Nora's Arrival (warning: medical stuff...ewwwww)

After a long night of tossing and turning, my thoughts racing in excitement over what was to happen the next day, and wondering if everything I felt was actually -something-, morning finally arrived. We were so ready to meet Nora! It was precious to have a last night and morning at home with just Amelia. We dropped Amelia off at Grandma & Grandpa's house around 9am. We got to the hospital around 930am, and they were ready for us. Instead of sitting in triage before being admitted, the nurse took me right to my labor & delivery room. After receiving a phone call the night before from a nurse in triage wondering why Dr K had pulled my chart, and making me wonder what I was/wasn't supposed to say about our "secret" plan, I was relieved that the whole thing wasn't that big of a deal.
We got settled in our room, the nurse did the IV and we waited for Dr K. She attempted to break my water, but wasn't sure if it worked, so we waited again. In the meantime, they decided to start me on pitocin at which point I asked for the epidural. The epidural made a huge difference as I was having contractions the whole time we were there, and the water attempt had not helped (that was just about the worst thing I've ever felt). Dr K again attempted to break my water and this time was definitely successful. That, combined with pitocin, should've made things progress...but they didn't. Dr K and my labor & delivery nurse Janelle were both trying to position the contraction monitor, because it didn't look like anything was happening at all. Dr K left, and the nurse anesthetist left, and it was just Janelle and another nurse. Janelle had gotten me a bedpan, which was my first adventure with such a device. I sat up to use it and my vision went black. My ears rang and fuzzed, I went shakey all over and mildly panicked. I heard numbers being called out, and people being paged. The next time I could see, there were about 10 people in my room. The nurse anesthetist was injecting something into my IV, Janelle and Dr K were next to me saying something about the epidural. A cold washcloth was put on my forehead, and a bunch of people were watching some monitors. Dr K pulled up a chair, which was deja vu from when I had Amelia and she told me my bp was too high and we had to do a c-section. She explained that the black-out episode was not supposed to happen. She said "it seems we've had this conversation before...but this time it's because your bp dropped too low" (It had dropped to 80/50, whereas with Amelia my bp was 250/200 when she called it). It could be because of the epidural. But, most likely, it was from an abruption or from a "window" in the scar tissue from the previous c-section. Either way, it was time to call a c-section and be done with labor. With that, we were off to the operating room. Dr K called a somebody over to "take a look at this"...which I found out later was a "window" in the scar tissue that was about 5" in diameter and that Nora was trying to push through (Dr K said usually they're about 1"-2" and that this was the biggest one she'd seen). At 2:06pm, Nora was born! 4 weeks early, 8 lbs 2 oz, 19 inches long. When she came out, Dr K said "This one looks like mom!" because Nora had tons of black hair. Nora's first cries seriously sounded like a duck quacking, so someone said "congratulations, it's a duck!" She was doing a lot of premie stuff (breathing fast, with fluid in her lungs) so she went to the special care unit after I got to see her for a little while.
Nora spent 5 nights in the special unit, and finally we were released on Monday morning. She had graduated to a regular crib the night before. Luckily, even though I was discharged on Sunday morning, I was able to board on the floor Sunday night right across from the special unit. Nora had started out on a warming table (which is the most serious type of table since it's designed to allow immediate access to the baby by multiple drs/nurses) in the more urgent room, she had multiple monitors and an IV and was unable to drink from a bottle. Once her temperature stabilized, and she had expressed all the fluid in her lungs, she was moved to an isolette (which looks like an incubator). She was only in the isolette one night, Saturday, and during that time was moved to the less urgent room across the hall within the special care unit. That night her IV was also removed. Sunday was a very cry-y day for me. I cried when I saw Nora without her IV, and found out she was drinking from a bottle. I cried when Dr McIntosh (the ob on-call Saturday night) told me that I was staying admitted Saturday night (which was a relief because Nora was definitely not being released that night). I cried when I found out that there were definitely rooms available for me to board on Sunday night. Normally that much crying would make me cringe, but in this case they were all happy tears (including the ones I shed while on the operating table when I saw Nora, and the ones I shed when I found out Nora was being discharged on Monday).
While in the hospital, our families all visited...some on multiple occasions. My parents brought Amelia to see us everyday. Everybody was able to see Nora in the special unit, albeit one at a time. Dan Mahrle and his girlfriend Rachel stopped by. Mary came by a couple times. Tonni visited on Saturday. Tom, Kellie, Ava, Giovanna, Steve, and Juliana visited all at once. Everybody was so excited that Nora was finally here! And they all agreed that Nora was a beautiful little girl who was already very talented at keeping us on the edges of our seats. :)