Cassie's first photoCassie was born on February 4th at 2:45pm. Tuesday night my water broke and as it was three weeks early, I was not even sure what was happening! I mean, after all, the first child is supposed to be late, right? We went to the hospital and I was actually expecting to be sent home. I was not even having any contractions yet. But, they told us that things were definitely starting and we would be staying. I felt so calm. I guess I was still in denial that this was actually happening.
When we realized we would be staying we also realized we hadn't brought with us anything to stay in the hospital with. Art went home to get a few things and to call my sister, Sara. She sent off a few emails to alert people to what was happening and came right up. As my contractions, at that point were still light and irregular, we sent Sara to sleep at the house with a list of things to bring back in the morning.
By 7am Wednesday morning, my contractions were still light and irregular. But, they had been enough to keep me from getting any sleep all night long. The nurse consulted with my doctor and it was soon decided that I should be induced. Once that got going the contractions became quite strong and regular very quickly.
Around noon, Art went off to the house to get some lunch. Just after he left, the nurse started setting up the room for delivery and I started needing to push. Sara called Art and told him to high tail it back. But he needn't have hurried. Cassie's head was not positioned quite right and she was stuck. For two hours we tried pushing with me in all kinds of positions and the nurse tried reaching in to turn her, but nothing was working. The monitors showed that Cassie was in distress during contractions, so we knew her cord was being restricted somehow.
Because of Cassie's distress and my exhaustion, the doctor (who had finally arrived) decided that I needed help. Her suggestion was to use suction to help turn Cassie. At that point I would have agreed to anything. I was so tired and frustrated, although compared to a lot of stories I had heard, I was being quite civil through the whole thing. I did not swear, yell at Art or bite him. I did have some moments of irritation with him, but on the whole I did pretty well.
We moved to the delivery room and the doctor got the suction going. It was quite painful as she maneuvered the device up to Cassie's head but once there it did not take long to get her moving down the birth canal. My sister said later that she could tell when Cassie entered the canal by the look on my face. I remember when I saw the head how surprised I was by the size. I couldn't believe something that big had just passed through me. It didn't take long for the rest of her to slip out. What a relief!
And what a joy to see her and to hear my sister say "It's a girl!" I had done a lot of prayer after my miscarriage and during the work I did to put closure to that episode in my life I had visualized the baby I had lost so I could say good bye. I knew it would have been a girl and I felt the name of Cassandra with that image. When I first became pregnant again, somehow I sensed that this was the same little soul. When they laid Cassie on my stomach after her birth, all I could think of was "Thank you for coming back to me."
She is a joy and we love her deeply. We had a rough start because she was jaundiced and had to stay two extra days in the hospital. I was devastated despite everyone telling me how 'normal' this was. When we were finally able to bring her home, we had a hard time feeding her. She was lethargic and breast feeding was a challenge, since she had had bottles in the hospital. But we worked with some lactation consultants and now we are doing fine and she is gaining weight as she should be.
I will try to update this page with stories and pics as much as I can.