This post is my labor and delivery story,  I promise to keep all the gory details out for those of you who have a light stomach.  For the rest of you here goes:

No one told me what contractions felt like.  I know, not the usual beginning, but you have to understand that I asked everyone and pretty much all I got was “Oh, you’ll know when it happens”.  Later, I found out that it is different for everyone. After all, how do you describe the feelings of your body getting ready to perform miracles?

And so, with me not knowing what contractions would feel like, I paid attention to anything that felt different, which brings us to the morning of our week 38 appointment.  On that morning, Justin would stay home from work to make sure that I was okay and we went to the appointment. Our doctor said that everything was okay and we went about the rest of our day. The morning of my week 39 appointment, we packed our bags, just in case, because I was feeling some cramps in my legs and a few in my stomach.  We went to the appointment and were told that I was only 1 1/2 centimeters dilated. I went home, took a nap, didn’t think about contractions and had a fantastic dinner.

The next morning, at about 1:30, I woke up feeling wet and hoped that my water hadn’t broken.  I changed my clothes, went back to bed for about a half an hour and woke up again with contractions.  I know that it must be contractions because it is like nothing that I have ever felt before.  The only thing that is going through my mind is that it can’t be happening today because Justin has a work conference that he needs to go to.

I get up again, at 2:30, and this time I turn on the light. It’s easy to see now that the wetness I was feeling was blood.  I go into the bedroom and say “Justin, I’m bleeding”.  Justin was up in a heartbeat, (good thing that we had packed our bags the day before),  and we head straight for the hospital calling our parents and our Doula on the way.

We finally get checked in at 3:30 and they check me.  I am 3 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced, the nurse doesn’t seem concerned about the bleeding, saying that it looks like “old blood”.  I walk around a little bit surviving my contractions by hanging onto Justin.  About two hours later, I tell Justin that I can’t do this.  I ask the nurse to check me again and I am already at a 7.  At this point I feel like it has been forever and the contractions are getting more and more painful. The nurses tell me that they have called my doctor and she wants them to call her back when I hit 9 cm.

Less then an hour later I  insist the nurses to check me again. They do and I am at a 9.  I start feeling the urge to push and they tell me I need to wait until the doctor gets here and get me positioned up on my knees.  I get on my knees, and start swaying while moaning to get through the contractions.  Finally, I tell everyone in general that I want my doctor because I need to push. Right at that moment, our doctor walks in hair still wet from the shower she thought she had time for.

As soon as she gets here I start to push.  They keep telling me how to do it and that I shouldn’t hold my breath, I just focus on pushing with the pain.  At one point, they give me oxygen because our little one’s heartbeat keeps lowering and then our doctor tells me that they may need to cut an episiotomy, because she seems to be stuck in the birth canal. About five minutes, and two pushes, later, I know that she is out. They quickly cut the cord and whisk her to the other side of the room.
(From Justin) It turns out there had been a placental abruption, which is where the bleeding had come from. Because there was blood in the sac she had it in her stomach and lungs, so they had a specialist waiting to suction out the blood and make sure she was breathing well.

Natalie Dawn Ferrell arrived at 6:55 in the morning weighing 6 pounds and measuring out at 18 inches.  Labor was only five hours.

I feel compelled to write this while listening to Christmas music and realizing that I am now 33 weeks along in my pregnancy.

Our fertility journey continues on with me finding a job at a residential treatment center and getting some good health coverage.  We found a doctor that was willing to help us a little bit.  She prescribed progesterone.  I would take it for ten days and then have my period.  After my period had started, I would go in for some blood work, (they were checking my progesterone level).  After three tries and no success, our doctor told us that she could not do anything more for us and then referred us to a fertility doctor.   One thing that must be understood is that Justin and I have never intended to do IVF.  We just don’t feel comfortable with it and we felt that the fertility doctor was going to suggest that right away so we did not go. Another big factor going against us was that apparently your progesterone level is supposed to above 10 for anything to happen and on my last blood test, my progesterone level was below 1.  I was doomed at least in my mind.

We found out about a natural healer/bio-something that my sister-in-law was going to and we decided to try that side of things.  She would ask questions and then test my muscle reactions to the questions.   She put me on a lot of medicine and I felt like we were going somewhere and then Justin got the job in Atlanta.   I asked her if we could check my hormones before I left and we did.  I found out exactly what I thought: low estrogen and low progesterone.   I felt like I was right back where we started.

In Atlanta, I finally was able to meet with a LDS social worker to talk about adoption.  The social worker that we got was exactly what we needed.  She told me that I needed to grieve over my infertility and come to terms with it.  I accepted the fact that I would probably never have children and we started working on our adoption papers.   Now that was quite the experience.  There is nothing in the world like writing a letter to the birthmother or decided what kind of child you would be okay with getting.  When we meet with our doctor to get our paper filled out for our adoption file, I was diagnosed with “premature ovarian failure” and they didn’t even do any tests.  Needless to say, I was not very happy with the doctor we had picked.

We got approved for adoption on February 14, 2011.  In May of that year, we knew that we were moving back to Utah for Justin’s new job.  With LDS Adoption files, if you move to another state, you have to pay 500 dollars just to transfer you file and that doesn’t include all the fees that you have to keep up every year.  Justin and I decided to take that 500 dollars and see if we could figure things out.

We had been in Utah for two months and I was reading a blog of someone that was struggling with infertility and she mentioned a fertility doctor.  I looked him up and realized that our insurance covered him (Blessing number 1), and that he was in Pleasant Grove, Utah only about ten minutes away from where we lived. ( Blessing number 2).  I called and made an appointment.

At our first appointment, he explained PCOS in the most easiest way possible and we told him everything that we have tried. He suggested to do a bloodtest and then go from there.  I was called a few weeks later and told to go get an MRI. I went to the American Fork Hospital and got an MRI.  Later, they would tell me that I had a small tumor near my pitutary gland that was secreting prolactin.  Interesting what some blood work and the right doctor will do. (Blessing number 3)  I was put on a medicine called Bromocriptine to shrink  the tumor.  I went in every month for four months before I was at the right level for us to start the fertility treatments.  I started at above 400, and finished at about 30.

Finally we were able to start the treatments which consisted of shots of FSH into my stomach about every week.  Then we would go in and make sure that my follicles were growing.  If they were then we would do the trigger shot, if not I took more FSH shots.  After a certain amount of days, I would go in for a blood test to see if I was pregnant or not.  Twice, the call was to tell me that the results were negative.  On the third month, the call came telling us that the result was positive, we were going to have a baby. (Blessing number 4)

I still don’t know why it happened now and not earlier.  I am not ready to be a mother even though this is what I have always wanted.  Our little miracle is kicking and moving every day and I am in so much awe that our prayers have been answered.  Now will this birth help everything get back to normal. I have no idea, we may adopt in the future.  Right now I look forward to holding my own little daughter in my arms and calling her mine.