Abby’s Birthday

Abigail Elaine Orr was born on June 12, 2010. This is her story…

Since Corin had come six weeks early, Kristi had always said that she just wanted to get to 37 weeks and one day before giving birth to our daughter. Well yesterday was 37w + 1d, and Abby has already started listening to her mother. Kristi, Corin and I went to our neighborhood pool for an afternoon swim and got done a little after 3pm. When Kristi got out she said that she was “leaking” but that it may have just been pool water. This slow, intermittent, but undeniable leaking continued for a couple hours. We certainly knew what this could be, and I packed up the car in the event that we had to make a dash for the hospital.

We had planned on going out to eat Friday night, and knowing that if we did go to the hospital Kristi wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything, we kept our family date night and went out for a little Mexican to see if some south-of-the-border spices could coax the baby out. Dinner went fine but Kristi continued her light steady leak.

When we got home Kristi paged the doctor and explained the leaking. At that point she wasn’t having any serious or regular contractions. But since it had been a little while since she had felt the baby move, the doctor wanted us to get to the hospital right away to make sure that everything was okay. We called Grandma and got her on the way and then Corin, Kristi and I headed back to where Corin was born to see what we could do about getting him a little sister.

We got to the hospital at about 7:30 pm. The nurses hooked Kristi up to the fetal monitor and we could tell right away that the baby was fine. Her heartbeat was on pace and regular and there were no signs of any distress. They then took a swab of Kristi’s leaking fluid. This was not a pleasant experience for Kristi. The “instant test” showed positive for amniotic fluid, but then another doctor had to look at the fluid under the microscope to confirm it. While they were doing that I took Corin home and dropped him off with Grandma. She stayed with him while Pop and Lola were called into action and made their way to our house.

When I got back to the hospital Kristi said that the doctor didn’t see what she needed to under the scope and that our delivering doctor wanted to do another test to confirm whether or not her water had broken. So she had to have another uncomfortable test. But this one clearly showed that her water had broken (as everyone pretty much knew) and that we would be spending the night at the hospital and having a baby. At that point Kristi was dilated to about 3 cm.

We were moved from an examination room to a delivery room and Grandma arrived to provide her support. Kristi continued to have fairly regular contractions which continued to increase in their pressure. Despite these contractions, when she was checked at midnight she was still only dilated 3 cm. Our WONDERFUL nurse Amanda said that she would be back in a couple of hours to check on Kristi’s progress. So Grandma stretched out in the recliner and I got into bed with Kristi so we could all try to get a little sleep.

About 20 minutes later, things kicked into high gear for a bit. When Kristi’s water had broken earlier, there had been a “high bag break”. So the bag had broken above the baby and fluid was leaking out. This left a little cushion of fluid between the baby’s head and the cervix. This was making things much more comfortable for Kristi, but also slowing things down a bit. While we were laying there Kristi tensed up and it was clear she was having a very strong contraction. The lower portion of this bag had broken and now the baby was pressing hard to try and get that pesky cervix out of the way. This increased Kristi’s pain substantially, so at about 1:00 am Kristi (who was at 5 cm) had her epidural placed.

The epidural made Kristi much more comfortable, and again Amanda told us that she would be back in a couple of hours to check on Kristi’s progress. Amanda and the doctor came in at about 2:50 am to start checking on Kristi, but they were having trouble finding the baby with the monitors that were placed on the outside of Kristi’s belly. So the doctor checked under the hood and said, “Oh, that’s why we can’t find her on the monitor. She’s right here.” She told the nurse to get everyone together because we were about to have a baby.

Corin came in only six pushes, and we didn’t think that there was any way that this birth was going to be easier than his. But we were wrong. It only took five pushes to get her out, and the doctor even told Kristi that she didn’t need to push so hard.

At 2:56 am, Abigail “Abby” Elaine Orr was born. She was 6 pounds, 12 ounces, 19 ¾ inches long. She started crying right away and her skin pinked up beautifully. She got to go right to Kristi’s chest, which was a wonderful moment we missed with Corin when he was rushed back to the NICU. I cut the cord and Abby was moved over the baby warmer to get heated up a bit and cleaned up. Kristi has having a huge adrenaline dump and was in the bed just shaking, but very proud of her obviously dominant childbirth skills. Grandma headed back to our house to try to get some sleep.

We were all moved up to our nursery room at about 5:30 am. Abby was taken back to have some tests done and get a bath. Kristi and I took the best constantly interrupted 90 minute naps that we could, but any sleep was welcome at that point.

Pop and Lola came by for a visit. Grandma is here now. We are all just trading off holding the baby, taking pictures and taking naps. Kristi is breastfeeding like a champ. And the legend rolls on…

I know that this is poor video, but it was more for the audio so you could hear her cries when she came out.