Madilynn Jane Noble: Birth Story

Better late than never! I've let my blogging slide the last couple weeks as I've recovered but am finally feeling like I have a good enough handle on things to add in blogging again :)

A little back story before we get to the good stuff: After Ameilya was born I didn't recover as I should have. I had a tear that had a nerve stuck in it after they stitched it up. When Ameilya was four months old we finally realized that it was not normal to still be hurting all the time and I went back to the doctor to see what we could do to fix it. Over the course of the next four months we tried physical therapy and steroid injections to try to calm the nerve and decrease the pain but it was to no avail. Finally when Ameilya was 8 months old I had surgery to repair the damage. When Ameilya was 10 months old I finally was able to consider myself "recovered" from childbirth. 10 very long months after the birth of my baby. The surgery only mostly fixed the problem. There was only a 50% chance that the problem would get better with surgery, so the odds were not very good at all. 85% of the time I felt a lot better but I still had some pain. And with pregnancy the pain increased. The further along I got, the more the scar hurt. Because of this and the surgery that I had to have to fix this problem that I had, we decided that a sceduled c-section for the birth of Madilynn would be best. If I was to tear in the same location again, which is likely since the tissue had been weakened twice already with a tear and then subsequent surgery, then I could have ended up having to have another surgery to fix the same issue and the chance that it can be fixed a second time is a lot less.
For the c-section we had to be at the hospital at 5:30am. Bright and early ;) We answered all the regular questions and asked all of our own questions and had all the prep done until the doctor arrived. We got into the operating room around 7:45 where they administered the anesthesia and made sure that I couldn't feel anything. All the fluid that they gave me during the procedure made me swell up a lot. They took their time making the incisions and everything and Madilynn was born at exactly 8am. She came out trying to scream, I was so glad to hear that. Tyler was with me in the operating room and when they delivered her he went over to be with her while they suctioned out her lungs and made sure that she was alright. They did the APGAR tests on her twice and she scored a 8 and 9 out of 10, healthy little girl for sure. Finally they were finished making sure she was alright and they brought her over to me so I could hold her while they finished sewing me up. Everything with the c-section went well, nothing unusual happened at all. In recovery I held Madilynn skin to skin and we had our first shot at breastfeeding, she latched on very well and didn't have any issues there. In recovery she was given her first sponge bath to get all the goo off her, she wasn't too crazy about the bath ;) They took us to our room a while later and we were finally able to have a little peace with our sweet new little bundle of joy.
The first few days of recovery from the c-section were rough, probably mainly just because I was so sleep deprived having not been able to sleep well at all in the latter part of my pregnancy, especially that last week. I was in a lot of pain because the nurses realized my desperate need for sleep and in their attempt to let me get the sleep I needed they were always late on my next dose of pain medications. By the time day three after the c-section rolled around I was feeling in control of my pain levels and was much better rested but I now had a spinal headache from the anesthesia from the c-section. On day four I was treated for the spinal headache. They basically give you an epidural and instead of the pain medication that's usually in an epidural they draw blood from your arm and put that in the area of the spinal cord where the epidural medicine would go. This fixed the problem almost instantly and I felt much better. I was discharged from the hospital shortly afterwards.
We were and still are being blessed by service from members of our ward for which we are immensely grateful. We have had so many people bring us dinner, stop by unannounced because they were thinking about us, offer to help/bring dinner, and many other thoughtful things. This is one of the times when I have felt Christ's love for me and my family so greatly manifested through the selfless, kind acts of those in our ward family. We have been very touched by all the kindness we have received from our ward family. What a perfect demonstration of Christ like service.

Madilynn weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces and was 21 inches long.

And now what you all have been waiting for, pictures! :)