Meet Andrea Violet Brunner

On Monday, January 6th, Robin had her weekly appointment with the Doctor. He said that she was looking really good and that he was confident that the baby would come before the week was over. On Tuesday morning, Robin started having contractions. She was planning on going to work, but when we timed them and they were 4 minutes apart, we packed up and went to the hospital.

It was nice that Kindra could take care of our kids. Olivia had followed a prompting the night before about showering and having her clothes picked out and so she was ready to help get the boys out the door. She took them to Kindra's and got herself to the bus.

When we got to the hospital they hooked her up to some monitors and checked her cervix. After an hour, she had progressed a bit and so the doctor let them admit Robin. This was about 7:30 in the morning.

She didn't make much progress for a while and so the name added Potocin to the IV drip and a different doctor from the clinic came and stripped Robin's membrane. A short time later, Robin was feeling a ton of pressure and they decided the baby was on her way.

That's when things turned scary.

After a couple of pushes, this is what I hear the doctor say,

"What's the baby's heart rate? What's her heart rate? What's her heart rate?"

"It doesn't look like like she's getting good oxygen. It doesn't look like she's had any for a while."

"Get respiratory in here. That's a lot of blood. That's a lot of blood. We've got a placental abruption. Give me the forceps."

The next thing I see is the doctor holding our baby upside down. The baby's covered in blood and very listless. She looked pale, which I guess is better than blue, but they immediately took her to the warming pad and started working on her. The respiratory specialist shook her chest then put a breathing bag over her mouth and forced air into her for about 15 seconds.

While they were working on the baby I asked about the risks of a placental abruption. The nurse told me that an abruption is when the placenta peels away from the uterus. The problem is that the blood is still flowing back and forth from the mother to the baby through the uterus. With an abruption, it's like having two severed arteries. Robin and the baby were bleeding into the uterus. If we would have been away from a hospital, Robin and the baby would have died.

The wiped her off a little bit, weighed her, handed her to Robin for about 15 seconds and then took her down the hall to the nursery.

The doctor kept working on Robin. The placenta came out but there was still a lot of blood. There ended up being a puddle of blood on the floor that people were walking through. He stitched a tear and then they cleaned everything up.

Needless to say, this was pretty scary. I think the hardest part was that Robin didn't get to hold the baby for very long. I went and checked on her in the nursery. They had her hooked up to a CPAP machine that blew air into her nasal passageways. They were having trouble getting an IV in her too.

The rest of the afternoon was spent basically waiting until Robin could be moved downstairs where the nursery was. They wouldn't let her switch to a wheelchair until her legs weren't numb and she was still feeling the affects of the epidural.