Delivery

Delivery:

After a while, the nurse came back in and examined me again. She decided that I was dilated enough to start doing some practice pushes. She told me that I needed to listen to my body and once I felt a contraction coming to start bearing down to push and if I wasn't able to feel my contractions she was going to have to have the anesthesiologist come in and take me off of the epidural. This terrified me. I did not want to be in pain again. I liked the epidural. The epidural was my friend. But this scared me so much that I started to stress myself out! I was so worried that I wasn't going to be able to feel the beginnings of the contractions and they were going to make me deliver my baby without an epidural! Luckily, I was able to start to feel the pressure of the contractions. Thank goodness!! So we kept doing our practice pushes and the baby started crowning, so she sent for the doctor and his team to come in. It was show time!! The doctor came in and got himself all situated and had me push for awhile. I pushed for about 15 minutes and then f
inally I gave one last push and our baby girl was out!

On August 11, 2015 at 5:21am, Amina Elaine Whipple was born!!! 

I looked at her when the doctor lifted her up and she was purple! I knew that wasn't a good sign but I wasn't feeling so great. I couldn't find the energy to ask why she was purple and if she was okay. Then I heard her cry. She was okay. The nurse asked Justin if he wanted to cut the cord but the doctor had already done it and had handed her over to one of the other nurses to get her cleaned up. There was so much going on and so many people in that little room, I couldn't comprehend all that was happening. I kept hearing nurses say something about both the baby and me being warm and that they would need to take the baby to the nursery. Then the next thing I knew they were laying my precious baby on my chest. At that moment, time stood still. I only got to hold her for about 5 minutes before they shipped her and Justin off to the nursery and I was left in the room with the doctor and a few nurses. The doctor started to stitch me up but only got a few stitches in before he was called in to deliver another baby. The nurse that was in charge of the epidural machine decided that I'd had enough and unplugged it when the doctor left. So when the doctor came back in to finish his stitches 30 minutes later the epidural had all but worn off and I could feel every single stitch. I was so uncomfortable. But I sucked it up and tried to think about my baby. Once he was done he left and my nurse came in. She told me that the reason they had to take my baby to the nursery was because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck when she was born and that is why she was purple and because we both had spiked fairly high fevers during delivery. So they were going to have to put both of us on antibiotics just to be sure we didn't contract any kind of infection during delivery. This meant that I wasn't going to get to see my baby for awhile. She told me to get some rest and that everything would be okay. By now it was almost 7:00 am and that meant it was almost time for shift change. She told me that another nurse was going to be coming in to take care of me and that she really enjoyed being my nurse.