It's a GIRL!

Emery Elizabeth Jensen 

05.21.15

2:20 pm 

7.7 lbs

19 inches

Emery's birth story goes a little something like this....

I went into my Dr appointment on Tuesday the 19th. I was 38 weeks (the longest i've carried one of our babies) and I had been dilating about 1 cm per week since 36 weeks. I was at a 3 and was 60% effaced. I had only gained about 17 pounds (which is what i gained with the other two as well). I had been getting contractions, but nothing consistent enough to send me to the hospital. I was getting really uncomfortable and I hurt every where. I was carrying baby really low and was truly waddling wherever i went. Dr. Later was going to be going out of town that next week and wouldn't be back till June 1st. After he checked me he sat down and said, "Let's go over some of our options." You can be induced when I get back, you can go on your own, or you can come in on Thursday and i will accidentally break your water. (the rule of thumb is not to "induce" until you are at least 39 weeks by hospital standards). When he gave me that last option, I about starting crying right there. I was hoping he would be able to deliver my baby, and I was so relieved that I could not be hurting anymore. I was about ready to say, "K, what time do you want me to be here on Thursday?" But before I could say that he told me to go home and talk to Ty about it and then call and let him know what we decided. I kind of went.. oh right... i should probably talk to him. We decided that we would be induced on Thursday the 21st. My Dr. assured me that baby would be fine and healthy. He told me to come in at 10 am. 

Thursday came, my mom showed up to be with the kids, and off we went down the hill to the hospital. The hospital we delivered at is only about a mile away (if that) from my house. Dr. Later broke my water in his office and then we went downstairs to Labor and Delivery. I was a mix of emotions.. sad, happy, excited, nervous, anxious, and relieved. Ty was kind of the same way. I get hooked up to all the monitors, get an IV finally after 3 tries (my veins blow so easily), and then after about an hour get put on a small dose of pitocin. Once my contractions started getting pretty consistent and hard, I got my epidural. I had told my nurse that once I get progressing, I progress pretty fast. When I got my epidural it was about 12:30-1:00. It helped relieve the intensity of the contractions, but didn't make them any easier. My Dr. came in and checked on me and I was breathing through my contractions and he told me that my dose needed to be changed because I shouldn't be feeling them like I was. So in comes my anesthesiologist  again. He added a little more happy juice and told me to let him know if anything changed. Come about 1:45 nothing had changed with the contractions and pain, so he added another pretty good dose to my epidural. He said that I was progressing too fast for the medicine to keep up (told them that would happen).  After he gave me the dose about 10 minutes later I told Ty that I felt pressure down there, and that he needed to get the nurse. She comes in and checks me and has me do a practice push. The baby crowned right then. She said don't move, I'm going to go call the Dr. She was gone maybe 5 minutes?! and I told Ty that I felt even more pressure and to go check if she and the Dr. were close. Sure enough they were coming down the hall, and Ty told them that they needed to hurry. In walks the Dr. and gets his stuff on and sits down and says ok push on the next contraction. I push and I had to take a breath in the middle of it, so it pulled the baby back up a little bit. The Dr. said K push push push on this next one. I did and in the middle of it I hear him say, Chels look right here, your baby is here. I look down and I see my baby's cute little face. I start crying immediately (we still didn't know the gender) and he pulls the baby out and sets the baby on my chest. In between them pull her out and setting her on my chest, I hear It's a girl!! i start crying even more because my kiddies were right about having a little sister. I was for sure it was going to be a boy because we all thought it was a girl. She was wailing and I look up at Ty and he is crying a little bit too. Such a special moment. 

We wanted our kids to be the first to meet the baby. They came down to the hospital with my mom about an hour after the baby was born. Addi walks in and sees the baby and then looks up to me and asks, "What did that Dr. say we have?" I told her that she had a little sister now. She says in kind of a choked up voice, I have a little sister?!?! It was love at first sight for her. Parker didn't know what to think. He liked the baby for about 2 minutes and then was ready to be off exploring what was around. He kept asking my mom if it was time to go the post office most of the time while we were gone. She didn't know what he was asking, he kept saying I want to go see mom and the baby at the post office. haha that is where you make deliveries you know :) 

She had skin tags on her pinkies. One on each pinkie. They assured us it was pretty normal actually, and that it would be an easy fix. It was a pretty easy fix. They more or less tied them off with a special string. Ty went in with her when they did it, and asked if I wanted to come in. I knew i couldn't because I would be a bawling mess. He came back into the room with tears in his eyes and said it was so sad because she cried pretty hard. Totally glad I didn't go in. 

So there is Emmy's story... now it's time to write down my story of what happened afterward. 

We had family and friends come visit that night after we had Emery. I was feeling pretty good (except  that it took a while for me to feel my legs again from the big dose of medicine from the epidural). I was tired, but that was to be expected right? Emmy had been with us ever since she was born. They didn't have to take her into the nursery to clean her off, they did it in the room for us. It was so nice and reassuring to have her by our side. 

