Emma’s birth story actually starts just before my 36 week appointment. I thought that the baby had dropped as I could once again breathe comfortably. I wasn’t surprised as her sister ( Katy) had made her entrance at 37 weeks and we all thought that this baby might come early too. At my 36 week appointment I mentioned this to my OB and when she checked me we couldn’t tell where the head was. One thing we were certain of was that the head was not where it was supposed to be. I was subsequently sent in for an Ultrasound for the following week to see just where this baby was. During the following weeks I was given I variety of “exercises” to do to get the baby to move into the correct heads down position. I went to the pool and spent an hour doing head stands in the water, I had to lie on an upside down ironing board with my feet in the air and my head on the floor, I had to crawl around on my hands and knees. I tried everything to get this baby to turn heads down no matter how ridiculous it seemed. Alas at my Ultrasound the next week they said the baby was both breech and transverse. At my next OB appointment we discussed doing an external version where the Dr.’s try to manually move the baby into the correct position, so they sent me for yet another ultrasound to see where the cord was and if an external version was going to be possible. While I was thrilled to get to see my baby so many times through the ultrasounds I was getting quite anxious to have this baby. At the follow up Ultrasound the baby was still sideways and breech and in addition the cord was wrapped around her neck. We now knew we would have to have a c-section. We scheduled my c-section for 5:30pm the following Thursday.

Thursday August 7th 2003
We decided to take Katy to the zoo with my Mom and then Mark and I would leave to go to the hospital from the zoo while Katy and my mom spent the afternoon together. The morning was quite stressful for me as I had never had surgery before and was very nervous about going in for this c-section. We kept telling Katy that Mommy and Daddy were going to the hospital to get her a baby and that she would be staying with Grammy while we went to the hospital. She was very excited and ready to find out whether she was getting a baby brother or baby sister. We all went to the zoo at 1:00 and at 2:15 Mark and I left to head to the hospital. (we needed to be there by 3:00 for pre-op stuff)The hardest part of the whole morning was not being able to eat or drink anything for the whole day prior to the surgery, though I must admit I did sneak in a couple of gulps of water and some grapes. At 3:00 we met my Doula ( Wendi) at the hospital and got checked in.

Everything was going smoothly and while I was still nervous I felt okay as we hung out in the room they gave us UNTIL the nursery nurse came in and told me they would be taking the baby to the nursery while they sewed me up and while I was in recovery. Well that did not sit well with me at all. It would have meant at least 3 hours before I would have been able to see my bay and I TOLD them that under no circumstances was my baby being taken from me unless there was a medical reason she had to go to the nursery. This didn’t sit to well with the hospital staff and they had to have a big conference with several people about whether the baby could stay in the OR room with me and then go straight to recovery with me. I held my ground and insisted that they baby was going to stay with me and in the end the hospital agreed.