Havin’ a babeh: Ur doin’ it wrong (Part 1 of possible multiple segments)

I’ve been trying to post Baby Half Caff’s birth story for days now, but between the baby chaos, pain pills and WordPress eating everything I try to save, it’s been a slow process. I’m going to have to publish it in parts. There may be two parts, there may be 57, it’s too early to tell at this juncture.

First of all, let me just say this:

Lila Genevieve was born via C section on Wednesday the 14th. She is beautiful, just a wonderful baby so far and we are all in love with her.

So, by the time I was 36 weeks pregnant, I had a plan. Not a birth plan, because I knew I would be having a repeat C section, and I knew from previous experience how the procedure and hospital stay would likely go.

What I had was a family plan. Some scheduling and organization, firm plans for who would be caring for my children and when. I had specifically scheduled the arrival of our new baby on a Friday, so that Caroline would only miss one day of school and the people who would be our support would be able to easily take days off from work if necessary. I had allotted myself a certain amount of time to set up the changing table, catch up on laundry and clean the bathroom.

Really. I had a plan.

We had gone to Southern California for a wedding the first weekend of October and when we returned home I was feeling like maybe I was coming down with a cold. I saw my OB for our regular appointment and mentioned that I had a little cough and chest pain. He prescribed  a Z pack as a preventative measure and scheduled an extra appointment for me before C section day. He also reminded me that he would not be available at all during the upcoming weekend because his son was getting married. This was on Tuesday.

Wednesday I felt better, but Thursday I was starting to feel really run down. By Friday night I was running a little fever. I continued to run a low grade fever over the weekend and I was completely lethargic. I called the on-call doctor on Saturday morning and was advised to go to urgent care (?!) for Tamiflu. I disregarded this advice and told my husband that if I wasn’t feeling better we would just go to OB triage at the hospital.

Sunday I was having contractions from the moment I woke up. They were irregular but I had them all day long. All I could do on Sunday was lay in bed and sleep around the contractions, taking Tylenol at regular intervals.  Finally Sunday evening my mom and husband convinced me to go to the hospital to be checked out.