Baby Arabelle - The Birth Story.

I had booked my cesarean at 34 weeks pregnant to happen at 39.5 weeks, the 24th of March 2015, but I was convinced I wouldn't make it that far. Little miss Arabelle had different plans and made me wait, completely and fully engaged until the booked date. The doctor even tried to see if he could break my waters a week prior, but I wasn't even dilated in the slightest. Having had a previous cesarean, and not being allowed to go past my due date due to having gestational diabetes, my planned cesarean date it was.

The Night Before:
With our cesarean booked for 8am my Dad stayed the night before to look after Jydan. I'm not sure if I was nervous or excited or freaking out that I was about to have major surgery in the morning.  I sent hubby and dad of to get some chocolate from the supermarket and they came back with chocolate and ice cream. We spent some time chatting and snacking and then we went to bed at 11. We woke about two hours after to Jydan  hysterically crying.

We had gone over for months about how the baby was coming, which he seemed to take really well.. Until a few days before the big event. He was horrified at the thought of a baby coming out of my tummy. That night he was extremely upset. I gave him cuddles, snuggled him in his bed, a massage, he had a snuggle with his Pop and I hoped back into bed, which he followed and came in too. By then it was about 3.30am & I just couldn't get back to sleep. Wasted time on Facebook and messaging a friend who was also booked for a C-Section at the exact same time as me. 5am came & I got up, had my zantac tablet, my last cup of water for the cesarean and went to get ready. Woke hubby up, and an hour later, my dad. We were all ready in time to head to the hospital at 6.45am.

The Morning:

My Husband & I buzzed to get in and my midwife was expecting me. Showed me to my room and I met my mum there and a few minutes later after my Dad parked the car, he came up with Jydan too. The doctors got started on the IV's, I had to have one in each arm, one for the anesthetic, and another for a glucose/insulin drip for the diabetes. It took them so many goes to get the IVs in, they had to call another doctor to help. I think this is what hurt the most out of the whole process. They got pretty ruthless in the end and I ended up with massive bruises all over hands, wrists and inner elbows. They started to wonder if they had to use my feet but finally got some vans, thank goodness!

Because of the IV lines taking so long we were a little bit late to the theatre, but everything happened so quick at this point. I said goodbye to my parents and my beautiful boy, knowing this was the last time he would be my one and only! What a thought! And I was wheeled off to the theatre.
Tim got handed his surgical clothes and we waited... and waited for him to get dressed so we could get started. The poor nurse even knocked on his door in the end. Hehe! C'mon Tim, It's baby time!!

The Cesarean:
I was asked all the typical questions, had the check over for bruises and cuts, and then it was time to start the spinal tap. I started getting really scared at this point and seriously wanted to back out. I didn't want to go through with the surgery AT ALL! HELL NO! It's funny, every single thing in life you can back out of last minute, except giving birth.. You really can't get out of that one! I was seriously scared that I would feel them cut. And that they were going to use staples to close me up, but they assured me they wouldn't. The anesthetist started doing all the spinal tap stuff and I was clinging onto the pillow for my dear life! Until my leg started getting these electric shocks down it and started spaseming! I had no idea what was going on and started yelping and crying! This was right after the anesthetist had just gone over all the risks associated with a spinal - including the possibility of being paralyzed. Oh crap! Here it is, I'm going to be paralyzed!! The anesthetist took the spinal right out, waited until the electric shocks had stopped, and started again. Thank god this time it went fine. No idea what that was about?
I laid back on the bed and got wheeled into the surgical room and pulled onto the surgical bed. I kept saying "I'm going to feel them cut, I'm going to feel them cut! It's not working" Then I began feeling really heavy on my chest, like someone had just sat on it, I started saying "I can't breathe" I turned to hubby trying to tell him I can't breathe, I have asthma, I can't breathe.. he told the anesthetist that I couldn't breathe who said that all my vitals are fine, and that I'm breathing, it's the anesthetic, because I can't feel my chest, it feels that way, but I seriously felt like my lungs were squashed, so they propped my head up on a pillow to help. The anesthetist was really reassuring that I was fine, but the feeling was awful! 
Then my mind went back to being able to feel them cut, I turned again to the anesthetist saying that the spinal tap hasn't worked where he said "they've started already, and you didn't even know."..

  Phew! I knew I was extremely scared about feeling them cut open my stomach but I didn't realize how scared I really was until I definitely knew I wouldn't be able to feel them. For the first time I could relax, wow! It was happening. Now I knew I couldn't feel anything I just relaxed and enjoyed the experience. I kept wondering how big she was going to be, everyone had bets on 8-9 pounds. I started getting so so excited. Any minute now my baby girl would be here! It was time, it was baby time! After all these horrible months, probably the worst time of my life to be honest, it was finally going to be over, and I was finally going to have my reward.

I got Tim to start taking photos (and now my whole entire face started itching from the spinal) and asked them to lower the curtains when bub was here, about ten minutes after the beginning of surgery it was almost baby time, so they lowered the curtain just before they pulled her out, and I watched them pull my sweet little beautiful girl out at 8.48am. It was insane! Beautiful. So very beautiful. My little girl was being pulled out of ME!

 They couldn't pull her up very high because she had a very short cord, but we saw her. And she was beautiful, and tiny! And beautiful. I instantly fell in love. The first thing I said was "She looks like her brother, she's so beautiful! She's so little". They took her off, did her checks, and came back with her all bundled up. I had my first hold, but couldn't hold her for long because my face was itching like crazy I couldn't even hold her properly! Tim help onto her for most of the time with me having a little hold every now and then.

Recovery:
I was stitched up and put back on my bed, and sent to recovery. Tim was sent back to my room where he let my mum know Arabelle had arrived. Arabelle had her first feed where she latched on beautifully, I couldn't believe it, after having so much trouble feeding the first time around, it seemed so easy this time! What a little champion I just made! 

After her feed Arabelle had her sugar levels tested, because of the diabetes, and she was only 1.1! I had no idea what she was suppose to be, or how low 1.1 was, but I know the nurse went into a bit of a panic and said we needed to get the the milk I had expressed into her as soon as possible. I later learnt that 1.1 babies would usually have been sent straight to NICU but because I had expressed so much milk, they wanted to try that first. If she wouldn't take it she would of been sent, but she did, and her sugars slowly rose up. Doing my research, and talking to other people with diabetes, 1.1 is actually THE lowest I've heard/read about!!
After the low sugar reading out recovery was cut short and we were wheeled back to our room, and had our beautiful Arabelle weighed and measured. She was a teeny 6 pounds & 11 ounces, and 51 cm long.

I have to say, even though the start of the csection was incredibly scary, it was actually so so beautiful watching Arabelle be pulled out. I was scared the cesarean would end up like my previous one, with a hemorrhage, with me passing out, with not being able to hold my brand new baby, but it was not like that all. It was actually pretty amazing and I would do that over again!

Afterwards my blood glucose levels became really low, and so did my blood pressure, so even though I felt well enough to get up and about I wasn't allowed! So frustrating, but I eventually was allowed to move about a little bit 6 hours post cesarean. And got to snack on biscuits for a fair few hours to try and keep everything back up. I also had to feed Arabelle every 3 hours to try and keep her levels up too.

The midwives were amazing and the experience was so much better then my first.

Welcome to the world baby Arabelle Adrianne!