Backtrack a little to May 2010. We found out I was pregnant for the first time, and couldn't have been more thrilled. It was time to have our first child! When I was about 6 weeks along, I had gone to lunch with my cousin, and we had just gotten to the mall for a little retail therapy. I went into the bathroom as soon as we got there, and my heart sank. I was bleeding! I hadn't told my cousin I was pregnant, I was planning on waiting until I was a little farther along. But I am not someone who can hide her feelings. Especially when it came to the disappointment of this situation. And to make it worse, I had bled through my KHAKI pants! Luckily, I was at the mall! I could go buy a new pair of pants to get home! Unluckily, I was at the mall, on a Saturday! I now had to now walk through a building with everyone and their dog, and a huge blood spot on my pants!
I got home later that afternoon, in my new pants, and told Wesley that I was bleeding and had miscarried. His grandma, who we were living with at the time, suggested we go to the hospital. Just to make sure everything was OK. Wesley was a student x-ray tech at Gunnison Valley Hospital, so that is where we decided to go. That way we would know the people checking me out.
As they were doing the ultrasound, they kept hhmm-ing. Talk about being confused. I was staring at a screen that was showing my insides, which I had no idea what anything was! And all anyone who did know what they we looking at was hhmm-ing! Finally she said,"Well, there is still a heart beat, you are still pregnant!" WAHOO!! "But... you have a Bicornuate Uterus."
"What the heck does that mean?" I thought to myself as Wesley and I both looked at each other, totally confused. Come to find out, a Biconruate Uterus, is a heart shaped uterus. Some women have it and it gives them a lot of problems. Other women go their whole lives, or a whole pregnancy without ever knowing they have it.
Unfortunately, I am in the "it gives you problems" category. And about 3 weeks later, I did miscarry that pregnancy. 14 months, 4 midnight emergency room visits, and a whole pregnancy of bed rest due to random bleeding problems, we welcomed our first child into the world! Although my pregnancy was terrible, he was born at 39 weeks 3 days, and weighed in at 6 pounds 6 ounces, and 19 inches long. He was tiny and perfect and we were so so in love!
Deciding to get pregnant again was not easy. My pregnancy with Kastyn was anything but easy, adn I gained 60 pounds! I had been running for a couple of years and didn't want to have to give that up. I was finally feeling really good about myself. But it felt right! We knew it was time to add another bundle of joy to our family.
I got pregnant in September 2014, with a due date of June 2, 2015. And I was very anxious to see what this pregnancy was going to be like. To our surprise, it was a great pregnancy! I had one "bleeding episode" at about 7 weeks, but it never happened again. We found out just before Christmas that we were having a little girl, and I was thrilled!! We were going to have one of each! I was able to run up until about 25 weeks, and then I was getting big enough that it hurt my whole body to run and I had to give in and quit until after I had the baby. But everything was going so good I was OK with that. I had gained more weight then I was hoping to, but not close to as much as I gained with my first pregnancy. Things were going great!
I woke up the morning of April 11, 2015 and was feeling normal. I was 32 weeks and 4 days, and we had just scheduled a repeat c-section that Wednesday for May 28. There was finally a light at the end of the tunnel! (Kastyn got stuck and my labor with him ended in an emergency c-section. So they thought that would be the best rout to go with this one.) We were visiting family for the weekend in Ephraim, about an hour away from our home in Santaquin. It was mny little brothers 10th birthday, and we had spent a lot of the day hanging out with him, my parents, and my grandparents. Talking about how soon this baby was going to be here!
We went back to my in-laws house where we were staying, and started to get ready for dinner. Normally we leave on Saturday night to go home so we don't have to be up super early on Sunday morning and make the hour long drive to be home in time for church at 9:00 am. But Wesley wanted to go turkey hunting with his brother-in-law and a friend that night. So we decided we would be fine to get up early the next morning, so that he could go. While he was gone, I started having contractions. We had finished tying a quilt for the baby a little earlier, and had been sitting around the kitchen table on the hard chairs for a couple of hours. So I thought I was just cramping up from all of that and didn't say anything.
Wesley got back from hunting, ate dinner, and we moved into the living room. I thought that once we were sitting on the soft couches my "cramping" would stop and we would go to bed and go home in the morning. After two hours, not only did it not stop but they got closer together. When we went down stairs to go to bed I finally told Wesley what had been going on and that I was pretty sure we were going to be making a trip to the hospital. We got into bed and I timed my contractions while Wesley slept. A half hour after we got into bed, I woke Wesley up and told him we needed to go. I was now relieved that we had decided to stay one more night, cause we could leave Kastyn sleeping at my in-laws house.
