For the past few months, Alisha has been working toward the final days of Dottie's pregnancy. Today was that final day. Since roughly week 16 of her pregnancy, Alisha has had Braxton-Hicks contractions. These contractions have increased in both frequency and intensity over the past few weeks. Three days ago, the contractions started happening once every 20-30 minutes through the night, leaving Alisha with very little sleep.
Last night on a walk around the neighborhood at 4pm, Alisha's water broke. We hurried home (being slightly rude to our neighbors who made friendly conversation) and the contractions began occurring regularly 11 minutes apart. Alisha kept her doula (Brooke Cozby) updated so she could meet us at the hospital. This lasted several hours, until around 8pm they shortened to 7 minutes apart. We loaded the car and headed off to Kaiser Roseville. By the time Alisha checked in and got her room around 9:30pm, the contractions were occurring every 2-3 minutes. The labor continued like this, increasing intensity for the next 6 hours as we changed positions and talked Alisha through the pain.
These next few hours reinforced how honored I am to be married to Alisha. She went through labor pains for ~11 hours (4pm-3:30am) without any medication to give Dottie the healthiest birth possible. She reached 9cm dilation (where 10 is the point at which she'd push out the baby) and started having feelings to push. The doctors had her climb into the bed (she was in the shower) and then moan through the pain to keep from pushing unnecessarily. She commented that she felt a dull pain in her lower abdomen even after the contractions were over, but we assumed that was just part of the labor process. After several iterations of contractions, Dottie's heartbeat began to drop from 130 to 110 beats per minute. They tried changing positions (hands & knees), but then Dottie's heartbeat dropped further to 60 beats per minute and stayed low. At that point, the doctor called an emergency C-section ("code C").
People swarmed into the room and carted Alisha off to the operating room. Brooke and I had to stay behind, so we just prayed. Within a total time of 7 minutes, the Kaiser staff did ALL of the following:
- Carted Alisha down the hall
- Prepped the operating room
- Had Alisha transition herself from the cart to the operating table
- Used narcotics for paralyzing and numbing Alisha (general anesthesia)
- Intubated Alisha, intubated her
- Cut open Alisha's belly
- Pulled Dottie out safely
To Brooke and I this was frankly astonishing. We finished a relatively short prayer, waited a few minutes, and then a nurse returned to the room to let us know that both Dottie and Alisha were fine. Once again we were glad that we chose Kaiser Roseville, because they had saved Dottie's life, and possibly saved Alisha's (compared to a home birth). Alisha's uterus had ruptured in two different places (one near the site of her prior C-section, another even lower), and Dottie's shoulder and umbilical cord had come through the ruptured locations.
Dottie was born on February 12th, the same day as her great-grandmother, Murry Landrum. She weighed 7.5 lbs and was 20.75 inches long. It took about 45 minutes for them to clean the blood off of Dottie and expel it from her lungs/stomach. Once I got to hold Dottie at 4:15am, it took another 2 hours for Alisha to exit the operating room.
Alisha's surgery needed to occur so quickly that they didn't have time to do normal surgery prep like counting instruments. This meant that the way to double-check they hadn't sewn up any instruments inside Alisha was to use an X-ray. They also said that Alisha lost about 1500cc (or 50 fl oz) of blood during the surgery, so they gave her transfusions to replenish the lost material. She came back groggy and heavily drugged. Several of the doctors commented that Alisha must be tough as nails to reposition herself in bed AND move herself out of the bed, while having a uterus that was ruptured in two places.
Over the course of the day, Alisha came off of the heavy sedation and was able to function more normally. She will be kept at the hospital for 2-3 days while she heals from the surgery and comes off of the heavy painkillers she's currently receiving. Dottie is doing wonderfully. She has been a very quiet baby so far, shows visual curiosity, and is able to recognize both of our voices. While she was in the womb I tried to sing "the ABC's" to her each night, so when I first got to hold her that's what I sang to her to make sure she recognized me.
Here are a few pictures of our new little bundle. One of the doctors (and a few of the nurses) recognized us from our prior stay, so they've come by to introduce themselves to Roscoe's little sister. She is pretty fun to hold!
The doctors warned us that due to Alisha's damaged and thinned uterus, any future pregnancies could not go full term: they would need to be a C-section at no later than 35-36 weeks, and no sooner than 2 years from now.
We'll be at the hospital, likely through Sunday, while Alisha recovers. After that, we'll return home with Dottie and introduce her to her room, our dog, and the joys of being home.
