At Christmas my husband gave me a
gift certificate to an elective ultrasound, something that I had been bugging
him about doing, especially since we had gone when I was pregnant with our son.
The weekend after Christmas when I was 34 weeks pregnant we traveled to
Buffalo, NY to catch a sneak peak at our little girl.
I should note that at our 20 week
ultrasound our daughter was squirmy and appeared to make an effort to hide from
the technician, we never truly got to see her face and it took almost an hour for
her to stop being modest so we could determine gender. We returned at 22 weeks
and the technician got the images of her heart and nose/lip that could not be
taken at 20 weeks but she was still adamant that she not stay in one place very
long. This was typical for her and I
would frequently tell my husband that it felt like she was spinning in circles
at night.
While at our elective ultrasound,
the technician asked if we knew our baby was breech. I don’t know about my
husband but I was surprised. I have only heard that when babies are breech that
mothers are always uncomfortable and I was still chasing around a class of 1
& 2 year olds with no problem. The tech took tons of images, marveled at
her hair in utero and tried to unsuccessfully convince her to wiggle just a
little to check her gender.
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| How our daughter was positioned at 34 weeks |
She gave us a bunch of information about
breech babies; our daughter was Frank Breech, which means her feet were pulled
up by her face, and things our doctor might recommend. And then we waited…
At 36 weeks we went for an
ultrasound and appointment with our OB. She confirmed that our princess was
still breech but thought she may be small enough to still turn herself. We were
told that we might have to make a decision to try to physically turn her or
have a C-Section, which I absolutely
didn’t want to do! She recommended time in the pool and I spent one full
morning/afternoon looking like a fool taking a water aerobics class while 8 ½
months pregnant.
We did another ultrasound at 37 weeks with no change and
made the decision to do an External Version, physical turning, followed by
induction while I was given an epidural. We were given a week off of
appointments but had to fill out paperwork allowing the version, and a
C-Section and blood transfusion if necessary.
At
39 ½ weeks, on February 1st, my husband and I arrived at a very
quiet hospital, checked in, and then waited. We had chosen to first try having
our daughter turned; I swear we sat waiting for the anesthesiologist forever
but he came and joked with us as he set up my epidural. Then for a while
everything was a rush. The doctor came in with the assisting doctor and a
portable ultrasound machine. They located our little peanut and our wonderful doctor
tried to turn her 5 separate times before informing me that even though she
knew we didn’t want a C-Section it was now our only option.
I
cried…
I cried
from the moment the doctor gave up during her fifth attempt until the moment I
heard my daughter had arrived. The
anesthesiologist became my advocate as he numbed me from my chest to my toes.
As they began my surgery he fairly angrily asked nurses why they hadn’t
collected my husband yet who had been left and told to get gowned up and was waiting.
My husband arrived in time, and remembered our camera! He took some photos as
they cleaned her up and then one of our wonderful nurses offered to take photos
of the three of us. From there we were
checked out and moved upstairs to our room, my daughter was beautiful, here
safely and nursed like a champ!
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| I love our nurse for getting this shot of the 3 of us! |
Recovery
sucked! It was so much different than with my son and I was so angry about not
being out of bed for my daughter’s entire first day that I screamed at my
husband about how unfair the whole morning had been. Of course it wasn’t his
fault and he dealt with my screaming gracefully. To this day I think that melt
down was the key to my coping with my unwanted C-Section.
While at
the hospital we were notified that we would be receiving appointment
information to Shriners Hospital for Children since it was standard protocol
for Breech babies to receive a referral. The staff pediatrician reminded us to
keep our appointment since she thought our daughter’s hips felt too loose.
Other than that she checked out well and we went home on February 4th.
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