You know how some people are so excited about their birthdays that they start announcing their upcoming birthday weeks in advance? I guess that's Miss Ruby. She was so excited for her birthday that she wanted to start getting us excited and making sure that we were prepared for her birthday a couple weeks ahead of time. Just to keep us on our toes.
At 37 weeks I spent all weekend in excruciating back pain, then on Sunday in addition to the back pain I started having painful, regular contractions. It felt like labor but we weren't expecting Ruby to come early so I waited to see if it would stop. Josh brought me dinner in bed and when I didn't want to eat he told me I had to call the doctor. (It's really sad that me refusing food is Josh's number one warning sign.) So we went to the hospital expecting them to tell me it was just a false alarm but instead they hooked me up to a non stress test and found my contractions were coming every three minutes and rushed out to call the doctor to come perform the birth. (At which point I looked at Josh and burst into tears because my mom wasn't coming for two weeks, we didn't even have our camera, and Cooper was currently bouncing a birthing ball around the room.) We were not ready.
However shortly after that the doctor called to tell me that I actually had a severe kidney infection that was causing me to go into labor and once it started to get treated my labor would stop. So I wasn't giving birth that moment which was such a big relief that I didn't even care why! I did have to stay in the hospital for at least 3 days though while they treated my kidney infection so we decided Josh would take Cooper home, put him to sleep (it was almost 9 pm at this point) and have our neighbor who's about a mile away come sit at our house for about a half hour while Josh brought me my things and went to pick up his cell phone he left at work over the weekend.
Then came the second drama of the night! In between Josh coming back home from the hospital after he brought me my things and my sweet neighbor leaving to go back to her home there was a giant landslide that blocked the entire road in between our house and hers. So she had to drive back up the river about 8 miles, east 20 miles to the next town over, and get on the freeway back to Aberdeen to come home. I felt/still feel HORRIBLE soul-crushing guilt over this. It took her an hour and a half for a ten minute drive at like 9:30 at night all for my stupid overnight bag! My poor poor neighbor who was just being sweet and kind!
So that's when the flooding began. I was at the hospital still having my contractions monitored and my progress checked and Josh was literally stuck at home with no way out to get to the hospital if I had given birth! So that was stressful! But thankfully everything worked out fine, my kidney infection was treated (Um can we talk about kidneys for a second? Holy crap! I can't decide which was more painful that or my unmedicated back labor with Cooper. They were definitely close. I literally spent the first 24 hours in the hospital either crying or vomiting from the pain. Apparently kidneys are not to be underestimated.) and my labor was stopped, and the flooding stopped as well and the roads were cleared so Josh and Cooper were able to visit me the rest of the time I was in the hospital. So that was Miss Ruby's dramatic false alarm.
The Birth:
Now for the actual birth. Ruby was a scheduled c section for January 20th at 5 a.m. We picked up my mom from the airport the day before so we left her asleep with Cooper at home and went to the hospital to have our baby. We got all prepped for surgery which was a much more casual and leisurely thing this time around since it wasn't an emergency and a lot of the things that didn't bother me at all with Cooper because I was distracted with labor like the iv and the catheter were much more uncomfortable and unpleasant this time. The whole time I kept thinking about how one time my grandpa hooked his catheter to his belt and went to the store when he was supposed to be home on bed rest. People like that should probably be the ones having babies, not wimpy me!
Eventually it was time for the surgery and they rolled me back to the operating room and then made me walk into the room and hop up on the operating table myself which I thought was a little weird. It's an odd disconcerting feeling to go willingly sit on the table that they're going to cut you open on. Josh had to wait outside while I got my spinal shot so I left my little smurf in his blue paper clothes watching me through the window while I went to go through what would be one of the worst experiences of my life. It took around an hour from the time they started my spinal block to the time they eventually put me under general anesthesia for my surgery. The anesthesiologist went in three separate times during which I just sat there frozen trying to be a good patient while I cried big black mascara tears all over my legs and said out loud it's going to be ok it's going to be ok to myself over and over again. The only thing that got me through it was I could see Josh's little blue head staring at me through the faraway window. He wouldn't take his eyes off me and I knew that he knew something was wrong even though no one had told him anything yet. He told me later he knew because he could hear me crying out in pain each time they tried to place the needle.
Not to get into the details too much, after a lot of attempts, multiple adjustments, lots of pain tests, and the beginning of my incision, it was determined the anethestetic was not going to work. My doctor said they were going to have to put me under general anesthesia. I think they had to hurry because he had made the start of the cut and hurry they did. In the course of about 30 seconds they told me I was going under, kicked Josh out, put a mask on me, and someone was pushing on my throat so hard I felt like I was being choked to death and that was the last thing I remember...
I really don't remember anything for about six hours after surgery. I don't remember seeing Ruby or Josh or anyone telling me about Ruby was but somehow even with my anxious personality I remember feeling very assured that Ruby was fine and it was ok for me to rest. So I slept most of the day, I even slept through most of Cooper and Ruby's first meeting. I opened my eyes long enough to take about five pictures and that was it.
Ruby Josephine Beach however came out of the surgery without a hitch! She had no problems and was healthy as could be! She was born at 8:30 a.m. weighing exactly 7 pounds and 19.5 inches long. I am so grateful that she's here and healthy and perfect!
The Recovery:
The next day things took another turn when I woke up with a spinal headache. I'd never heard of one before but apparently it's a side effect of having a spinal block where your spinal fluid keeps leaking and gives you a debilitating headache whenever you're upright. But the really bad news is that the only way to treat it is to go back in and do a procedure that's basically like getting the spinal block all over again. And when my doctor told me that I probably had to have another spinal done I burst into tears. It sounds like I'm being super dramatic and ridiculous but it was honestly a really traumatizing, painful, scary, horrible experience that I was determined to never repeat and I just couldn't handle the thought of going back to do it again the very next day. But on the other hand the headache made it physically impossible for me to sit or stand. So the doctor gave me the option of resting for a day while drinking lots of fluids and caffeine and wearing an abdominal binder to see if that would help before they sent in the anesthesiologist. He made it sound like none of those would help enough and that I'd pretty much have to do the procedure but he would humor me for a day. And oh boy did I worry and cry and pray that whole day... And guess what. My spinal headache went away even though the odds were really slim! After that recovery didn't seem so bad, at least I didn't have to endure spinal torture again.
We also found out on Wednesday that Cooper's cold he woke up with the day before Ruby was born, was actually bronchitis. We were so careful in the weeks leading up to Ruby's birth not to get sick. I kept Cooper home all week long but he still somehow got sick anyway. So upon taking Ruby home we were going to have to keep her and Cooper completely separated for five days. Another unplanned experience. Luckily my mom was here to take care of Cooper while we took care of Ruby sequestered in our bedroom. We were so lucky to have my mom here with us to help us through this experience, we definitely would not have managed without her. I owe her a lot, starting with 27 years ago when she went through childbirth for me. It is no small sacrifice that parents make for their children to be born. Ruby girl, I love you. And I'm pretty sure you owe me one. ;)
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