Molly's Birth

March 11, 2013

Two days ago, Molly would've have been 3 months old.  I think that has been the hardest month birthday I've had yet.  I feel like, at least with my other two babies, that once you hit 3 months everything is golden.  Meaning, at 3 months old you have worked out most of the kinks.  You know your baby and how they act and they know you and what you do for them.  Usually they are sleeping through the night by now (or at least giving you a good chunk of sleep at a time), you have mastered the art of mealtime whether breast or bottle (I've done both), you both have a sort of routine down and it just seems to be easier to get out of the house in a timely manner (most of the time).  At 3 months my anxiety over "new stuff" went down and I really enjoyed both of my boys at that age.  Not that I didn't enjoy them before that, I was just still learning and so were they.  The boys and Jeff and I would reeeeaaallly be enjoying Molly right now if she were here, and that makes me sad.  I know she is with God and enjoying each other though, and it gives me comfort knowing this and that she has the best caretaker you could ever have with her right now.  If I can't be there for her, I'm happy Jesus is.  Don't get me wrong, it still hurts so much that I don't even have words to describe it.  I thought by now it might hurt a little less, but maybe it never goes away.  Maybe I just have to learn to live with it and just get better at the coping. 

It was the weekend that Johnny Football became Johnny Heisman... Mom and Dad had the boys for the weekend hoping I would go into labor with Molly as my due date was Friday, December 7th.  We went and ate Mexican spicy food Friday and cajun spicy food Saturday.  The Cajun would win this competition because about 4 a.m. Sunday morning I woke up to regular non-painful contractions and I knew this was it.  I laid in bed timing them for an hour before I woke Jeff up.  I decided I should wake Jeff up because even though I was 2 days past my due date, we had still not packed a bag and we kind of had a lot to do (what can I say?  Life with 2 little boys is busy!), plus I wanted to take one last shower before being stuck at the hospital and shave my legs and wash my hair.  :)  We arrived at the hospital around 7 a.m. and got checked into triage.  **WARNING:  I may go into details too graphic that you don't want to hear about.  If birth story details are too much for you, stop reading now.  Thank you!!** By this time my contractions were about 5 minutes apart and starting to get a little painful, but not terrible.  We had a strong heartbeat from Molly and I was dilated to about 3 cm.  I spent the next 2 to 2-1/2 hours walking and waiting and walking some more trying to increase my dilation.  At 9:30, the nurse checked me and I was still close to a 3.  I then asked her if she could break my water to get this thing going, because that is when my serious labor began when I had Hunter.  She told me that she thought she felt a cord, so breaking my water would not be a good idea.  Knowing what I know now, the standard of care when you feel an umbilical cord is immediate c-section.  However, at the time I was unaware of this or of how life threatening it was to have the cord so close to the cervix.  The nurse convinced us, despite my growing pain (that was seriously hurting at this point) that we should go home or go eat.... basically that it would be a long time, that my water probably wouldn't break and that it would be better than being hooked up in a hospital while not being allowed to eat.  Had I never done this before and had I not been in the pain I was in and had she not "thought" she felt a cord, this would've been a good idea.  We listened to her anyway and left. 

