Inconceivable: Welcome to the world

I’m so sorry to leave all of you hanging for an entire summer, but baby Hayden Grace is here! Go Ask Mom did announce it on the Facebook page, but it didn’t make it onto the blog. I was a little busy adjusting to my new life as a mother of two, and I took the full 12 weeks off that I was allowed to!

Hayden arrived four days early and not by her choice.

It all started when I went to my 38-week appointment at the OBGYN, and my blood pressure was elevated. The doctor sent me to the hospital for evaluation, saying they were most likely going to induce me. After four hours, they sent us home saying I was stable. I was so confused. It all happened so fast, and I had gotten my hopes up that I was finally going to meet my little rainbow baby.

After that, I had to monitor my blood pressure daily. Things seemed to be stable. I went back for my 39-week appointment and my blood pressure was OK. Then, two days later, I got light-headed. I had been out at my son’s flag football game that morning and I guess I was a little dehydrated or something.

When we got home, I got dizzy and light-headed and my blood pressure was higher than I’ve ever seen it. I called my OBGYN and he said to go to the hospital. I told my six-year-old son that I would be home that night. My husband and I really expected to get sent home again.

Once there, they did the same thing as last time: Urine tests, blood tests, fetal monitoring, constant blood pressure monitoring. My blood pressure went down, but my right leg and foot were swollen. Whenever I stayed on my feet for even a little bit, both of them would swell up. The right one, however, always got much larger.

The doctor wanted me to get an ultrasound to make sure I didn’t have any clots. By the time I got back from that test, it had been two or three hours and I was over it. I knew they were going to send me home again. And the best part – for me it is a $300 co-pay every time I got sent to the maternity ER and didn’t deliver the baby. So that was going to be $600 in a 10-day span and we were still having to pay for the delivery!

I was mad. I was upset and I was super pregnant. All of the frustration of the past three years of trying to conceive this baby and the losses (including the loss of this baby’s twin) all built up in me. When I got back to the ER, I ripped off my oxygen monitor from my finger. My blood pressure shot up again and then started to go down. No nurses came in so, about 10 minutes later, I told my husband to grab my clothes. I would be getting dressed in preparation for them to send us home. I pulled off all of my monitors and sat there, fully dressed and ready to roll.

The nurse came in to check my blood pressure and I told her I knew I was getting sent home so I saved myself some time. She looked confused and soon the doctor was sent in. She looked at me and said that she had spoken with my OBGYN doctor on call (he was actually at the ER delivering babies). They had gone over my medical history and when my blood pressure shot up this last time, they decided I needed to be induced. I burst into tears. I was finally going to get to meet my baby!

“I’m becoming a cartoon”

With my son, my water had broken but nothing happened after that. I ended up getting medication (Pitocin) to speed up the contractions. In this case, I was only 1 or 2 cm dilated and my water wasn’t broken. I was admitted to the maternity ward for the night. The doctor used a catheter to send a balloon into my uterus between the baby and the cervix (yes, he inflated a balloon up there!). The balloon bottom was taped to my leg. As the balloon lost air, it would put pressure on my cervix and, basically, widen it. The balloon would fall out when I was dilated more.

I tried to sleep while the balloon did its thing, but it wasn’t easy. The nurse gave me something in my IV (I still have no idea what it was), but it made me weird. I remember talking and laughing. I tried to sleep, but every time I closed my eye,s I saw a cartoon-like video game. I was straight up high and I vividly remember telling my husband and mom (both stayed with me through delivery) that I was “becoming a cartoon.” The medication soon worked and I was asleep. I got a few hours of rest and then I had to use the bathroom. The balloon fell out so I notified the nurse. We were only a few hours from taking Pitocin and starting this delivery process!

Just after 7 a.m., I began to feel so sick. I told the nurse I was fine, but when she stepped out, I immediately got sick and, at the same time, my water broke! She came back in and gave me the Pitocin, saying it would take awhile to work. By 9 a.m. my contractions were coming at 2 to 3 minutes apart. By 9:30 a.m., I asked for an epidural. Two hours later, I finally got that epidural. I had never labored that long with my son. When contractions got like this the last time, I asked for the epidural and got it within 20 minutes or so. I was 8 cm dilated at that point.

This time, I had to have an additional blood panel drawn and even after that, the nurse said the epidural was going to be delayed. She never said why it took so long, but it was the longest two hours of my life. I was in agony. She gave me something in my IV to help with the pain, but it was the same stuff I had the night before. Soon, I was feeling "high" again and babbling. I was still feeling the pain, but I was too out of it to care. At one point, "The Golden Girls" came on the TV. I started singing the theme song.

