MY baby #2 story...

This is MINE...all MINE...and it is not for the contest. It is also not for the weak at heart. This one has pained me just thinking about writing it...UGH! Get ready, friends 'cuz here it comes. MY BABY GIRL! My 1st was 4 1/2 months old when my husband asked, "If you don't get a period while you are nursing, how do people know that they are pregnant?" In my head I heard, "What if we are pregnant and don't know." Poor guy. He worries about everything. So, the next day I picked up a pregnancy test so that I could alleviate his stress and at dinner that night I would show him we were SO NOT pregnant. I got home from the store - put the baby down for a nap and peed on the stick. BIG FRIPPIN' PLUS SIGN!! WE WERE PREGNANT!!! Being 6 months pregnant at my 1st child's 1st birthday was just BIZARRE but it was what it was and there was nothing I could do about it. I bucked up and tried to be at peace with this thing I SO did NOT plan. My OB told me that if this baby reached the same weight as #1 before my due date, she would take it early. I needed to know the sex so I could plan the nursery...an artsy thing. "It" was a SHE! I told everyone that she would not wear PINK, or lacy socks or black patton leather shoes...I bought her first pink outfit with lacy socks and the black patton leather shoes. She was destined to be a girly-girl. This pregnancy flew by. Chasing a very busy one year old sure takes your mind off being pregnant. Even though my belly had a whopping 52" circumference and I couldn't see anything within 3 feet in front of me, it flew by. We had an ultrasound 2 weeks before my due date and it was the one where they take all the measurements - the screen kept blinking with the words...SYSTEM ERROR. My husband was a little concerned and questioned the technician who was quick to respond, "Oh, don't worry. It simply means the baby is beyond 40 weeks gestation in size. The system can't calculate anything over 9 lbs." Ummm......excuse me? Would you repeat that? So, what you are saying is I have 2 weeks to go and she is NINE POUNDS already?? D-DAY! My doctor changed her mind about taking the baby early and decided to even let me pass my due date. I think I cried every day thinking about delivering her. Youchee. I was changing my mind about the hippy-feel-and-experience-everything kind of birth that I wanted with my 1st. I wanted the epidural and I wanted it when the pitocin drip started! Well, we checked in for induction. My parents were at my house with baby #1 while I prepped to birth baby #2. Within 48 hours I would be a stay-at-home mom of 2 babies under 16 months. WTFreak? Labor started about 7-ish with the little pill that they put on my cervix before the pitocin. I never needed the pitocin. Labor was HELL....in my back! Did I say, IN MY BACK?! I told the nurse who took all my info when they hooked me up to the monitors that she needed to cross out the no-epidural from the first birth plan and make it very clear to everyone that when I WANT it I shall GET it! She did. Then there was a shift change. I BEGGED for those little anesthesia-wielding men to come hook me up with the goods and my new nurse kept saying...things like, "but you did it naturally with the first one." and "honey, if you want the epidural, I would have to wake up the anesthesiologist - it is 3:45 am. Just go take a shower." Ummm. Excuse me. If they make six figures sticking needles in people's backs, I think I can call them whenever the heck I need them, right? Nope. Not according to Nurse Wratchet. So, off to the shower I would go. How warm water was going to alleviate the pain that had WELL surpassed the pain from a year ago, I will never understand. Why she would deny me some well-deserved comfort, I will never know. But she did. So, I labored as my uterus stretched and wretched a small toddler closer to the outside of my body. I never got ANY drugs to help me. Time to push. I remembered quite well that pushing was the best part...the pain went away when I pushed. Not this time. There was a horrible sensation with each push this time. I actually yelled a little and squealed with each push. I grabbed my nurse's hand and said, "This feels different. Something is wrong." "Oh, honey. You just forget. Everything will be fine." I forget? I was just here a year ago. I promise you. I didn't forget. Something was wrong. At 5:15am and after 10 minutes of pushing, I was the mommy to a pink, lacy, patton leather little princess. I could only have been happier if she had been breathing when they plopped her up on my belly. She was blue. She was still. We were not prepared for that. Within seconds and lots of rough rubbing by the staff, she was screaming with a big set of lungs. My baby girl! My ELEVEN POUND BABY GIRL! I just happened to glance down toward my feet and my OB was talking to the resident. I heard her say, "Do you know what that is?" as she pointed between my legs (sorry for the visual). He didn't respond. She answered her own question with, "That is her cervix." My cervix? It was 5:15 am, I had been through 10 grueling hours of hard back labor but I was quite certain that they should not be able to see my cervix from the outside of my body let alone by pointing at the end of my table. I started to get light-headed and the doctor told Ken to take the baby so I could expel the rest with my next couple contractions. I forgot about the cervix-thing when I pushed and everything went black. "I can't see!" I yelled. Little by little I could see again. Next push. Black. Everything slowly came back. She pulled, she tugged but my placenta was holding on for dear life. Not coming out. They tried for 30 minutes - the max time before you are at risk for bleeding out. There was a lot of rushing around. They tipped my bed so that my feet were well above my head and they turned off the faucet that was running. I found out later it was not a faucet but my blood leaving my body and they tipped the table to keep it in! Alarms went off. The OR was called. They kept smacking my cheeks and telling me to stay awake. More alarms. A very worried husband stood and watched as he held my baby girl. He will tell you, he feared leaving the hospital without me. He felt he was watching what could quite honestly be my last minutes on this earth. It took 30 minutes for the OP to be prepped for me and I was rushed in for an emergency D&C. Apparently I have a uterine disorder that my OB suspected when I delivered #1 but never mentioned it to me. (BTW, there is a lot of trauma I am leaving out - this is very cathartic for me - but there is no reason to include all the things that could have been part of a serious law suit) My doctor's first words to me the next day were, "God saved your life last night." And I spent the few days before Christmas with tubes in my arms for antibiotics and blood transfusions but I had the best Christmas present ever...my baby girl...all 11 lbs of her! I hate that what should have been one of the most amazing moments of my life is over-shadowed by the fact that I almost died in front of 2/3 of my family. Horrible. But, my baby girl is 9 now and absolutely the light of my life. I look at our #3 and think, "God knew what He was doing Dec 21st, 1998." TO BE CONTINUED...check back for my baby #3 story!