Number Four Has Arrived!!!

Our precious little baby girl has arrived.  Yes, that's right, I said GIRL.  I am still in shock that we have another girl in our family.  I was so, so sure that it was a boy that even hours after she was born I was thinking that we'll need to talk to the doctor about when to do the circumcision!  I am also still in shock over her size...9 pounds, 5 ounces!!!  How in the world did I have a baby that big???  Never in a million years would I, or anyone else for that matter, have guessed that!  No wonder my belly was the only thing that got bigger, she was taking everything I ate and storing it!  So far, it looks like she has Rosie's nose and Emily's eyes and mouth.  She's got many fat rolls and long fingers and toes.

Callie Hope Jergler arrived at 2:13am on Wednesday, June 3.  As many of you know, she had a very rough start to life.  I was attempting a VBA2C (vaginal birth after 2 cesareans) and had wanted this more than anything I've ever wanted before!  I talked to many of the midwives and doctors, did all my research, learned so many things about natural birth, and felt so confident that this was the best option for both of us.  I spent so much time, money, effort and thought into how my beautiful, natural, unmedicated birth was going to go this time.  This pregnancy was my chance to finally have the birth I had always wanted.  Yes, I knew there were risks in doing this.  But the chance of that risk happening was less than 2%.  There's no way I would ever be in that 2%!  I was confident, I was educated, and I was certainly prepared.

Three days before my due date, I had a regular prenatal appointment, where the doctor checked me and did a membrane sweep, which can start labor, because it starts the hormones that cause labor.  I was already a good 3cm and 80% effaced.  The doctor thought there would be no way I wouldn't go into labor that day or the next, and really wanted me to go into labor before 40 weeks, because of the attempt at a VBA2C.  That night, I woke up at 2:30am with a contraction that was definitely different than any I'd had before, more painful.  I was excited and started timing them.  They started out at 10 minutes apart and went down to about 5 minutes apart for about 3 hours, then they completely stopped.  The next day nothing at all happened.  This went on for a few days of nothing.  My due date of June 1 came and went and I started to get nervous that the doctors would start pressuring me to schedule a c-section.  I did every natural form of inducing labor that I could think of and that I had read about.  Nothing happened.  I wondered if this baby would ever come out!  Finally, two days after my due date, I decided to take a swim in the pool.  It was finally warm enough for me to want to get in the water and I had so loved swimming when I was pregnant with Matthew.  I got in the pool about 4:30 and around 5:00, I noticed that I started having contractions pretty often.  I'd had Braxton Hicks contractions for some time now, so I didn't really think anything of them.  These ones didn't hurt, they just had a lot of pressure, and the pressure was lower than it had been.  I kept swimming around hoping they would continue.  They did, but they never got painful.  I started tracking them and they were never more than 5 minutes apart.  When I was done swimming, I sat on the exercise ball for a while, took a shower, sat on the bed using the computer for a while, went for a walk and laid down.  If contractions continue or get closer together, no matter what you do, that's a sign of labor.  But I had been told so many times that you don't go to the hospital unless the contractions are hard to manage through and that wasn't the case.  Although, I started to question if this was it anyway because when I went into labor with the twins, my contractions were never "painful" and I got to 6cm and 100%.  Then I started to think "well, maybe this is just pressure to me, where most women would think it's pain?"  I guess I just have a high tolerance of pain!  I'd been in contact with my Doula, letting her know what was going on, and she was the one who suggested I walk to see if they get closer and more intense.  This all went on for about 6 hours, with the contractions getting down to about 2.5 minutes apart, so I decided to finally call my doctor advise line.  I was embarrassed to call because I was not in pain.  The nurse asked me questions for quite a while and talked through two contractions with me to see how long they lasted and how I managed through them.  Since I wasn't in pain, she said she'd call the midwife on-call, get her opinion and call me back.  This probably took about 30 minutes.  By the time she called me back the contractions did get painful.  There was cramping each time a surge came on.  Just about the time I thought we should really go to the hospital, the nurse called back.  The midwife had said that it was totally up to me if I wanted to come in, but when I told her the contractions were hurting now, she said to go ahead and go on in!