When I finally got the epidural, I was exhausted and around full dilation. I laid down to sleep for a bit, but I kept shaking. The nurse explained it was because my body was still feeling the pain. I napped a little bit. Within an hour, I was ready to push. The nurse could see little Hayden's head but the doctor (one from another practice since my OBGYN's shift was over) was not anywhere to be found. Finally, the nurse opened the door to look for her and there she was standing outside the room.

Just before my final push, the nurse checked the baby's heart rate. I saw her say something to the doctor and I panicked. I was so afraid something was wrong. When the baby came out, she didn't cry. She was silent. I began to panic.

I kept screaming, "Is she OK?!"

The doctor and nurse said she was fine. Not all babies scream when they are born. My son screamed so loud when he was born. I expected her to scream like that too.

They handed her to me. Her nails weren't long and jagged like my son's. She didn't have as much hair as him either. She looked like a Cabbage Patch doll come to life. My husband and mom cried, but I had no tears left. I had cried so much over the past three years that I had nothing left in me. I felt relief. I had done it. She was here. But I couldn't shake the fear that she was going to have some type of problem. They checked her out and said she tested positive for the thing that causes jaundice. She wasn't super yellow though so they thought it would go away on its own without having to put her under the special light for treatment. She also had a heart murmur, but by the next day it was undetectable.

My son got to meet his little sister at the hospital. He gave her snuggles and told her how much he loved her. It melted my heart into a million pieces.

A living nightmare

When Hayden was one week old, we ventured outside to see my husband play baseball. It wasn't a hot day. It was overcast. I thought we'd be fine for an hour or so. When we got home, Hayden was breathing rapidly - much more than the 60 breaths per minutes we were told to watch for. I called her pediatrician and they said she needed to be checked out. Since she was only a week old, we had to go to the hospital.

Then, I endured the scariest 24 hours of my life. Seeing your newborn (or any child) hooked up to machines like that is terrifying. I had a complete panic attack and mental breakdown in the ER. I couldn't stop crying. I could barely speak. The ER doctor said they would check her blood for infection and do a chest X-ray. He said they would also do tests on her heart. He noticed two of her cranial sutures hadn't fused yet so he wanted to do an ultrasound of her brain.

All I could think of was that we got our rainbow baby but we were going to lose her. The whole pregnancy I waited for the other shoe to drop and this was it. Everything was going too well. This was too good to be true and now we were going to lose her.

All her tests looked great. They had this device on her foot to check her oxygen saturation levels. Her levels would dip a little and then come right back up. The machine would go off though, which caused me a lot of stress. Things were looking good and the nurses said we might be getting sent home. We had hope, until a new doctor started her ER shift. She walked in, took one look at the baby's oxygen levels and insisted we stay for observation overnight.

I burst into tears. They wheeled our tiny little baby on this giant bed to the children's hospital. I asked the nurses if they could shut off the oxygen monitor in the room. They could do that but still see the monitor information at their station. The nurses assured us that there would be multiple people in the hospital monitoring her levels. They would only come in if something was wrong.

I cried myself to sleep as I laid next to her crib. I slept for maybe 30 minutes. Hayden had to have an ultrasound of her heart in the morning. The nurses made sure she was the first stop of the day for the technician.

Soon a trio of doctors came in to assure us she was fine. She is learning how to breathe, they said. Her abnormal heavy breathing was part of that and likely a reaction to being warm outside. She was happy, healthy and going to be fine.

It took about a week for me to stop worrying about Hayden's breathing. Every little thing had me scared we'd be headed back to the hospital. Finally, I started to breathe again and enjoy my baby.

The remaining 10 weeks were a blur! Lots of baby snuggles, bottles and dirty diapers. She doesn't like napping during the day (just like her brother) but she does love to sleep at night. She averages about 7 to 9 hours of sleep at night. She doesn't wake up to eat, but she does eat 5 ounces of formula every two hours! She has her moments, but she is mostly happy. She's only mad when she is fighting to keep herself awake during the day or when she's hungry.

Sometimes I look at her and wonder how did we get here. It feels like we did IVF a million years ago. I think about the day she's old enough to hear the story about how hard we fought for her. I think about the people who are just beginning their infertility journey and others who are dealing with loss. My heart breaks for them. I hope they get their happy ending.

I want to thank the readers who have reached out to me the past few years. This blog has been a huge part of my healing process. It really helped keep me going. Knowing I wasn't alone was so crucial to my recovery.

​I'm officially back at work and balancing my mommy life with my work life. Wish me luck!

Kathy Hanrahan is the mom of two and editor of WRAL.com's Out & About section. She wrote about her journey with secondary infertility and pregnancy here on Go Ask Mom.