First Born

Isabel Rilene Caceres, also known as "Sky". Isabel is after David's mom, and Rilene is after my grandmother. My baby girl was born on July 19, 2012, two days before her official due date after two long nights of contractions. After not sleeping for two nights I woke David up in tears telling him we needed to go to the hospital to get a morphine shot because i just wanted to be able to sleep. I knew my contractions were not the typical 3-5 minutes apart so I did not expect to stay at the hospital but when we got there they monitored me for an hour and because I progressed from two centimeters to three centimeters, Dr. Nance said it was ok to go ahead and keep me and get me started on pitocin. I will remember next time to make sure I get the epidural before I let the nurse start the pitocin, luckily though she was willing to give me a nice dose of fentanyl while I waited for the anesthesiologist. That was my first time receiving any real pain medication and I could easily see why people become addicted to that kinda thing it was almost an instantaneous feeling of calmness and relaxation. I remember being super nervous about the epidural as i had heard horror stories of having terrible headaches and loosing feeling in the extremities permanently, however it was not an option at this point to opt out at this point i was so tired i was ready to make them put me to sleep cause i had had it. Luckily i had a really good anesthesiologist and i barely felt a thing and it didn't make me sick at all other than the fact that i had no control over my bottom half which was awkward. Not too long after Laurie our nurse started the pitocin had i quickly progressed to a ten, i could feel the Isa was ready to come out anytime but the dr was on the way so we were just waiting with grandma Rilene, my mom, and Dad in the room. next thing i knew i looked at the the monitors and the babies heart rate was down in the 50's, i didn't think much at first i thought it would just come right back up but after a few moments i could tell the nurse was concerned she tried repositioning me and checked for a cord but nothing brought the heart rate back up the team was called in i was put on oxygen and transferred to the OR for an emergency c-section. I knew every second at this point was crucial so i stayed as calm as possible so that i didn't interrupt. When i was all set up for the c-section my dr. finally walked in and grabbed the forceps instead of doing the c-section and pulled Isa out in two pushes, i was so heavily dosed with the epidural i didn't even realized she had come out, they had taken her immediately to be resuscitated and intubated by by Gerday. She was blue with apgar scored at 1,3,5, & 7. David immediately followed the baby to the NICU. Every thing I anticipated about giving birth and seeing my baby for the first time, breast feeding and daddy cutting the cord was all taken away. Before being transferred to my recovery room i was wheeled into the nicu to see Isa for the first time, she was still a little bluish, swollen and very noticeably long and skinny with especially large hands and feet. She was on the osscilator, and was being passively cooled due to her very low ph of 6.8 at birth. She went 18 minutes before birth and about ten minutes after both with decreased oxygenation. our main concerns at this time was how this would affect her brain function. But every day Isa got better quicker and quicker than anyone had anticipated. although she had a pneumothorax from being resuscitated she was able to come off the oscillator the same day to a nasal cannula, she sucked very well on her binky, and tolerated her feeds quick enough that even though she was still fed slowly by NG tube she quickly moved up to being able to be breast fed, it took a few times but she caught on very well. She did so well that her MRI was cancelled and we were able to get her out of the NICU in 8 days.