I did decide that we wouldn't go home because it was too far and I was in too much pain.  So, we went to IHOP.  We had breakfast in between contractions that were getting closer together and longer.  Then, being the tough girl that I am, decided I was going to work through this pain and stay away from the hospital for as long as possible.  After IHOP my suggestion was to walk around North Star Mall, but when we got there, I knew the parking lot was too far away and there was no way I could do it, so we went to Target.  I walked in Target leaning on a buggy, hiding in empty isles during contractions, but after about 10 minutes, I just could not do it.  It took me another 10 or 15 minutes to actually get to the car.  I told Jeff to park in the far off corner of the parking lot because I couldn't walk, all I could do was sway next to the car.  We did that until I just couldn't take it anymore and told Jeff I could not make it until 2:00 (that was my goal to stay gone from the hospital) and we needed to go back now.  I was standing outside of the car in the hospital parking garage when my water broke.  I was completely mortified as this has never happened to me outside of the hospital and the leaking would not stop!  It was awful!  When we were at Target, I had Jeff buy me the gigantic pads I knew I would need when we came home from the hospital so I ripped that open trying to soak up this liquid coming out and while in the backseat changed into Jeff's pajama pants he had brought.  I don't know why because they were soaked in about 2 seconds.  It probably took me about 20 minutes getting into the hospital because I was leaking all over (I mean gushes with every contraction), I was in unbearable pain and I couldn't stop crying because of everything.  It's kind of funny now, because with every contraction I would literally try to hide behind Jeff and cry until it was over.  Ugh, not fun.  So I finally get to labor and delivery and they took me to a room, I put on my hospital gown and sat on the bed and waited.... I was ready for the epidural.  The computer in the room wasn't working, so after 20 minutes of trying to get it to work, I had to move... no walk (they seriously made me do that???!!?) to another room.  I got into that room and they began to try to hook me up to monitors.... the contraction monitor and then the fetal heart rate monitor. 

This was me having a contraction in the Target parking lot.

This is where I want to cry.  They tried to find Molly's heart rate for a good 15 or 20 minutes and they just couldn't find a strong one and keep it.  You could hear it faintly in and out, here and there.  Now I know, because my water had broke and the cord was prolapsed, her actual heart rate was fading in and out.  It wasn't just her moving around or me not being still.  My water had be ruptured for 30 to 45 minutes now and Molly was probably in distress the whole time, and nobody had checked my cervix yet to determine that the cord was there.  It really breaks my heart and makes me so sad.  Finally, a nurse who seemed to be new at this, I gotta say... decided we should check my cervix even though we were having a hard time keeping a heart rate.  She checked me and with a smile on her face told me I was at a 7.  Yay!  Brief moment of happiness for me because I knew it wouldn't be too much longer before her arrival (with Hunter once I reached a 7, it was only another hour or 2).  As they were still having trouble finding Molly's heartbeat, the nurse who earlier "thought she felt a cord" decided she wanted to check me too, just to be sure everything was ok.  Low and behold, she felt the cord there and that is when chaos broke loose.

The nurse was elbow deep inside me trying to push the baby back up and people started yelling to turn me over, tip the bed so the head of it was on the floor, put an IV in me... I had to pain reliever at this point, not even a Tylenol, so needless to say I was in pain.  I don't remember screaming at all, but Jeff said that I was.  Neither one of us really knew what was going on.  All I remember thinking and saying is, "You have my permission to do whatever it takes to have a healthy baby".  And I remember praying for God please let Molly be ok over and over and over as they wheeled me through the hallway, nurse on my bed with me holding the baby inside. 

We get into the operating room and it seemed like it took forever for somebody to find a doctor.  I heard people yelling and saying they had paged every OB in the hospital and had started calling doctors at the hospital next door.  It felt like a good 10 minutes of this to me, but I hear the doctor showed up in 3 minutes.  They turned me back over and were ready to do surgery.  I remember the doctor asking if they had ever gotten a heartbeat over and over and nobody answering.  I wanted to say "YES!  It was there!  Get her out!", but it was like I was frozen in time listening to everything going on in disbelief.  Finally (and thankfully) and nurse told him that they did have one, but couldn't find it right now.  I thought they were going to begin cutting me while I could still feel everything.  I kept saying, "You know I'm awake right now, right?  I can hear you."  The anesthesiologist was all of a sudden over my head, putting a mask on me, pinching my neck and telling me who he was.  That was the last thing I remember of the birth itself. 

