About as unplanned as a C Section gets

At 34 weeks I had been told definitively that I would be having a c section due to my LO being frank-breech the entire pregnancy.  They scheduled it for my 39th week (Jan 4). This devastated me and I spent the following week crying and fighting bouts of depression.  I have given my all to exercise my entire pregnancy (spin classes, yoga, swimming) so that I could be a labor warrior.  Labor was going to be my battle that I was going to face head on and hear me roar dammit I was going to be strong enough so that I could endure it. I paid for all kinds of workshops and had my labouring room at home ready so that I could avoid being at the hospital too long.  I wanted an empowering, drug free, natural delivery. I wanted the skin to skin and delayed cord clamping; I wanted a beautiful birth story.

Now unfortunately my HCG was low in my 12 week IPS screening and that can mean I would potentially have IUGR aka baby would run out of space to grow. As a result I had bi weekly ultrasounds since week 24 (this is how we knew she was always breeched).  This is also how we learned she wasn't growing at the right rate. Beginning at week 32 she dropped below the 21 percentile in size...week 34 she was below 10%....and week 36 she was below 3%.  Now if you've been following my story you'll guess where this headed. Week 36 ultrasound was Dec 16th. 

Following the routine US the tech asked me to stay so she could call my OB.  After a 25 min wait I was asked to walk over to the L&D ward to do a stress test on the baby. I texted my husband and asked if he could come be with me cause I was so afraid of bad news. My BFF agreed to drive him so we wouldn't be stuck with 2 cars at the hospital. They hooked me up to the stress test and the on call OB comes in and tells me I am having a c section today. I tell him I can't I'm at work and I have meetings set up all afternoon and I'm already scheduled for a section in January! He tells me it is happening in 2 hrs. He was wonderful and explained the reasons he needed to do it and it was very clear that the only way to understand why she wasn't growing or moving in the US was to get her out. In preparation for my Jan section I had made a list of 47 questions about section recoveries and procedures etc.  And in that moment when I found out she wasn't moving I couldn't remember a single question on that dang list. When my husband arrived (25min after my US) they handed him scrubs and said they were doing this now instead of in 2hrs. They wouldn't even give me 5 mins alone with my husband to process what was happening to us. We were terrified and completely unprepared. They brought me in to begin my spinal before my husband could come in. I held the arms of this delicate scrub nurse with kind brown eyes and as they prepped my spine I remember looking into her eyes and asking if this was really happening? She told me it was and to breathe. 

I won't bother with details of the spinal - they hurt like a bitch getting set up and then they feel like nothing. 

Once I was laid out on the table they brought my husband in and sat him by my head. He held my hand and we were both crying as I fervently apologized for not being able to grow our baby. (In the days following my husband told me he was crying because everything he loved in this world was laid out on an operating table and both their lives were in the hands of a surgeon.) Without feeling the pain the spinal still lets you feel everything.  As such I could feel the moment they touched her because she kicked up such a storm I would have sworn I was delivering an octopus! The second her face hit air she gave them all hell in the form of a hearty, outraged wail. I heard the nurses say "she's a feisty one!" Yes, she is. She is my daughter. She is the heart of the battle I had planned to fight. She is the strength of my blood and the endurance of my heart.  She is everything I had trained to be to bring her into this world. 

Now because I was 36 weeks it is classified as late pre-term so I wasn't allowed skin to skin or delayed cord clamping. They needed specialists to review her immediately to make sure her lungs were ok and also to figure out why she wasn't moving on the US. As of today they still don't know. She is testing healthier than some full term babies. We were sent home on day 3 pp as we were both doing so well.  It's been a week of tears of frustration, exhaustion, and some for the trauma of the experience. However, looking at this beautiful girl on my chest I can say that despite not having the delivery/birth I wanted, I had the delivery I needed so that I could have the child of heart. I understand now that I didn't need to give birth vaginally to have a birth story. This is my story; Tears, fears, and scars.  This is her story.