On July 5th, Eleanor was born. Birth is always nerve wracking, but in her case, it was downright scary. For two months befor she was born, she had stopped growing very fast. Every week I went to the Dr.'s office and had a non-stress test. In that time, I stopped doing anything that I thought might stress her out, (weeding, excercising ect.) and I ate everything. Nothing worked, every time we looked at her on the ultrasound, it was the same, she wasn't growing. The day before we decided to be induced, the ultra sound showed she was 5lbs 10 oz. I thought, that can't be right, the ultra sound is off. She'll be at least 6lbs.
I was induced on the morning of the 5th with pitosin. It seemed that every time I had a contraction, her heart rate dropped. The stronger the contractions got, the deeper her heartrate went down. Very scary. Dr. Hartman had the nurse stop the pitosin and wanted to try breaking my water and see if she would tolerate regular labor. He got the hook thing, looked like a crochet needle, and started trying to break my water. Right then, she started to flip. She was breech. I had to get a C-section. I got my epidural, and was wheeled into the opperating room.
The surgery was fine, I couldn't feel a thing. She was trying to crawl away from the Dr. or something cause he said something like, "little rat!" lol. When he got her out and they weighed her, she was 4lbs 6 oz. I was in pure shock. I heard a nurse say, "prep the NICU". I couldn't beleive it. How had this happened?! They hadn't grounded the scale so they weighed her again, and she was 4lbs, 7oz. JUST enough to go to the intermediate nursery instead. She was only there for a day, because she was completely healthy, other than being tiny. That day was the worst, I only got her to feed her, and I couldn't walk to see her because of the epidural.
We got to bring her home when I was discharged, which we found out later was a big deal, cause they don't normaly let babies that small go home.
