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Introducing
Beatrix Elizabeth Pinette Sandor

6 hrs old

Here's the stats

Born Thursday October 15, 2009 at 11:23 am
7 lbs 15 oz
21 inches

10 mins old

Here's the story
Chattin' on the phone Thursday night with my mamma. All of the sudden I am all wet. Question, did I pee or did my water just break. I make my way into the bathroom to find that indeed my water just broke but it is green. Meconium. Great. My birth plan did not include the observation that is necessary when meconium is present. So Adam calls our midwife while I take a shower since I somehow did not get to showering that day. The midwife tells us to meet her at the hospital in an hour so she can check out my stats. We pack up and drop our Anya off at some friends for the night and make our way to the hospital. By the way, we were planning a hospital birth this time so I was not freaking out yet. Why go to the hospital since I despise the place? Remember how I told you in the last post that we moved to Quebec? Well Quebec = bureaucracy= Ontario midwives can't deliver in Quebec= really sad Chrys.
We arrive at hospital with some mild surges (hypnobirthing talk for contractions) happening about every seven minutes. My midwife hooks me up to some machines and we wait. I watch movies on my laptop, Adam attempts to sleep in a hospital chair and we get excited about seeing the baby soon. Problems occur. The babies heart rate is quite high and is not going up and down with the surges like they should. Our midwife consults with the bad bad OB guy (we actually we really comfortable with him, and he was worried about the baby since there was no variability in Trixie's heart rate) and he says that if things don't progress in the surges department he may have to intervene and perform a C-Section. So, obviously all surges stop dead and the babies heart rate stays high.

Seven am rolls around and extra midwifes have arrived. They, with the OB guy decided it would be best to start the Oxytocin. Really far out of my birth plan but Adam assures me that I can handle it and we go ahead with the IV. Now I am attached to the IV as well as the monitor so my water birth plan is totally out of the question. The surges pick up speed as well as the intensity. Hypnobirthing to the rescue. I breathed and relaxed and Adam talked me through each surge (which were way crazier as a result of the oxytocin). The baby is still not doing great so the OB man decided to do a PH test, so he attempted to reach inside (ouch!) and prick the top of babies head with a little razor thing to get some blood to test and make sure she was ok. But luckily the baby would have none of that. Apparently she didn't like OB guys either so he gives me a time line. Two hours and he will do a section. I get up and start moving around more. The surges are awful by then but Adam somehow makes it all ok. About 40 minutes later and only 20 minutes of birth breathing (pushing) and baby Beatrix is born.

Favorite moment of the birth besides having it over with: Imagine me sitting on a birth ball with Adam on the end of the bed. I am leaning over him in the height of a pretty heavy surge. I am pushing on Adam's legs letting all the pain go into him. When that surge is over Adam tells me that I am beautiful. I laugh and say that it is not possible at that moment. He says no, I am beautiful and we move into another surge.

Immediatly after the birth Beatrix was taken by Adam over the the heating tray to be checked out by the Pediatrician. Adam rubbed her and talked to her and she told him stories of her journey. The Pediatrician cleaned the gunk out of her mouth and throat. After noticing that Miss Trixie was super pale and not gaining color they ordered blood tests. After a while they came back to tell us that her hemoglobin level was super duper low. Like scary low. It should be 140 and Beatrix's was 85. They said that they wanted us to hang around and see if it would go up by the evening. Unfortunately during the course the afternoon it dropped to 71. So they decided to transfer her to the children's hospital where there are neonatologists that would know what was going on. This photo is while we waited to the transfer people to come and pick her up.


From thursday night until monday afternoon I spent almost every second with Beatrix at the hospital while Adam spent his time moving back and forth from home to the hospital and moving Anya around between various friend's houses. Beatrix was put on oxygen soon after we arrived because when you have no red blood cells you don't get enough oxygen through out your body. She was off it on Saturday afternoon after she had improved a bit and eaten some. She had been sleeping a ton, even for a newborn because of the anemia, but she eats really well so she started to pick up. They did several blood tests and decided that in the last few weeks before delivery, Beatrix had been transfering blood to me. During the first two days they checked her hemoglobin levels and they were, 73, 75, and then 76. After that they decided to wait 48 hours before checking again in a effort to allow her to build some more cells on her own. This morning the test showed a hemoglobin level of 88 so they decided that we could go home. We are very grateful that she is such a strong sweet little girl.





Upon arrival at home I found a sick two year old who was super excited about having a baby sister at home. Anya is totally in love with baby Beatrix which means that she wants to help with everything involving Trixie including feeding and holding at all times. I guess too much love is something that we can deal with.