she just needs her mama, that's all

Something's been coming over me the last few months. It all started when I had miss lola-bird. Something about how peaceful the morning of her birth was. I'd gone into my doctor the week before and they checked me out and said that my blood pressure was up a bit. This for me is normal, but my sweet doctor J. (no, not THE Doctor J, but yes, that fabulous) said he wanted to be safe so we scheduled me for an induction on my 39th week of pregnancy, the following Friday. I was ok with this because I'd been having weird feelings and I'd shared them with Dr. J. So Friday came and the cute nurses at American Fork Hospital called me at 5:45 am and asked me if I could be there in 30 minutes. They had an early opening. I shook Mike awake and said "It's TIME!" which for us means "they're going to induce me now!" since I don't go into labor (when it's time, at least, I can't say the same thing about the first 30 weeks of pregnancy. Figures, right?) on my own.

I showered, shaved my legs and got to the hospital (which is 15 minutes away) in 35 minutes. Fast showers are the best. So is wearing your hair long and straight. Easy peasy. We got into the room, filled out all the paperwork, met our AMAZING nurse Paula and got the iv's started and settled in. By 8:30 the pitocin was causing contractions and I was already dilated to a 2, so we thought we'd have a while til the contractions started coming harder. Fast forward to 9:00 am.

I look at the husband and say to him "something's wrong". He says "what's wrong?" I say "I dunno, something" so he says "Call Paula". I call the nurse, tell her something's wrong. She asks a few questions, and tells me that she wants to check me. She checks me and says "whoa. You're at a 7". For those of you who don't know what that means, that means I'm almost done. In 30 minutes, I went from "eh, let's maybe have a baby by midnight" to "ok, so your body is really trying to get this baby out NOW".

I am having contractions that are super intense, and it comes the time where I have an epidural or not. Now here's where it gets tricky. I wanted to have Miss Lo with no epidural. I went in there thinking I'd say no. I had Casey with no epidural (#4) and Tiffany with no epidural (#1) so it was totally one of those things I knew I could do. The pain wasn't any different than it was with the others, and I knew it was happening fast, but something told me to get it. So I got it. It only worked on half of my body. When I say half of my body, I mean

that absolutely literally. Epidurals are in your spine. Mine only took care of my right side. Period.

So there I was, feeling everything in my left side of my body, trying to breathe through the fastest labor in the universe when 2 nurses come walking in, but really quickly. One comes to my left side to mess with my iv, the other, my nurse Paula, she comes over and tries to move the fetal heartbeat monitor around on my belly. I asked her what was wrong. She says "well, we keep getting YOUR heartbeat on the baby monitor, so we want to make sure the baby's heart rate isn't that low." The other nurse informed me that she was turning the pitocin off because I was going 1000 mph. at this point and definitely didn't need help getting this baby here.

After 10 minutes of not finding the baby's correct heart beat consistently, they opted to break my water so they could put the baby on a monitor attached to her scalp. As soon as they did this, things got crazy. Lola's heart beat WAS the one they thought was mine. With every contraction, her heart would go from her normal 150-160 beats per minute to 45-50 beats per minute. They rolled me onto my left side then we waited... They rolled me onto my right side then we waited... nothing helped. 10 minutes of this, and with each contraction, I'd look at Mike and start to pray aloud.

Please Heavenly Father, please help Lola. Please get Dr. Jones over here to get her out.

Mike was in a trance. He couldn't even move. He was silent.

Finally, Paula said to the other nurse "Get Doctor J. here. Now" and the other nurse said "he's here. He just walked in for another patient...."

Dr. Jones walked in and said (with a smile on his face as always...) "So what's going on here? This baby being naughty already?" (those doctors know how to keep you so calm...)

Just at that moment, Lola's heart just stopped. Literally. Just...stopped. Mike stood up immediately and I looked at the clock and watched 5...10...15 seconds tick by. Doctor J walks over to the nurse who looks like she's seen Jacob's ghost and takes the forceps out of the nurse's hands, walks over to me, says "you're at a 9. Let's just get her here" and the next thing I know, the bluest baby you've ever seen is being handed to me.

"She just needs her mama, that's all" he says.

Lola-bird had her cord wrapped 4 times around her neck. Every contraction pulled it tighter. The cord was also the size of a straw, which I've since learned is about 1/4 the size of a normal umbilical cord. She needed to come out.

I talked to Dr. J later when he came to visit me in recovery. "See, always trust your gut feelings, even if they seem crazy" he said. "I can't tell you how many times I've learned the hard way to just trust a woman's feelings over the years"...

He calls them gut feelings. I like to call it intuition. Intuition fueled by the promptings of the Holy Ghost. What a gift it is to be a woman.

That's what's been coming over me. This feeling that I'm here for a greater purpose, that there's something out there for me to do, and that I'm not alone. Sometimes the days are dark, and adversity gets the better of us, but really...I feel surrounded by light. I feel loved. I feel like I can take care of these people even when financially, it seems like I can't. Also, I'm just so blessed to have this little birdie. I can't resist her. Can you?