A Star is Born...

... And a family is made.

Zoe Madison Brinkerhoff joined our family on Tuesday September 4th at 11:57pm and weighing in at 5lbs 3oz. I guess I should include that she was 17in long.

As per her usual , she couldn't come any other way , but the way that would give her the MOST attention possible. So here , my dear friends , is the story of the day Zoe was born.

It was Tuesday morning and I had to head in for my doctors appointment. I don't really expect to hear anything super awesome aside from when to come to my next appointment. That's not the case though. My blood pressure was up , I had +2 protein in my urine ( sounds gross ,but is totally important when you're at risk for pre-ecclampsia) and I had already dilated to a 4 and was  80% effaced. My doctor told me he was headed out of town for the weekend and wanted to induce me. He wanted to go for Thursday , but when I told him that Thursday I wouldn't have anyone with me because of Gregg's schedule , he arranged for it to happen that day.

So I headed home to get Gregg and we went to L&D. Once they got me hooked up to everything things went really slowly. They finally had the pitocin up to 20 , the highest they would let it go before calling the doctor, and Zoe kicked. With that kick my water broke and the real contractions started. I immediately asked for the epidural. After that things just got crazy. Crazy scarey. With every contraction Zoe's heart rate would drop and they'd have to roll me over. Eventually they switched from the external monitors to the internal monitors. Around this time my doctor also ordered to have me put on the Magnesium IV to prevent me from having seizures.

Things got worse. Zoe's heart rate would drop lower with each contraction and take longer to get back up. I was given an oxygen mask to try and help her out. I was feeling really terrible from all the IV's they had me on. When Zoe's heart rate finally dropped from 155 to 43 and wasn't going back up , they rushed me to an emergency c-section. It was just like in the movies or on TV when they're running people down the hall on beds yelling instructions to each other.

I had a really great team of doctors and nurses working on me and at 11:57pm Zoe was born. She was so pale but she was crying. They immediately ran her to the NICU and I had Gregg follow. They finished up with me and took me to recovery. 20 minutes Gregg met me and told me she was the prettiest baby with big eyes and big feet. Overall I was in labor for 10 hours . The c-section took 19 minutes from opening me up to sewing me up , and was the fastest the hospital had on record.

overall it was a really traumatic experience, but was so worth it in the end. She improved really quickly and was with me the next day. We are super blessed to have been helped by such great staff. We were also blessed with a fighter baby.