and 9 out of 10 for the 5 minute check. Her heart rate, respiration, muscle tone, and reflex response were all really good and she got scores of 2 out of 2 for each of those categories. I guess she came out a purplish/grey color (probably from her oxygen being cut off by the cord) so she got a 0 out of 2 at the one minute Apgar check and a 1 out of 2 at the 5 minute because she still wasn't as pink as they would like. Dr. Sprake kept saying, "Give her an 11!" When they weighed her and announced she was 8 pounds 5 ounces, everyone was surprised because she looked a lot bigger than that when she was coming out.

They finally brought her over so I could see her. She was all wrapped up and all I could see was her little face. When the nurse put her down next to me I blubbered, "You're so cute!" I also told her how I had never been so glad to meet anyone in my whole life. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and then the nurse handed her to Brian so they could go over to the nursery and finish up all the weighing and measuring and such. They said they would bring her into the recovery room in a while.

It was just a few minutes after everyone left with Tessa that I started to have a hard time breathing. Technically I was breathing just fine but it didn't feel like it to me. The extra booster on my epidural had been too much medication and I was now numb almost up to my neck. I could squeeze Dr. Kelly's fingers but not very hard. He put an oxygen mask on me to help me breathe. What I really wanted to do was sit up but since I was still being sewn up that wasn't an option. I was kind of starting to panic and I think Dr. Kelly mixed something in with the oxygen to help me relax because I don't remember going from the operating room to recovery at all. When I woke up in recovery it was 11:40. The nurse was taking my blood pressure and freaked out a bit when the machine said it was 60/20. I didn't know it could go that low. She actually went and got another machine because she was sure that one was wrong. She took it again and it had come up a little bit but not much. Dr. Kelly was there too and I asked him if I could sit up now. He put the head of my bed up and after a couple of dry heaves into one of those plastic kidney shaped bowls (I hadn't had anything to eat or drink in almost 6 hours so there wasn't anything to come up) I started to immediately feel better. It was almost like the medication was draining away down to my legs. It was such a weird feeling to be lying there and not be able to wiggle my toes no matter how hard I tried. I was now better able to grip the nurses fingers but my arms still felt kind of heavy. Dr. Kelly told me that if I ever had an epidural in the future to make sure I tell the anesthesiologist that the medication takes a little extra time to work on me and not to give me a booster because it would be too much medication.

It was almost noon when Brian came into the recovery room with Tessa. I finally got to hold her for the first time. She breastfed a little bit although I don't think she got much. My parents and my sister came in for a few minutes a little while later to see us. They left around 12:30 to go get some lunch and then they were going to come back so Brian could go home and take a nap. Since I wasn't "mobile" I had to have someone in the room with me if Tessa was there. We were going to have to wait a while for a room because they had been really busy that day and house keeping needed to clean a room for us that someone had just checked out of. Brian and I stayed in the recovery room with Tessa until almost 1:30 and then we were moved to room T-11. Quite appropriate since Tessa was born on the 11th.

I made a few phone calls to local friends to let them know Tessa had arrived and spent the afternoon talking with Brian and holding/feeding Tessa. I had been up for over 48 hours and you'd think I would have passed out by now but I was too excited. My Mom returned (Dad was napping in the motorhome) and Brian left for a while. He was supposed to take a nap but spent most of the time straightening up the apartment. We had all left in such a rush it was a disaster. The midwives had been all set up for the homebirth with equipment set out all over and Brian wanted to get that all put away. I was still hooked up to my IV and the blood pressure monitor and the nurses would come in every few hours to take my temperature and check my incision. It was seeping a little bit so they put a pressure bandage on it. They were also concerned about my circulation because I had some swelling in my feet and ankles so they put these little booties on me that had air bladders in them that would inflate and deflate every few seconds. the squeezing and releasing was supposed to increase circulation. I just found them to be annoying and didn't think I would ever get to sleep that night with them on. I got to eat some dinner but it was mostly liquids (chicken broth, tea, milk, pudding) and not too filling.

Around 7:00 pm my friend Chuck came by to visit, Dad came back after taking his nap, and Brian returned around 8:00. Mom had been holding Tessa and noticed that her breathing seemed really fast. She was right because when the nurse came in to check on us around 8:30, Tessa's breathing worried her enough that they took her back to the nursery. I had Brian go with her. The hooked her up to a few monitors and found her respirations were up over 100 per minute (should be between 40 and 50) and her oxygen saturation level in her blood was really low. They put the little breathing tubes in her nose but Brian said she kept ripping them out. I don't blame her. They did a chest X-ray and found her lungs to be just a little cloudy- probably from inhaling some of the meconium in the amniotic fluid. They drew some blood to test and found that her body was working overtime to try and fight off an infection because she was using a lot of immature white blood cells which meant the regular white blood cells had already been used up. The nurse from the special care nursery kept coming in and giving me updates but by midnight I wanted to go see her. So me, my IV stand, and my lovely catheter bag carefully loaded into a wheelchair and went down the hall to the nursery. I could feel my legs again but this was the first time I had tried to stand up after my surgery.

Tessa looked miserable with an IV in her tiny hand, heart and respiration monitors stuck to her chest, the oxygen saturation monitor on her foot, and the oxygen tubes coming out of her nose. I fed her a little bit which was quite complicated since I still had my IV and trying not to get us all tangled up took some creative maneuvering. Since her blood work had come back showing the white blood cell problem, they decided to start her on an antibiotic series. I kissed her good night and Brian helped me back to my room and into bed. Since Tessa was going to be in the nursery anyway, he decided to go home and sleep instead of trying to sleep on the roll away bed or the couch. He left a little before 1:00 am and even with the weird booties on my feet, I was out like a light as soon as he was out the door.