I woke up thinking, I know we had a big scare and Molly will probably have to be in the NICU for a couple days, but everything is fine and we will just go home with our baby girl later than planned.  My mom was in the room with me when I groggily woke up and told me that Jeff was in the NICU with Molly and they were about to transfer her to North Central Baptist.  I immediately asked for a picture of her and mom showed me a picture that Jeff had sent her.  They said they would bring her by to see me before they left for the other hospital.  They wheeled her in on a huge stretcher with a little incubator on it and all the tools and machines hooked on it as well.  I wish I hadn't been so medicated at the time, because that first time I saw her is so fuzzy in my memory.  I remember wanting to see her and touch her, but also wanting them to leave because I felt they needed to hurry up and fix whatever was wrong with her before it was too late.  They tried to explain everything they had done and everything they planned to do, but I don't know if I heard any of it.  I was just staring at her thinking, "Did this really happen??"  It had to be explained multiple times to me that night what happened exactly and what they were trying to do to fix it.  In a nutshell, they told me when a baby is born with a prolapsed cord it cuts of all oxygen and everything else she was getting from me while inside the womb.  They explained how it really effects the brain because that is the source of almost everything functioning.  They told me about a new process, a cooling process, they were going to do to her.  They just now started doing it on babies, it had been done on adults for the last year or 2 and had shown great results. It was just a lot of information. 

The first picture taken of Molly.  This is the one Jeff sent to my mom that I got to look at when I woke up.

Jeff went to North Central that night and stayed with Molly, my sister stayed with me and my parents stayed with Logan and Hunter.  We had no idea at the time what the next 7 days held for us....

This has been an espeically hard post to write, but it feels theraputic as well.  When I think about Molly, I have a longing for heaven that I've never had.  When I think about the day that Jesus returns, it makes me happy and I really just can't wait.  Being a Christian most of my life, you would think I always felt like this.  But I remember thinking, "Lord, I know you're coming again, but can you just wait until after me and my children die and are in heaven?  I want to have a normal life with them."  Now, I know that the "normal" life I wanted will be filled with heartache, destruction, sorrow and sin.  I still think it would be a good life, but nothing compared to what God has in store for us.  It won't be scary, the way I've kind of always had it in the back of my mind.  It will be beautiful and wonderful and more than our human minds can even conceive.  And because I am a Christian, I get to be a part of it.  I can't wait for that day to come!  I can't wait for God to restore the earth into what it was meant to be. 

At Molly's funeral, one of the songs we played was 'Homesick' by MercyMe.  The song describes my feelings to a T.  And I can't get enough of it, even though I cry every time I hear it.  It talks about how you know the person you lost, in my case Molly, is in a better place... a much better place, but I'm still human here on Earth and I have so much sadness.  And asking the Lord to give you strength to get you through this... This is what I do almost every day now.  I cannot do anything without God giving me strength.  Through this whole thing I've always said, I don't know how people do this without God and faith... and a hope to see the one we lost again someday.  One of the first things I went through with everything that happened to Molly, was asking God why?  Why did this have to happen to my family?  Why did you want Molly back with you?  Why?  And the song says, even if I knew why, it wouldn't really make a difference because Molly is still gone and I would still be sad.  I'm at peace with the 'why' question now.  God had a reason he took Molly.  He had a purpose for this happening to me and my family.  I just can't see the big picture He can right now.  And I trust Him and have faith in Him that He is working.  He is doing something.  And as the song says, 'In Christ, there are no good-byes'.  I will see Molly again.  And I'm so homesick for that day.

You're in a better place, I've heard a thousand times
And at least a thousand times I've rejoiced for you
But the reason why I'm broken, the reason why I cry
Is how long must I wait to be with you

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place
Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now
Help me Lord cause I don't understand your ways
The reason why I wonder if I'll ever know
But, even if you showed me, the hurt would be the same
'Cause I'm still here so far away from home
I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place
Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now
In Christ, there are no goodbyes
And in Christ, there is no end
So I'll hold onto Jesus with all that I have
To see you again
To see you again
And I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place

Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
Won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
Won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now