Miss Hannah

Hannah Eve Jones

February 9th 2012
8 pounds 9 ounces
20.5 inches
Taken the night before I had Hannah

We had to most eventful 4 hour labor/delivery with our sweet Hannah!! The weekend before she was born I started having regular contractions that were coming really close together (1-2 minutes apart). Following doctor's orders I decided we should probably go into the hospital. I was dilated to a 4.5, but my contractions weren't hard enough to make any further changes. SO, I was sent home. The contractions stopped being so regular and I spent the next 6 days obsessing over "When will I go into labor? A person can't walk around dilated to a 4.5 for TOO long, right?" I tried to stay active and get as many last minute things done as I could. On Thursday the 9th I was having some pretty regular contractions, but they weren't very strong. So, I picked Mckenna up from preschool and strapped the kids into the stroller and went on a LONG walk. We fed the horses in the neighborhood next to ours, watched the cows eat and then walked all the way to the duck pond in the neighborhood two away from ours. By the time we were walking home I was having some good contractions- woohoo! I fed the kids lunch and put them down for a nap. We had been working on our garden all week long and had just bought some marigolds to plant the night before. During nap time I decided I would plant the marigolds and get the rest of the bubblers/soaker lines put in. I worked for about an hour and was just cleaning up to head inside when my water broke. Full on gush, soak me to my feet broke. I was so surprised!
2:50pm- I called Jeff and told him he needed to come home. He left work right away and made all the necessary phone calls to get the kids taken care of for the night (a HUGE thank you to Marty, Heidi and Grandma Horne!!!!!) I was able to shower, finish packing my bag and get a few things ready for Mckenna and Andrew. Thankfully Andrew was still asleep.
4:15pm-Marty got here to watch the kids. Jeff and I headed off to the hospital.
4:30pm-I got checked in and hooked up to the monitors. I was dilated to a 5 and about 80% effaced. I am group b strep positive, so I got hooked up to the IVs quickly and started my first dose of penicillin. After being on the monitors for 20 minutes the nurse started noticing that the babies heart wasn't reacting normally to labor. They had me lay on my side and wear an oxygen mask. Laying down during contractions should qualify as torture. It was terrible. (During all of this, the person comes to draw my blood. She walks in and I see that it is a girl that I know from church and high school. OH MY GOODNESS---who wants to see anyone they know during labor? NOT ME!)
5:30pm-They wheeled me into the delivery room (side note- Chandler Regionals rooms are HUGE and you stay in the same room for labor, delivery, recovery AND postpartum. It is fantastic!!!) and at that point I was miserable. My original plan was to labor as long as I could without an epidural so that I could stand up and move around. BUT, I was being told that with the babies heart rate that I would need to stay on my side for awhile. I wanted to cry and then asked for my epidural.
6:15pm- My epidural had kicked in just in time for the doctor to come in and check me. I still hadn't dilated beyond a 5 and they were getting more concerned about the baby. My temperature was higher than they would like (100.1) and the babies heart rate was showing signs of distress. The doctor wanted to move things along faster in hopes of avoiding a c-section. My water broke up high, so I still had the membrane down around my cervix. The doctor broke the fore bag and hoped that it would help the baby move into position a little better. They also started me on pitocin to speed things up. THEN, the doctor talked to us for like 20 minutes about the babies heart rate patterns, my elevated temperature and possible c-section. I LOVED this doctor he was fantastic and I would highly recommend him to anyone (Dr. Guzman with Goodman and Patridge). I signed all of the c-section consent forms JUST IN CASE anything made a turn for the worse with the baby.
7:30pm- The doctor came in to check me again. I was still a five and the baby was doing worse. I had to really fight back tears as the doctor told us that he really thought we needed to do the c-section soon. He went over all of the information with us and then left to get ready. We spent the next 30 minutes getting prepped for a c-section. Jeff even got to wear the awesome daddy scrubs!8:00pm- My original epidural medication was starting to pool on my right side (the side they had me laying on) and I started feeling the contractions on the left. The anesthesiologist came in to give me the medication to numb me for surgery. He gave me one syringe of medicine and then 3/4 of the second when I started to feel a TON of pressure. He stopped giving me the medicine and asked the nurse to check me. No one could believe it but I was complete and ready to push!!! The nurse called the doctor and everyone frantically started re-prepping our room for delivery.
8:20pm- The doctor came in and gave Jeff a high five (haha). He was SO shocked. He kept saying to me "You're a rockstar! I can't believe you did that!"
8:31pm- Hannah Eve Jones was born!!!! The doctor called her a drama queen :-)

They took her away quickly because she wasn't breathing. After about two minutes the nurses called the level one nursery team. Of course I was panicked because we didn't really know what was going on. At about 3.5 minutes, after birth, the level one team got to our room JUST as Hannah started breathing. We decided that miss Hannah definitely likes to do things her way and she seems to love grand entrances!

Wow, how come no one told me my hair was SO crazy :-)

We got her hold her for about 45 minutes before the nurses came to check on her again. She was still breathing very fast and not very well. Her blood sugar had also dropped. It was very obvious that she did not feel well. The nurses took her to the nursery and I didn't hear anything else for another hour.

At 11pm the NICU nurse practitioner came in to talk to me. She told us that they had placed an IV in Hannah's head and that she was on oxygen. She said all signs point to her having an infection, so they sent a culture to the lab to be grown for two days. They also did another blood test that showed that Hannah's immature white blood cell count was high (and that is a great indicator in infants that they are fighting and infection).

Because I had been given almost a complete dose of the numbing meds for a c-section I was numb for a long time! As soon as the medicine wore off Jeff was able to take me to the nursery to see Hannah. It is heart breaking to see your baby sick and uncomfortable. She had a fever and looked miserable. We weren't able to hold her that night.

This recovery has been the easiest for me. I think it was all the walking to and from the nursery in the first 3 days :-) We are glad that Hannah is home and healthy now!!!

THANK YOU to everyone who brought us meals and presents. We appreciate all of the love and support people showed us!!!!

A VERY huge thank you to my mom who played "mom" to our two kids for a whole week! I don't think we would have survived without her!!!!!