Aftyn's BIRTH-day

It's taken me longer to get to this post than I thought it would..."tomorrow" has turned into a week later. Aftyn is a week already. Can you believe it? Me either.

The fact that she is here is more exciting than the details of how she arrived, but here is a brief run down of Aftyn's BIRTH-day.

I was scheduled for an induction on Monday, January 31st. Ken and I left for the hospital at 6:30am. By about 7:15 I was all hooked up and on my way to having a baby. I was predicting a mid-afternoon birth between 2:30 and 3:30. My doctor came by around 9:00 to break my water and a short time later I got an epidural. Everything was going good. I was having regular contractions and things were progressing well. The only thing weird was Aftyn was in a strange position and they were having trouble picking up her heart tones consistently on the monitor as well as my contractions. This was easily remedied by placing internal monitors in me to monitor things more accurately. This may have actually saved Aftyn's life, because at around 11:30 her heart rate suddenly went from the 135/145 range down to the 40/50/60 range. The nurses quickly tried to determine what was wrong but were not able to get her heart rate back up. Thankfully my doctor is right next door to the hospital and quickly responded to the nurses page. He took a moment to check for a prolapsed cord but could feel nothing. He too could not get her to respond to his efforts to get her heart rate back up and within minutes (which felt more like hours, when you think your baby may be dying) they wheeled me to the OR for an emergency C-Section. I think it was 11:53 when they wheeled me in, Aftyn was born at 12:01 in the afternoon.

The reason Aftyn was struggling was because she was basically drowning in blood. My placenta had began to tear away prematurely causing my uterus to fill with blood, which she was then swimming in. When she was born they sucked a large amount of blood from her stomach and lungs, but after that you would never know that anything was wrong. She has done so well. She is totally fine.

Having a C-Section was a whole new experience for me. I won't go into details now, maybe sometime I'll write about what that feels like. Not so much fun, but boy am I glad for modern medicine. I have always been afraid to have a C-Section and I never ever wanted it to happen to me, but when something is wrong with your baby all you can think about is keeping them alive. It actually felt like they couldn't slice me open fast enough, at that point nothing else mattered to me but getting Aftyn out alive and well. And we did!

She is so beautiful and precious and sweet and perfect. I can hardly believe the joy that a little baby can bring. We are all in heaven with her.

I have lots more I want to write, but it is getting late and I am already sleep deprived. I'll have to make a habit of doing shorter posts more often. Here are a few more pics of our little angel....

Oh, before I forget if you want to see the pictures the hospital took you can go to.... www.bellababyphotography.com/login Login: 0131aftynroberts They are way cute!

This baby is such a sweet, little tiny, piece of heaven!