I finally get to join the rest of you that have been fortunate enough to meet their little ones and share their story!

For starters, my pregnancy had some rough patches. Found out April 2nd with a digital test that I was pregnant, estimated around 4 weeks. We found out that we were having a baby girl on May 20th by the genetic blood test. When I was around 20 weeks I started to have issues with my only kidney; it had become severely infected and I was showing high signs of hydronephrosis. After several tests and ultrasounds later, we got that under control but of course that means with kidney issues comes an increased risk of preeclampsia. My blood pressure started to spike when I was 36 weeks, I was diagnosed strep b positive and that’s when all the fun starts!

On Monday, November 13th I woke up with severe cramping/contraction like pain and my bed felt damp at home. Called my OB and was told to go to the hospital for monitoring. Get to the hospital around 10:30 AM and they get me checked in to triage and I’m having severe contractions and my blood pressure is in the 170/113 range. My OB was the doctor on for the day, and he ordered that I have labs done.. sure enough I had raging preeclampsia with serious swelling and large amounts of protein in my urine and bloodwork all over the place.

I was admitted to the hospital around 1pm that day and was put on routine stress testing/monitoring for my baby and myself. My doctor was highly recommending induction the following day, which would have put me at 37 weeks exactly; however the hospital has a “no induction prior to 39 weeks” policy unless deemed medically necessary, so my OB had to contact a high risk specialist before making any final decisions.

The high risk specialist decided that I should just be monitored, and wait until I was 39 weeks along (two weeks of from the original suggestion!)

So throughout the week the hospital routinely checked my labs and monitored: I had really good days and horrible days and because of that, each doctor that was on would tell me something completely different than the next as far as the game plan for my baby.

On Thursday November 16th, my doctor finally made the decision to bypass the recommendations of the specialist and schedule me to be induced on Monday the 20th instead of wait another week.

Fast forward to Monday, come to find out the nurse that was working with my doctor on Thursday never scheduled my induction! So it was then scheduled for the next day at 12pm.

Tuesday rolls around and all of my family and I are super excited and eager to get things moving with this induction, however my 12pm scheduled induction became a 4pm “sorry we were busy” induction. Get moved to labor and delivery and started on penicillin and

pitocin. Contractions start coming and they hurt like hell but I managed to get a few hours of sleep.

Wake up this morning, November 22nd, in serious pain with a lot of mucous coming out of me. The nurse checks and I’m only 2cm dilated as of 5am. They decided to try the cervix ripening pills and after 6 hours I only go up to 3cm. My doctor’s partner comes and decides to break my water to speed things up and oh my god did things get worse. My contractions became extremely consistent and painful and I couldn’t get comfortable. After an hour of trying to fight the pain I decided to get my epidural around 1pm. And thank god for that because my pain went from a 10 to a 0 in minutes. The most painful part of the epidural was the position I had to sit in to get it done. Once it was in I passed out and woke up at 8cm dilated. Maybe 30 minutes later my doctor comes in to check on me and says “oh god, she’s right there and you’re ready to push!”

We get set up and do some practice pushes and she almost comes out then so we stop and wait for my doctor.

5 minutes and 6 pushes later, my perfect baby girl entered the world! No tears and I didn’t feel a single thing.

Baby Carly - 38 weeks and 1 day born 11/22 at 4:25pm, weighing 7lb 10oz and 19.5in long. She’s the most relaxed baby ever with a great appetite; she latched on right away for a 30 minute feeding after an hour of skin-to-skin.

We are absolutely in love with our perfect girl!