McKenna's Birth Story

Here's the events of the day McKenna Jane joined our family. I apologize for how long this is... but this is mostly to help me remember in the future. Feel free to just look at the pictures. :)

Friday November 21st

Sidenote: Just the day before I had been apologizing to my sister that our baby wouldn't be here for her to hold by Thanksgiving the next week. And the night before, as we were planning food for Thanksgiving, told my parents that we were pretty sure nothing was going to happen for another week or so. We were so wrong. haha.

4am: I woke up having contractions 15 minutes apart and lasting 2 or 3 minutes, they were bad enough that I wasn't going to be sleeping anymore. (Just to show how unprepared I was... I pulled up a quick search on my phone whether this was really labor or not and what contractions felt like. ha!)

4:45am: Decided to let Dallin know I had been having contractions, they were about 7 minutes apart at that point. 

5:30am: Dallin finally convinced me to pack the hospital bag and call the doctor. I showered, packed and called the doctor, contractions were 4-5 minutes apart by now but I could still walk and talk fine. The doctor even said "you don't really sound like you're in labor, but if your contractions are really that regular you better come in."

6:15am: Dropped off the monitor and keys with the Sardoni's so they could be with Kylie when she woke up, and we drove to the hospital.

6:30am: Put into a triage room, met the nurse, got hooked up to the monitors and waited. Contractions were 3-4 minutes apart. I got checked and was dilated to a 5 and still only 80% effaced (I had been dilated to a 2 and 80% effaced for 2 weeks.) Um... what?! Dallin, the nurse and I were totally shocked. She told us we would be having our baby today. HOORAY!

8:30am: Admitted to my room in L&D, ordered breakfast and started walking the halls. This was totally different than with Kylie since I had been on Pitocin and had an epidural for the majority of labor with her. They would check McKenna's heart rate every 30 minutes or so, but other than that they just let us be. We let my mom know that she should probably drive down here to be with Kylie, and she was so excited that she left town without telling my dad. ha!

11am: We had finally agreed on a first name... and were still working on a middle name. :) Contractions started getting farther apart, and I only had a few that made me stop walking, so the midwife came in and told us that if there hadn't been progress, they would send us home. If there had been progress she would break my water to speed things up. She checked and I had fully effaced, dilated to a 6 and baby's head had moved down a few positions. I was SO relieved! She broke my water and contractions almost immediately got closer together and to the point where I wasn't comfortable and had to concentrate on breathing. And I did a LOT of bouncing on the birthing ball.

12:45pm: Asked for an epidural.

1:15pm: Anesthesiologist came to the room, and he got the epidural in and immediately I knew something was wrong, there was a horrible ringing bouncing around in my head. He pulled out the epidural because he had hit a vein. He tried again and the second time there wasn't a problem. (it is SO hard to sit still while having major contractions...)

1:30pm: The nurse told me she was going to let us relax and let things progress, but when I felt a lot of pressure like I needed to have a bowel movement that we needed to let her know because that meant it was time to push. Well I didn't even let her finish her sentence because I already felt that sensation, she checked me and was like.... "it's time to push, you're fully dilated and baby's head is right there."

2:23pm: McKenna Jane Hague made her arrival. She had a major cone head from being in the birth canal so long, just like Kylie. But she was beautiful, and I hadn't tore at all! Holla! I had her on my chest for an hour or so, fed her for the first time, and then they cleaned her up and did all her measurements. She weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz. and was 20 inches long. I'm so glad she didn't wait until Dec. 2nd to come, she would have been huge! (but I will say, when Dallin and I first found out we were pregnant we calculated my due date to be Nov. 22nd, so we don't really consider her to be early.)

Unfortunately, we didn't get to move out of l&d and into a recovery room right away because they couldn't get my uterus to contract to stop my bleeding. Over the next 6.5 hours they hooked me up to an IV and Pitocin, put in a catheter, pushed HARD on my uterus and scraped out huge blood clots every 30 minutes, and pumped me full of 4 or 5 different medications to cause intense contractions. I am so glad I had the epidural lingering in my system during all of this or it would have been SO much worse. All I can really remember is thinking about how I might not get to see Kylie that night, and I was so worried about her, I wasn't even really thinking about how dangerous it was that I was losing so much blood. ha.

8:30pm: They finally got things semi under control, so I got moved to a recovery room for high risk moms. They kept me on pitocin and various other drugs, with the catheter and IV in for that whole first night, and a nurse would come in every 30 minutes to push on my uterus and see if my bleeding was slowing. It was a miserable night, but we did get to see Kylie and my parents AND McKenna was perfectly fine which made it all worth it. My dad ending up leaving Kennewick at 7pm because he was so anxious to see his new granddaughter. He was amazing and rocked and held McKenna for 4 hours that night (until almost 3 am) so Dallin and I could rest between nurse visits.

looking real good after losing a liter of blood...

I'll just quickly bullet the rest of the craziness that happened over the next few days...

• My first IV burst the vein in my arm... so I had to get a second one put in
• I got a really high temperature on Saturday so they put me on an antibiotic to fight infection (most likely from all the scraping and pushing the day before)
• I broke out in a horrible rash, we think it was from the antibiotic. I'm allergic to penicillin and the antibiotic had a tiny bit in it
• Changed to a new antibiotic Saturday evening, since I was still fighting a fever, which meant I needed to stay another 24+ hours
• They drew my blood to see if I needed a blood transfusion (luckily I didn't!) and then an hour or so later came to take my blood pressure and burst the vein where they had earlier drawn blood...
• Got my fever under control by Sunday late afternoon, removed IV, then a few hours later had another temperature spike, as well as a high HR and blood pressure (we're pretty sure it was from the nurse startling/scaring me by waking me up in the middle of the night. I had her come back and take my temperature a few minutes later and it had already lowered significantly and all my other vitals had leveled out) If it had stayed high I might have had to stay another night.
• McKenna got discharged on Sunday, and stayed as a "guest" for 24 hours. We couldn't use hospital diapers anymore, nurses couldn't check her, and I couldn't be left alone with her. So random.
• I finally got to go home Monday November 24th in the afternoon.

And that's how it went down. So glad we are all doing well now!