I didn't get to sleep for very long though. At 3:30 am the nurse came in to check my blood pressure and temperature and to draw more blood. Luckily this time I had been on the IV long enough that I wasn't dehydrated anymore and taking blood was not such an ordeal as it was when I first checked in. I drifted back to sleep for a while until the nurse brought Tessa in at 4:30 to eat. We snuggled and dozed together for a few hours. At 6:00 am the nurse took my vitals again. Everything seemed to be looking good so she removed my catheter, took the oxygen saturation monitor off my finger and took me off the blood pressure machine. All I had left were the booties and my IV and she removed both of those after I ate my breakfast. I was free! I got up and used the bathroom for the first time and got the okay to take a shower. I hadn't taken a shower since 3:00 am on Friday morning so I was thrilled to be clean again.

As I was toweling off and putting on a clean nightgown that Mom and Dad had bought me the day before, Margaret and Paul arrived from Portland to visit. They waited out in the waiting room for a few minutes while I got organized. Tessa was still in the nursery so we went over there so they could see her. The nurses let me bring her out in the hallway for a few minutes to visit. Michele came in about 8:30 am to visit for a little while and then headed over to our place to help Brian do some more cleaning up. Mom and Dad came back for a while before they headed home and Brian came back around noon after he got a good nights sleep. The rest of the day was spent napping and cuddling with Tessa. We spent a lot of time in the nursery that day since it was easier to feed her there in the rocking chair instead of them trying to bring her to me with her IV stand and everything.

Here's a picture of Tessa in the Special Care Nursery on the 12th all hooked up to her IV and other monitors.

The doctors and nurses were a little concerned about me on Sunday because my heart rate was way too high. According to the statistics that I copied off of the monitoring tape at 2:48 pm on Sunday my blood pressure was normal at 105/62 but my heart rate was at 121 beats per minute. I usually average around 88 bpm. At 7:11 pm my blood pressure was 117/65 and my heart rate was still high at 116 bpm. Later at 11:46 pm blood pressure was at 108/87 and heart rate at 108 bpm. When they checked early Monday morning at 2:58 am my blood pressure was at 114/68 and heart rate at 97 bpm. Frequent checks throughout the day show it falling until finally at 7:42 am on Tuesday morning my blood pressure was at 115/81 and my pulse was back to normal at 86 bpm. I don't think they ever determined what my accelerated heart rate was caused by but since my blood pressure stayed normal and my temperature never went up they just wanted to keep an eye on it.

On Monday, Grandpa JB came to visit his new granddaughter. He even had some beautiful flowers delivered. By Monday morning I was physically feeling pretty good. I was happy to see my doses of Percoset every few hours and I was still pretty swollen but everyone who saw me, even the nurses, were telling me I looked better than most women at this stage of recovery. The only thing there were waiting for was to make sure my digestive system was working properly and I needed to produce some gas before they'd release me. I guess they wanted to make sure my intestines didn't accidentally get tied in a knot when I was being sewn back together. My nurse had me take the dressing off my incision before my shower on Monday. I still had my suture in and there were "steri-strips" across the length of the incision but it had stopped seeping and looked pretty good.

I spent a lot of time in the nursery on Monday trying to find out when Tessa was going to be able to go home. They had taken more blood and the results would not be back until early Tuesday morning. they had to see if the 48 hours of antibiotics had worked. If they hadn't, they would be doing another 24 hours of antibiotics and she would be there until Thursday. They had a guest room I could stay in so I could be close to her even if I was discharged before she was but I really just wanted to take her home. She had been poked and prodded so much I felt terrible that she had to go through all of that. They had to redo her IV because her little hand was getting all swollen so by Monday morning her IV was in her foot instead. She is still a little skittish about people touching her feet too much.

Tuesday morning Dr. Sprake came in to check on me while I was having breakfast. I had proven my intestines were fine the night before so he said I could be released whenever I was ready and they would get me set up in a guest room so I could stay with Tessa. Just then Dr. Chinn, my regular doctor and now Tessa's doctor, came into the room and said no need for the guest room because they were releasing Tessa today too. Yeah! I almost burst into tears. I got to take my baby home with me. It was going to be a few hours before she could go because they had to wean her off the IV but her blood work had come back just fine.

After my shower the nurse came in and removed my suture. She said the steri-strips should start peeling off in a week or so and I could remove them then. She went over my discharge papers with me and gave me prescriptions for Percoset and for the mini-pill birth control pills that I can start taking at 6 weeks post partum. They only have one of the hormones in them and I can take them while nursing. They are not quite as effective as the regular pills and have to be taken at the same time everyday so we will probably also use a back up form of birth control too. As much as I love Tessa and am glad I got to experience pregnancy and birth, I think Tessa is going to be an only child.

I was released about noon and after packing up all my stuff Brian took everything out to the car before we went to the nursery to get Tessa. The nurse there went over a bunch of stuff with us and gave us several booklets of information (much of which I already knew) and we were free to go. We changed her into a going home outfit, got her in the carseat (which she didn't like until we were in the moving car) and we headed back across the street. It felt like I had been gone forever. But now here we are- two have become three and life will never be boring again. :)

November 11, 2000