The Day Everything Changed: Vivilyn’s Birth Story

In honor of my sweet Vivi’s half birthday, I am finally sharing with you her birth story. It was a very emotional few days for everyone involved, but looking back now, I cherish every single minute…

It was 3:30 in the morning on September 2, 2015. I had woken up to use the bathroom yet again. I swear this child was doing somersaults on my bladder. I was sleeping on the couch because I found that it gave a little more support to my 38 week pregnancy belly. I rolled myself off the couch, waddled to the bathroom and then slowly made my way back to the couch. I made it back to the couch and realized that I needed to go to the bathroom again. But this time, it was not pee. My water broke walking to the bathroom and to prevent a mess I did the first thing that popped into my head… I took off my nightgown and shoved it between my legs.

Looking back now I realized that was pretty quick thinking on my part so I am going to give myself major props for that one. I waddled to the bedroom with the nightgown between my legs to wake my husband and, after a few phone calls, we were off to the hospital! Luckily I had all of our bags packed in the car already so it was pretty easy to get loaded and be on our way.

Once we made it to the hospital ER we did not have to wait long. I had called the Triage Nurse at my OB’s office and she had preregistered me while we drove to the hospital. I was put in a room not long after arriving and they checked to see if my water had actually broken. After a check it was determined that my water had broken but I was not actually in labor yet. They hooked me up to Pitosin to get things moving along.

Vivi’s heartbeat was strong and she was doing well but my labor was progressing very slowly. I was barely dialated and they had to keep coming in to increase the pitosin. I was hurting and getting more and more miserable with each passing hour. I tried to focus on my sweet baby’s heartbeat to help pass the time but I was exhausted.

By that afternoon I was drained. It seemed like it had been days since my water had broken and I had barely progressed at all. My contractions were not consistent and I had only dilated to around 6 centimeters. They decided to go ahead and give me my epidural to help with the pain that I was experiencing. They had really cranked up the pitosin at this point since I had not really progressed so my contractions were intense.

As they put in the epidural, I noticed that I was only feeling the tingling from the medicine on one side. The anesthesiologist asked if I knew that I had a mild case of Scoliosis.  This was news to me. Because of the mild curve in my spine, the medicine was only going to one half of my body so he told me that he was going to have to take out the needle and try it again. Say What??!! But I had an amazing nurse who held me still and calmed my fears, so we went for round two. As luck would have it we encountered the same problem. The anesthesiologist told me that he would have to do it one more time for the medicine to work on my entire body. By this point I was crying and dripping snot all over my poor nurse. My husband was distraught seeing his wife in so much pain, but he was a trooper and hung in there as best as he could.

After the epidural nightmare I was hoping that I would get some relief from the pain so I could rest but I noticed that I was still feeling almost everything. It went on like that for a few hours when the nurse finally asked if I was pushing the button on my epidural for pain meds. Why was I not informed of this magical button?! No one had even told me that there was a button to push more drugs!! You best believe that I wore that button out after that!!

The problem with the epidural and my Scoliosis continued to add to my pain because I started to feel some very intense contractions. My pitosin was set on higher than the average because I still was not progressing. This made for some crazy painful contractions. The nurse was concerned because I should not have been feeling them with the epidural so she went ahead and called for a booster of pain meds to help with the pain. While the booster did help with my pain, it bottomed out my blood pressure so I got really sick, really fast. I started vomiting and as luck would have it, it was when everyone left to get dinner. Luckily my Sister-in-Law had stayed behind and helped me get through that moment. The only reason that they allowed me to continue on with a vaginal birth is because Vivi’s heart rate remained strong.

I finally was able to get some rest, though it was not very much. The nurses started coming in and rolling me into different positions during the night to help me get to 10cm. By this point I had been in labor for almost 24 hours and time was running out on a vaginal delivery. I made it to 10 cm dialted just past the 24 hour mark and felt an urgency to push. I pushed for about an hour with no luck and finally collapsed in exhaustion.

When the nurses changed shifts around 7am and the new OB doctor came on-call, they really started to mean business. They were determined to get this baby out of me…

With the help of two hardcore nurses and one intense OB, plus 2.5 hours of pushing, I finally gave birth to Vivilyn Marie Fowler at 10:15am on September 3, 2015. I had been in Labor for 36 hours. I had pushed for 3.5 hours. I had thrown up, cried, snotted and wet the bed, but it was all worth it when I saw my beautiful daughter.

Our precious blessing weighed 7 pounds and 12 ounces and was 21 inches long. She had a major cone head from being in the birth canal for so long but she was perfect in every single way. She latched with ease and began our amazing breast feeding journey that is still going strong today.

Unfortunately, I was not quite out of the woods yet. I experienced severe postpartum hemorrhaging that caused me to lose a lot of blood. Because of this, my blood pressure bottomed out again and I became severely anemic. The anemia left me more exhausted than I already was and I almost had to have a blood transfusion. Then, all of the stress on my body gave me postpartum pre-eclampsyia which made my recovery even harder.

But when I look into my daughter’s eyes, everything is worth it. All the blood, sweat and tears that went into her birth brought me this precious blessing that changed my life completely. I never knew how much love that I had in my heart until the day I became a Mom. On that day, my heart grew tenfold and a tiny little girl wrapped herself around my finger.

She will forever be my single greatest achievement in life and I am so honored to be able to call myself her Mother.

These past 6 months have been truly amazing and I cannot wait to see how our lives will unfold with this precious little girl!

XOXO,

Mrs. Fowler