This was it!  The moment I'd been waiting for, for so long.  I had dreamed about going into labor naturally and it was finally here!  The drive to the hospital was about 25 minutes and it wasn't bad at all.  Once we got inside, I checked in and was taken to Triage to assess my progress and whether or not I was in true labor.  They admitted me and I was only there for about 20 minutes.  I was at 4cm, 90% effaced.  As we walked through the hallway to my Labor room, I had this feeling of excitement and anticipation.  I finally had the chance to labor like I am supposed to, in a real Labor & Delivery room.  I got situated while the nurse started working on the monitor, to measure fetal heart rate and contractions.  Maybe 10-15 minutes later, the midwife came in and we talked through my plan.  She checked again and I was already 6cm, 100% effaced, with a bulging bag.  The contractions were intense at this point, but not unbearable (yes, I was doing an unmedicated birth).  During this time, the nurse was having a hard time getting the monitor to work.  The one rule that the midwives at my practice had, if I was attempting a VBAC, was that I must have continuous monitoring, so they could catch anything that showed up as an issue with the baby.  Suddenly, I really really had to pee!  I went to the bathroom and as soon as I sat down, I felt a popped balloon feeling and my water broke.  Once that happened, the pain got much more intense and it was more of a sharp pain, which didn't subside with contractions.  It was at this point, that my uterine incision (from my prior c-sections) had ruptured.  There was blood in the water that broke, which is a very bad sign.  It took a while to get up because of the pain.  I made it back to the bed and as soon as I sat down, I had a very strong urge to push!  But I had just gotten to 6cm!  Well, they said to go ahead and try if I really felt like I needed to and the midwife checked me again.  I was 9.5cm!  The pain was so strong now and it was shooting all over my abdominal area that I could barely move.  Shortly after this point, they finally got a fetal heart rate, but only because the midwife ended up using an internal one and the baby's heart rate was only 60 beats per minute.  This is a horrible heart rate!  They put an oxygen mask on me and had me move positions to see if the heart rate went back up, but nothing worked.  They were all yelling at me to push, to see if we could get her out of there quick.  This was not happening, because my uterus was no longer functioning, since it had ruptured.  The midwife told them to get the doctor right away and said we'd need to go in for an emergency c-section.  Scott asked if he could go in there with me and they told him No.  This was because I was being put under general anesthesia, since I did not have an epidural.  He was standing in a room full of people taking his wife to emergency surgery, then left by himself not knowing what was happening or what the outcome would be.  Later, he told me that he was sure that he'd be raising 3 kids by himself... Luckily, my friend's sister works in L&D and was on duty.  She had heard that I was admitted, but by the time she had a chance to come check on me, this had all happened.  She was able to go in and out of the OR and give Scott updates.  That really helped him a lot.  From there, everything was so crazy and quick.  Everyone started preparing me and getting ready to rush to the OR.  I remember the lights of the hallway flashing above me, doors being opened and having to move to the OR table, which was excruciating.  The anesthesiologist was there, putting a heavy oxygen mask over my nose and mouth and this is where I lost it.  I get claustrophobic very, very easily and this really made me feel like I was going to suffocate, so I panicked.  It felt like ages, but was only a minute or two, and then I was knocked out.  Later, the doctor said in this situation, they usually have to do a hysterectomy, but I was lucky.  I wasn't feeling very lucky...

As soon as I woke up, it hit me.  "I didn't get my VBAC.  Everything went wrong and it's all my fault.  I have no idea what has happened to my baby, or where he/she is.  Scott is going to be so mad at me."  This is when Scott told me it was a girl.  A girl??  We were supposed to have a boy!!  I didn't expect a girl!  All the fears and unknown was a constant loop in my head and I couldn't stop sobbing.  They must have told the NICU I was awake, because 3 nurses from there came into the room with an update. They looked very sad and grim.  They told us that Callie was completely limp and unresponsive when she was born.  She wasn't breathing and hadn't gotten oxygen for some time, but they weren't sure how long.  She had to be resuscitated and could have severe damage to her brain, but was stable for now... This was ALL they could tell us at the time!  Two very small rays of hope were that once they got her stable, she was fighting them when they were trying to get her intubated and working with her and also that her heart never stopped beating.  The faces on everyone in the room seriously looked like she had died, or was going to die.  I had to stay in recovery for 2 hours and then they would wheel my bed up to see her on the way to my postpartum room, but after that, I wouldn't be able to see her until 12 hours after my surgery, which would be 2pm.  Those were some of the longest hours of my life.  I don't think I've ever cried so much in my entire life.  I was so devastated that the experience I had hoped for and dreamed about all these months didn't happen.  I was feeling so guilty that this was a decision I had made and now my baby might die or be severely brain damaged.  I was worried Scott would hate me for the rest of his life for what I did to his child.  I was fearing for my child and what may happen to her.  I wanted the whole nightmare to go away and start over.  Go back to a few days back, when I was still pregnant and loving it, when my baby was perfectly healthy and safe.  She was the most healthy and thriving baby all throughout my pregnancy, and even during the beginning of labor and in Triage.  How could 20 minutes so drastically change all that??  Start over with the decision to just have a c-section again.  My experience with Matthew when he was born was so perfect...why did I want to change it?  I desperately now wanted that scenario, not this nightmare we were living.