About 7:00 that night I went in to use the bathroom (my nurse was with me) and we heard a clot drop into the toilet. I looked at my nurse and said told me that it didn't sound too big and that we will watch me to see if I drop anymore. I had gone to the bathroom a few more times on my own and I never did drop another one. My uterus was firm every time the felt it and they said that come around midnight if things still looked good they would take out my IV. Come midnight things looked great so they took it out. Well wouldn't you know about 1:30 am as I'm sitting in bed holding Emery, I felt really wet down there. I tried to wake up Ty for him to hold the baby, but he was out cold. So I moved some pillows around and set her on the bed. I waddled to the bathroom (which was only about 10 steps away from my bed) and as I am walking I am dripping blood on the floor. I sit down on the toilet and there is a clot in my pad. I start going potty and I feel about 3 more clots drop into the toilet. By now I know something is not right. I wake Ty up and tell him to call my nurse. He was still a little groggy and didn't really know what was going on. Callie (my nurse) comes into the bathroom and I show her the clot in my pad and that there are more in the toilet. She says ok why don't we maybe run the bath and wash you off. We start the bath, but she stops it and says why don't you lay on the bed first I'm going to push on your uterus. So we make our way to the bed and I kind of just plop down on it. She pushes on my stomach and I feel another clot pop out. I hear her go "OH, that's not good!" Then from my stand point every thing kind of went in a blur after that. My body immediately went into shock (which is normal for me, after I deliver a baby my body starts to shake). I told her that I didn't feel well and that I was really tired. Callie starts calling in other nurses, and then she tells Ty that the baby needed to go to the nursery. She is telling me to stay awake and to talk to her. As I'm shaking, I hear her say that she needs to get another IV in me. I tell her that she won't be able to get it in one try because my veins blow so easily. She then makes a call and tells them to wake up the anesthesiologist. He comes in and easily puts in 2 IV's, one in each arm. Between all this I'm still shaking and I look around and see that there were about 5 nurses in my room. I had to get a shot in my hip of morphine, a shot of something in my thigh to help me stop bleeding, and then some medicine into my bum. Then I had a bag of saline going through me, a bag of pitocin, and then a bag of morphine.  Then I had Callie pushing on my stomach about every 2-3 minutes. I was getting contractions about every 60 seconds, and every time she pushed on my tummy I felt more clots pop out. I didn't talk much during all of this. I mostly was moaning because I was in so much pain. I held whomever's hand was close by. I laid their with my eyes closed, and shaking uncontrollably.  I remember opening my eyes and realizing that I wasn't holding Ty's hand. I looked around for him and then all of a sudden he is right there holding my hand again. My jaw started chattering and I was trying to breath through my nose and out my mouth. I  am sure I sounded crazy because I couldn't breath out my mouth very well without my jaw chattering. I also remember opening my eyes another time and looking up at Ty. He didn't realize I had opened my eyes, but I don't think I will ever forget the look of fear that was in his eyes. He was looking around at everyone with this look of terror. My eyes started to water, and I had to close them again because I couldn't look at him anymore. Finally the bleeding stops after about 30-40 minutes. Things start to calm down and everyone starts to leave my room. Callie had to stay in my room with me and about every 30 minutes push on my stomach again. Talk about exhaustion! I was wiped out and felt like crap. 

So this is what I learned what happened after the fact. I was hemorrhaging, and didn't even realize it. Usually I guess it happens around 1-2 hours after delivery. For me it was 11 hours after.  When Callie pushed on my stomach that first time a clot the size of a cantaloupe came out. Ty told me she literally jumped when it came out. He said his eyes went big too because he knew that wasn't normal. I had lost about 1/3 of my blood during the whole thing. Which was about a bag and a half (like what they use for saline).  That first clot was the size of the cantaloupe, that one alone was about half of the total of blood I lost. That bag of pitocin I had, I went through in about 30 minutes. That is why I was having contractions so fast. I was borderline getting a transfusion, but they didn't give me one. Callie also told us that that in her 2 years of being a RN that was one of the worst hemorrhages she has seen. All the nurses that came in after Callie had been told what had happened and they were very cautious and watchful of me for the next 24 hours. I had no energy, and was super tired and that feeling stayed with me for about 2 weeks after. I am just barely getting to the point where I feel a little normal again. I am still pretty white, but not ghostly white now. I also have lost quite a bit of weight. Ty told me that it was one of the scariest things he has went through. He still doesn't talk about it much, but I try to get him to talk through it a bit because I know it will eat him up if he doesn't. One thing he did say to me was that it was a sinking feeling when he was walking the baby to the nursery seeing nurses run down the hallway in the opposite direction of him knowing they were running to my room. When I couldn't find him that one time I opened my eyes he had taken a seat over in the corner because he said it got a little too overwhelming for him. But then he saw that I was looking for him and he came back over to me. What a trooper he is and I am lucky that he is there by my side through thick and thin. He was a gem to me when we got home as well. He stayed home with us for a week. We all cried when he had to go back to work. We love our dad SO much. He does a lot of us, and we love it when he is around. I am grateful that we have modern day medicine. We both said that no wonder women died of child birth back in the day. If I wouldn't have had the medicine we did, I would have for sure bled out. I am grateful for my nurses and the way they handled everything. I was very well taken care of there. I told Ty that I am glad that something like this happened to me and not the baby because I don't know if I could handle watching my baby go through something bad. He didn't comment on that one because he doesn't want to go through anything bad with either me or the baby. 

I am so grateful that Emery is here though. She fits into our family so well. It also seems like she has been here a lot longer than she has been. The kids still call her baby, and can't remember Emery. Addi tells everyone that her name is Sparkle Emery.  I am one lucky lucky mom and thank Heavenly Father for them every day. 

38 weeks and about to head to the hospital 

first time meeting the baby 

first family picture