Sunday, February 15, 2009

Kayla's Birth Story - Part 1

This whole pregnancy has been pretty crazy. What an experience! That is for sure.
To summarize, it was an easy pregnancy as far as the actual pregnancy was concerned. A bit of nausea in the beginning and some tiredness throughout. But no major complications, aside from one trip to the hospital . That was scary but it turned out to be okay. One of the biggest adjustments was switching to an Israeli OB. I was not impressed. Twice. With 2 different OB’s. I am used to the fantastic doctors at Women’s Health Consultants in Detroit. They were concerned about me, took their time to talk to me, delivered 2 of my babies, and I could call them anytime with any questions. Even once I moved to Israel, I called with a question for Dr. Schoenberger because I didn’t know who to call here!
So the pregnancy was definitely my easiest. My biggest issue was that I didn’t sleep well. I often spent a few hours in bed, then a few on the couch, then back to bed. I was in pain if I stayed in the same position for too long. For a few months, it was my lower back and towards the end, the pain was in my hips. Not so fun. I also got sick a lot. Not badly sick but I kept getting colds, sore throats and they would NOT go away. My immune system had a rough time.
But who had time for a difficult pregnancy? We had to apply for Aliyah, pack up our house and lift, get our house ready to be rented, move to Israel, adjust to life here….and just when we were getting settled in – have a baby!!!! G-d only gives us what we can handle. I could not have handled a difficult pregnancy.
They had scheduled me for another C-section because I had already had 2. Also, the baby was breech. So that made me feel better. I don’t like having C-sections and I always wonder, were they really necessary? So far, yes. And with a breech baby, yes.
We went in to the hospital on January 11th for a meeting with the surgeon and to register, etc. We met with a great surgeon (but who would not necessarily be our surgeon) and he explained the process to us. Then he got out his calendar and said, ok, let’s pick a date. He said, “Since this is your 3rd C-section, we like to deliver between 37-38 weeks. And tomorrow you will be 37 weeks so you can have the baby anytime between tomorrow and next Monday.” I looked at Shauli and said, “What? We are having our baby in a week?!? I thought we would have 2 weeks! If we have it Monday, we will miss Rachael’s wedding and (Shauli’s) Mom won’t be here yet – woah, that’s really soon.” I told the doctor that I know they like to do the surgery early so I don’t go into labor but that’s not really a problem with me. So do I really have to have it so early? He said not only do they not want me to go into labor but they don’t want me to have any contractions. That puts stress on the uterus and could cause uterine rupture. Well, we don’t want that. I wasn’t going to argue. So Monday, January 19th, it is.
The following week was spent anxiously getting ready for Baby Day. Cleaning up a bit, getting caught up with work, etc. I never got to the point of “Nesting” which was sad. Meant my house wasn’t quite as clean or organized as it could have been. But I think we were ready. As ready as we were going to be!! We arranged with Shev that she would come and stay with the boys for that first week. This way, Shu could come and go to the hospital and she could watch the boys. We had a nice day on Sunday. Boys went to school, Shu took Sammy to the ENT, Shev came around 5:00. Shu and I went to a meeting with the Mayor of Ariel. He wanted to meet with the Olim because he wants to bring a lot more North American Olim to Ariel. Then we went to Petach Tikvah and got dinner (Mmm Chinese food) and went to a movie. That seems to be our tradition. A pre-baby movie. We saw Madagascar 2. We had the entire theater to ourselves. It was a cute movie but seemed to be a little too much like The Lion King. But it was nice to spend a few hours of just the 2 of us. That will be it for awhile.
Baby Day!!!

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