she was born on tuesday, july 2nd at 11:04am. 7 lbs .09oz 19 inches long, via c-section.   we are so in love! i have been wanting to write but as you can imagine, things have been hectic and i was in the hospital from monday to friday morning :(

so abby's birth story:

i started having a sharp pain in my upper right side on sunday night.  it lasted an hour or two - i called the dr and he said not to worry about it and we'd check it out at my next appointment.  so that night - the pain gets increasingly worse, more intense and i start vomiting.  we go to the hospital at 5am and i get checked into labor & delivery.  i'm in terrible pain and i can't hold anything down.   they do all sorts of tests and everything is coming back fine. i end up getting sent for an ultrasound to check on my gall bladder & kidneys...the blood work was coming back normal but i was still in pain & puking.  this was over the course of the day on monday....monday night they were going to check us out b/c it seemed like i was able to hold down a liquid diet and water....so we were getting ready to go and then i puked again, so they kept me overnight.  monday had to be the WORST night of my entire life.   the pain was unbearable. i was in this horrible labor bed trying to sleep and i could only sleep on one side and after a while, THAT would hurt too! turning over was excruciating, and if i lay on my back i was extremely nauseous.  it was terrible.

so the next morning, they keep coming in and checking on me but i'm not getting any updates and they aren't talking about running any more significant tests...so i'm beginning to think something is up....what are they waiting for? i doubted i was going home since i was still puking and i would have refused to leave until they knew what was going on. i could NOT go home with that pain and wait it out for labor.   at this point i had still not progressed at all.

so the dr comes in around 8am maybe? and he says that my white blood cell count jumped up and they are getting concerned....my vitals were good and so were baby's but they coudln't figure out why my WBC jumped up.  he said he thought i might have appendicitis which is extremely difficult to confirm diagnosis in pregnant women since it ends up moving due to the baby!!   so i had a surgical consult and they decided that they would deliver the baby by c-section and take out my appendix at the same time!

it sounds crazy, right? i didn't even care at this point, i was like get me on a gurney and LET"S GO. howie was a lot more concerned than i was but i knew it was the best way - what was the point of waiting for me to go into labor, esp if my wbc count went up.  the dr felt like we should do this before something hit the fan and i agreed!!

so howie started calling everyone and letting them know and they started prepping me for surgery at 9am (at this point things moved FAST) by 10am i was in the operating room getting a spinal tap (which did not hurt at all compared to the pain i was in) and at 11:04, she was welcomed into the world!!

i ended up not having my appendix removed after all (which i am kind of glad for b/c it would have been like dealing with recovering from 2 surgeries at once, sheesh) but it turns out all the pain was CONSTIPATION! the baby was apparently sitting on my bowels in such a manner that i was all backed up. which i found kind of odd since i was regularly pooping until saturday night  you know?  but either way.

the c section was so bizarre to go through.  you obviously can't SEE what they are doing but you can feel it.  and i could FEEL them moving around my organs after she was born and i flipped out!!!!!!!!!! the aneshegiolist RAN for more morphine. holy crap did that hurt.

but it was all worth it and i'd do it again if i had to!!