Callie's first picture.  The midwife took this for us once she was stable

While I was lying in my hospital bed devastated for myself and my baby, the doctors and nurses were in the NICU fighting to save her life.  There is a technology that has been around for about 10 years called the Olympic Cool Cap that is used on infants who go through trauma during birth.  I can't even put into words my gratefulness, thanks and awe that we were at a hospital that has this technology.  This hospital (Gwinnett Medical Center) and Eggleston Children's Hospital are the only two hospitals in the entire state of Georgia that have this.  The cap needs to be put on the baby's head within 4 hours of the brain injury taking place (this injury being lack of oxygen).  It must stay on the baby's head for 72 hours.  During this time, the cap cools the brain down (to about 55 degrees), to stop it from working as much.  It slows down the brain, then the brain tells the other functions to slow down.  If the brain is functioning at normal temperature during this time, the cells that have been damaged will damage the other cells around it, causing even more injury.  With the Cool Cap, those damaged cells remain the only ones that are damaged.  Once the cap is removed, and the brain is back to normal temperature, the cells around the damaged cells can compensate for them, and regenerate into healthy cells.  It really is an amazing thing, and I would have never thought twice before about information on the brain.

You can see the white cap over her head with the tubes of cold water coming out.  The table type thing above her head is to keep the warmer from getting to her head.

Everyone at the hospital was talking about what amazing technology this is and how it has saved babies.  But, the downside was that we would know nothing about the extent of her injuries, or what the cap had done, until the 72 hours was up.  This was a waiting game and the worst kind of waiting game we could possibly have to go through.  Talk about a HUGE lesson in patience!  Until then, we had to sit and think about how damaged our baby's brain could be.  They were talking major life functions here (cerebral palsy, walking, talking, eating, etc.).  In addition to the cap, Callie also had to be intubated (oxygen tube down her throat) and was on 100% oxygen to begin with.  By the end of the first day though, they were able to lower the oxygen to 25% and she was breathing room air, but the machine had to keep her taking a certain number of breaths per minute.  She also had a tube going into her umbilical cord, to give her vitamins, minerals and sugar water, since she couldn't have any food.  She had an IV put in with multiple blood draws for multiple tests, and was under critical care, with a NICU nurse being assigned to only her.  She also had 3 leads put into her skull, hooked up to an EEG machine, which measures brain activity.  It looks for abnormalities that are happening, including seizures.  That first day, she did have a few seizures, which brought us down into an even dark hole of what would happen to her. Another bad sign was that they did a cranial ultrasound as soon as they got her stable, to see if there was any bleeding on her brain.  Luckily, there was not, but they said they did see an abnormality, which means brain damage.  But, of course, the ultrasound couldn't tell you if it was minimal damage or severe damage.

The afternoon of her birth, I was able to get all my tubes out from surgery and go see her.  All I did next to her bedside was cry.  There was nothing else I could do...just cry and HOPE, and feel in despair! I don't remember now if the doctor came by to talk to us, but the nurse was not very optimistic.  They continued to not be able to tell us anything about her outcome, expecting the worst. When Scott asked the nurse if she thought the effects to her brain could be something minor, she said "If you believe in miracles..."

These first 24 hours were so bad for me that I was not even recognizable.  My eyes were so swollen from crying that they were the size of golf balls.  I could not say more than two words to anybody without breaking down.  It was definitely the darkest day of my and Scott's lives, when it should have been one of the happiest.  At this point, we began contacting all of our close friends and family, spreading the word that our new baby girl needed all the support, love, positive energy and prayers that everyone could give her.  Those prayers started to spread from person to person, and there was comfort in knowing that all of these people were fighting along with her.  We are so blessed to have so many people who love and support us and our children!

Mrs. J