Pruitt Littles

The Tuesday before Emma was born (11/1/11) we had a doctor's appointment. According to the doctor her due date was that day...according to her measurements and ultrasound, her due date was 10/29/11.

3 weeks prior to the 11/1/11 appt. we had our last ultrasound wherein the technician said Emma weighed about 7 pounds already. This worried my doctor a lot. Throughout the entire pregnancy he expressed his concern that I wouldn't be able to deliver Emma vaginally because I have a small build. So, he recommended either *trying* to deliver vaginally by inducing, or going into it with a scheduled c-section.

I opted to avoid a c-section at all costs..so at our 11/1/11 appt we scheduled the induction for 3 days later, on Friday the 4th at 9am. The doctor was pretty confident that even my induction would result in a c-section. My nerves were all over the place to say the least....

So, Friday came, we arrived at the hospital a few minutes late, and got going with the induction. After getting me all hooked up to the IV's, the nurses gave me a pill and told me to wait. They said contractions shouldn't start with the pill, but would come later after giving me pitocin. BUT...I was definitely having contractions with the pill...so, early labor had begun. My contractions were irregular and inconsistent for the next 12 hours, so I knew we'd be at the hospital for quite some time. After giving me a second pill ( yucky) AND a (as my doctor called it) barbie girl tampon (haha), the doctor noticed little improvement, though the pain had definitely increased...so he gave me a sleeping pill and told me to rest throughout the night. The sleeping pill didn't work (but not much of anything they gave me worked...seriously), and the contractions continued, so it was a pretty long night.

By this point....I was READY to be done.
The next day, Saturday, at noon the doctor decided to start with pitocin, and to start it pretty strong. He had noticed that any medications they were giving me weren't really effective, so he up-ed the pitocin so we could really get things going.

The next 9 hours and 34 minutes were not my favorite. The anesthesiologist came in when I was about 6 cm dilated and gave me an epidural. It didn't work. :( He ended up giving me a total of 4 doses, and I still felt all the pain and the intense urge to push. {It's the worst thing in the world to have the urge to push and to be told not to. } Emma's heart beat kept dipping with each contraction, which worried the doctor (and Emma's mommy) immensely. At one point my obgyn came in and told me that it was looking like we'd do a c-section because of Emma's heart beat. He said he'd monitor closely and if she had another big dip (one of the dips went from a 150 down to 60) we'd go back to the OR. I was heartbroken to say the very least. But, it motivated me to do everything possible to make sure her heart beat didn't dip again. So I focused in remaining calm during contractions (at least, as calm as I could be) so my body wouldn't tense up, thus, so Emma wouldn't tense up.


The time *finally* came for the doctor to step in and help us bring our baby girl into the world. And we were going to try vaginally. :)

I was SO glad when they told me to push. But, with every push, Emma's heart beat dropped. I saw the look in my doctor's eyes, a look I hope to forget. But, with a lot of silent prayers, and a couple of hard pushes later, my daughter was born.
The doctor later told me that we almost lost her. We almost lost my baby girl. It makes my heart sink just thinking about how that was a possibility.

My body took a beating with the delivery, and it took just under 2 hours of surgery to fix me up. And the nurses had taken Emma to the NICU just seconds after she was born, since she had some dips in her heartbeats. I didn't get to hold my baby girl until 4 hours after her birth, just before 2am...and it was a moment I will not soon forget.

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