As we were on our way to the hospital I just kept hoping it would all stop. Or that we would get there and they would be able to give me some sort of medicine to make the contractions stop. As much as I didn't want to be pregnant anymore, I knew it was way to early. We got there and they hooked me up to the monitors and started asking me all of the questions they always ask you. When the nurse got done with the questions, she turned the monitor to show me my "ant hill" contractions as she called them, and said she was going to go update the doctor on-call and see what he wanted her to do. Not long after, she came back in and said that the doctor wanted her to "check me". She said that she didn't think it was necessary, but that she would do it since he asked her to, All I could think about was that no matter what she thought was necessary, this WAS NOT supposed to be happening yet and they nedded to get it figured out. As she checked me, her eyed widened, and she went to grab another nurse to make sure she wasn't crazy. The second nurse came in, checked me, and said,."Yep, she is dilated to a 4 and I can feel the head." 
WHAT!! That wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to check me, tell me I wasn't dilated, give me medicine to stop the contractions, and send me home. Instead they were making arrangements for Life Flight to come pick me up because that hospital doesn't deliver babies earlier then 37 weeks. Not only was I being put on Life Flight, but the nearest hospital with a NICU, Utah Valley Hospital in Provo, was full and on divert. So I was being flown to Inter-mountain Medical Center in Murray. A 40 min. helicopter ride, and almost another hour of driving past Provo that Wesley was going to have to do to meet me there. They gave me the steroid shot that helps develop the babys' lungs faster and started getting me ready for my first helicopter ride. 
I had no clue what to expect in my helicopter ride. They showed up and started literally strapping me into the bed, and then using me as a table for the monitors, because there wasn't enough room for all of it, and me one the helicopter. Wesley, his Grandma, who was spending the night at the hospital already with her boyfriend who was super sick, and his Mom, were with me and they wheeled me out to the parking lot to put me on the helicopter. And Wesley and his mom jumped in our truck and headed North to Murray. I will never forget how long that "40 min" helicopter ride felt! I remember hearing them say we were flying over Provo, and it seemed like we had been in there for an hour at least! But, we finally got there, and they got me all squared away in a labor and delivery room. 
Wesley and his mom got there around 4 o'clock on Sunday morning, the 12th of April. I was still at a 4 when they checked me, when I got to IMC. We spent that whole day sitting in my room, talking to all sorts of doctors giving us "our options" as the contractions continued. By around 7 o'clock that night the pain medicine that they were giving me had stopped working, so they decided to check me again. After almost 24 hours in labor, I was dilated to 6 cm, and they decided there was going to be no stopping things and offered me the epidural if I wanted it. OF COURSE I WANTED IT!! I don't have much pain tolerance.
I was able to sleep really good that night. Even with the nurse coming in every hour to check on me. I had no pain, and they had put in a catheter, so I wasn't getting up every five min to go to the bathroom anymore. At 3:00 am they came in to give me the second steroid shot. The goal was to at least get both of them into me before she came. So we were grateful I made it that long, even though it made for a really long couple of days. They day shift doctor came in to check me at around 7:00 am the morning of April 13 and I had gone from a 6 to an 8 through the night. They decided that the best thing to do would be to break my water and deliver this baby.
I was so torn!! I remember being so so happy that I wasn't going to be pregnant anymore, and that the pain was going to stop. But we had talked to the NICU doctors and I knew she was to early. They told us to plan on being in the NICU until her due date, June 2! Almost 2 months! And even as they told me that I kept telling myself, we'll only be here two weeks tops!
The doctor came in and broke my water at 8:00 am and I was completely dilated by 8:30 am. So they started prepping. We had decided that even though I was originally supposed to have a c-section, we were going to try a V-back.(a vaginal delivery). Either way that I delivered, I was going to have to deliver in the operating room. They had windows in there with a nurse waiting that went directly into the NICU. The delivery went great!! Laynee May Hermansen was born by vaginal delivery at 9:40 am after only 40 min. of pushing. We got to look at her for two seconds before they whisked her off to the NICU for evaluation. She weighed in a 5 pound 5 ounces, and was 18 inched long and had a head full of dark hair! A great size for a baby that was 8 weeks early!
They took me up to my room, me upstairs, and my beautiful new baby downstairs. I settled in for what I thought was going to be just a couple weeks of hospital living. Little did I know how wrong I was, and what was going to be one of the hardest experiences of my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment