Surprise!!!
I woke up in the early morning of Monday, Nov. 25th around 2:30. I was getting up as usual to go to the restroom and on the way I lost it. I wasn't sure what exactly 'it' was. Had my water broke or had I just peed my pants? Ashamed of the fact that I had most likely peed my pants, I quietly changed and got back into bed. Patrick woke up to the light on my phone and the beep of the keys as I quickly googled the difference between peeing your pants and your water breaking. He woke up to assure me that I most likely peed my pants. All I could do was lay in bed and think of all the things that I still needed to get done before the baby came. I had planned to work on school stuff over Thanksgiving break and have a transition week with the incoming teacher the first week in December. I decided that in order to calm my fears, I needed to call the OB triage line and ask them what they thought I should do. The lady on the other line told me to get back in bed and after an hour or so see if I was continuing to leak. After confirming that I was, I decided to take a shower and then head to the hospital. Patrick was still convinced that I had peed my pants. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, they confirmed that my water had broken. I was going to deliver our beautiful Dakota in less than 3 hours.
We were ready to go and meet our little girl. I had some fears going into a c-section yet I just wanted what was best for our baby. Little Dakota was breech and had been hanging out in my ribs all pregnancy. Due to her lack of room (or prime real-estate as the nurse liked to call it), she wasn't able to make the flip. Patrick was so supportive through it all. He prayed for me and our sweet baby girl before going into the operating room. I received my epidural and once I was all prepped for surgery, Patrick came in. He watched the whole thing with amazement. I thankfully felt nothing but the tugging and pulling as our little girl was brought into the world. They immediately took her and cleaned her up. All I could hear were sweet cries as our baby took her first breaths.
Because Dakota was about 3 1/2 weeks early, she had to go immediately to the NICU. Patrick brought her to me before they had to take her off. I couldn't believe that this precious little baby was ours. Sadly, because of my c-section and Dakota having to be taken to the NICU right away, I didn't get to see her again until about 6:30 that evening. It was torture, but I was so glad that Patrick was able to spend time with her in the NICU. He was the first to change her diaper and feed her a bottle. Patrick is an amazing daddy. I was just trying to recover. My nurses said that once I was able to eat without getting sick, I could go in a wheel chair down to the NICU. I pushed myself through quite a bit of pain just so that I could go down and see my little girl. This was a very emotional time for me. After delivering Dakota at 9:15 am, I was finally able to hold my little girl for the first time at 6:30 pm.
I pushed myself to recover as quickly as possible so that I could spend more time visiting our little girl. She wasn't able to stay in our room. We knew that our little Dakota was in good hands yet it was just hard because it wasn't our hands. We tried to eventually go down to the NICU for every feeding and spend as much time with her as possible.
We praise the Lord that everything went so smoothly. We saw His hand in the fact that my doctor was in on that day and could do the C-section. We saw His hand in the fact that I had been off my blood thinners for exactly 24 hours (which was what I needed to be able to have the c-section). We saw His hand in the health of our little girl. We saw His hand in the way that I was able to recover so quickly and how we only had to stay in the hospital for 4 days. Our God is so good!!
