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Melanie Morgan Sex: girl Born: 27 January, 2008 Age: 0 years & 181 days Birthday in: 184 days Starsign: Aquarius Development: See the 6 months page. Biggest achievement so far: -Making Mommy soooo proud! Especially by sleeping through the night (since 5 days old) and holding my own neck up on my own already!

She was 7 lbs 5 oz and 21 inches long @ birth. I went into labor at like 7 am on Saturday morning... well at least that's when the contractions started waking me up. They were about 12 mins apart at that point... by 9 am they were 10 mins apart consistently and getting a bit stronger... I decided I wanted to stay home as long as possible so that I wouldn't be tempted to get the epidural. By 2 pm the contractions were 5 mins apart and getting even more intense. I still waited it out, but John and I started packing the rest of the stuff for my hospital bag at this point... By 5 pm my contractions were a minute and a half to 2 minutes apart so I called the doctor. He told me to come on in to the hospital, so I got my stuff together and we left for the 45 min. drive to the hospital. The car ride was the worst part because I had this fear that I might have the baby in the car. haha. I had been calm at home (and I was calm again when I got to the hospital) but the car ride just freaked me out! haha. So... 11 hours after this all started I checked into triage at the hospital and they told me I was 4 cm dilated and my contractions were a minute and a half apart. About an hour later they took me to my LDR room where they checked me again and I was 6 cm dilated. my contractions were still about 1.5 minutes apart. At that point, my breathing started getting more and more shallow and I was getting EXTREMELY lightheaded.. I felt like I was gonna pass out in between contractions (probably because I hadn't eaten anything lately and was already SOOO TIRED!). The nurse told me I had to either get my breathing under control or I had to get an epidural. I tried for about the next 20 minutes to get my breathing under control, but at that point I was just too far gone... So... I got into bed and they gave me the epidural. I have to say, as much as I'd dreaded it and avoided it (about 12.5 hours at this point) it was like a GODSEND! I was able to relax and be sociable and concentrate on what was about to happen... However, it SERIOUSLY stalled my labor. The put me on pitocin because a few hours later I hadn't progressed at all. Around 11pm, I was still only 8 cm dilated and my epidural was starting to run out... the anesthesiologist (sp??) came to re-dose my epidural, but before he'd even gotten much in at all, I started vomitting. I spiked a fever of 101.4 and Melanie's heartrate dropped dangerously low! they rolled me on my left side to help her heartrate get back up to normal, but it took about 3 hours to get her completely stabilized. Throughout that time (and for a many hours after) I had basically NO epidural in me whatsoever... They asked me if I wanted them to come and re-dose it once her heartrate got back to normal, but I did NOT want them to do that again in case it made her heartrate drop again... (plus I really didn't wanna vomit anymore. haha). Also, at this point they had me on oxygen because something else wasn't right... I dont even know anymore because I was soooo tired and out of it. So, around 2am I was still only 8 cm dilated and they were starting to get a little concerned... They left and said they'd come back in 2 hours to check on me.

Well, about an hour later I started feeling a small urge to push... I called the nurse in, but no one came. So, I called again. Finally a girl answered the call button and said she'd send Jen (our nurse) in as soon as she could. Well, 20 minutes later still no sign of Jen... FINALLY I sent John out to look for her because I was PISSED! haha. The urge to push was getting alot stronger and I was about to kill somebody if a nurse didn't appear soon! haha. Finally, Jen walked in limping and apologized but said she'd been in the nursury checking on something and she fell. She really hurt herself and couldn't get up. The other nurses had paged her telling her to come to my room, but she couldn't move and the other nurses didnt know she hadn't already come to check on me... well, I guess Jen took some pain meds and came in to help me. At this point it was about 4 am and I had a REALLY strong urge to push... so, I started pushing and pushed for 2.5 hours. After a bit, Jen said she was a little concerned because I was pushing effectively and Melanie was getting lower and lower, but then we got to a point where it seemed that she was getting stuck on my tailbone... so she started doing some perineal stretches where as I pushed she would press her finger down really hard around Melanie's head and try and get a little extra room for her to get out... Well, it wasn't working and after 2.5 hours of pushing the dr came in to check on my progress... He watched as I pushed with a few contractions, and at that point noticed that I was leaking Maconium. He said Melanie had passed her Maconium and we needed to get her out fairly quickly before she swallowed it... He said we could continue trying to push her out vaginally and he would have to use the forceps and vacuum, but she would probably clip my tailbone (and I would have pain for basically forever) and we still might have to end up having a c-section, OR we could just go ahead and do it now... he said his recommendation was to do it now because he wanted to get her out quickly before she had a chance to swallow any maconium.. So I quickly agreed that we needed to do whatever was best for her (besides, a broken tailbone for forever doesn't really sound too appealing!). It took them about 10 minutes to get me prepped in the room and get the OR ready before they wheeled me down. They made John wait outside while they prepped me IN the OR. Finally, they asked me if I was ready and I said "where's my husband?". they said he'll be here in a minute. about 60 seconds later, John walked in and before he could even sit down next to me they started cutting me open. From the time they first made the incision to the time she was out was about 3 minutes. She didnt' cry for the first few minutes (which worried me) but they said that was good because they didnt want her to swallow any of the maconium. They rushed her over to where the NICU was waiting and they intibated her and pumped her stomach. Luckily, she hadn't swallowed any of the maconium! :-) I caught glimpses of her, but I continued to drift in and out of consciousness because of how exhausted I was. She was born at 5:57am on Sunday January 27th. I was in labor for 23 hours! :-(

It took them about 40 minutes to put me all back together (much longer than normal because they'd had to make an incision twice as long as normal since she was stuck in my birth canal and they had to back her out...). Also, she bruised my lung with her foot while she was kicking when they were trying to pull her out... Made for a fun recovery, let me tell ya! haha. I dont remember ANYTHING after they had finished sewing me back up except a few patches of conversation. I dont remember them wheeling me down to my recovery room or transferring me from the OR table back to my bed. haha can you imagine not remembering being lifted?? haha. I was basically out of it until around noon on Sunday when I finally was awake enough (and had enough strength) to hold her. John brought her to me and it was one of the best moments of my life! I was stuck in bed with a catheter for a day and a half which sucked, but there was no way in hell I could've gotten up to go to the bathroom before then! I finally was able to sit up at the edge of the bed monday afternoon. At that point the nurse realized that someone had forgotten to take my epidural needle out! haha. Nice huh? it didnt hurt anything luckily, but it could've been very bad! I finally got up and walked around Tuesday afternoon and by the time they released me wednesday night I was able to walk on my own without support from someone else, although I wasn't very steady! It took me until the following tuesday (9 days post partum) to be able to pick Melanie up on my own without someone else having to hand her to me.. Now we're both doing great and couldn't be happier!

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