When she arrived

12/19/08 originally wrote
I'll start by letting everyone get to know me a little bit, My name is paula , im a young mother, Im a Marine Corps wife, and a college student. This first blog will be about my daughter Emery Mae's arrival. After this i will do updates, either daily or weekly depending on how things are around here.

I found out i was pregnant in April, me and my husband Jeremy were so excited, we had been trying since october of 2007. I was seriously starting to think i was infertile . Anways, my due date was Jan 10th 2009, but my daughter had a plan of her own. Let me start by saying that my pregnancy was to easy, i never ever got sick , i felt beautiful and great.

Here comes the baby.

On Sunday oct 26th, i was having some contractions, i had remembered my dr. telling me to time them and if i had more then 8 in 2 hours and they didnt go away to go in to labor and delivery. So after walking around walmart for 3 hours and having them every 15 minutes apart on the dot, they werent horribly painful but pretty uncomfortable, we went home. When we got home friends stopped by , i explained what was happening to my friend who has 2 kids, and she told me i may as well go in, just to make sure. I figured they had to be braxton-hicks considering i was barely 29 weeks. I drove across camp pendleton with my husband to the naval hospital and went straight to labor and delivery, They checked my cervix and told me i was 1cm , they said it was a little unusual considering that this was my first child, but not uncommon in most pregnancies you can be 1cm for the last 20 weeks or so. They decided to hook me up to monitors for 2 hours, and they would check my cervix again.They told me the contractions could have been due to having sexual intercourse the night before, and they couldnt do the fetal fibronectin test because sperm can affect it. After 2 hours i had made no change, so they sent me home. They gave me tylenol, and a list of preterm symptoms and told me if i had any of these to CALL labor and delivery not to come in.
Monday rolled around i attended class, went to work it was a usual day but i still had contractions.
Tuesday rolled around, i had more symptoms, diarrhea ,a discharge that was yellow-greenish with a hint of blood. and still contractions becoming more painful. So i decided to call labor and delivery. I explained to the nurse on the phone that i was there sunday i was 29 weeks and that i was having more symptoms, she told me the diarrhea was probably the stomach flu that was going around and the discharge was because they checked my cervix, not ever being pregnant before , i took the nurses word. She told me not to come in unless my water broke or i started to bleed. Wednesday rolled around i worked and went to school in so much pain i could barely talk. Wednesday night i decided it must all be in my head, and decided if i was still in pain on thursday i would go in. Well i didnt sleep at all wednesday when my husband woke up in the morning he made the final decision we were going in NOW. Before we ran out the door i peed and saw a bit of pink. I was ready to go in to. Not planning on having a baby that day i didnt pack a thing i grabbed my purse,cell phone and that was it, luckily i always have my camera on me.
When i arrived, they immediatly hooked me up to monitors and checked my cervix, they couldnt even get the tool in all the way before they could see my bag of water. I was 6cm I had been in labor for 4 days, and had NO IDEA! I started phoning family , i live in california and all of our family is in Cleveland Ohio. My mom stayed calm telling me i wasnt going to have the baby they could stop my labor. They hooked me up to magnesium sullfate bags for 2 hours, which if any of you have been on is the worse feeling in the world. They gave me steroid shots, for the babies lung, checked her positioning. and hooked me up to an iv and put a cathater in me, which was placed wrong and had to be put back in. (not pleasent at all) After a few hours and 2 mag bags. they checked me again. i was now 9cm. She was coming, and soon. They told me they were going to break my water because they needed to have a team from another hospital standing by to take the baby because they do not have a nicu. At 9cm i received an epidural. 30 people entered the room, dr's pediatricians, mid wives, nurses and med students. My water was broke and 20 min later at 3:19 pm, Emery was born , they didnt place her on me, they let my husband take the cord. I heard a little cry and she was off. The first time i saw her was through the screen of my digital camera. She was pure perfection, in the littlest form. she was 3lbs 12 oz and 15 inches. And she was my preemie princess. She was immediatly transferred to Naval Medical center san diego by helicopter. She never needed oxygen but they put it on her just in case.

I got to meet her for the first time on halloween, the nurses had dressed her in a micro sized candy corn vest orange pumpkin booties and a tiny sized pumpkin orange hat. It made my heart skip a beat. She was amazing and healthier then i could even imagine..

In my next blog , i will talk about the nicu, my experiences, her growing, her triumphs her downfalls. and Her NICU GRADUATION.