Lydia Eve Neary

Lydia Eve Neary was born 6:36 pm August 31. She weighed 6 lbs 4 oz, has beautiful blonde hair, a cute little pixy chin, a little button nose, and is, in the eyes of her parents, perfect in every way. Lydia has taught us from the very beginning that the Lord has his own time table. What will follow is a day by day sketch of how Lydia made her debut

Tuesday, August 28, 2012
We went in for our 36 week appoint and found out that Melissa had a tinge of protein in her urine sample. To make sure it was a fluke, Dr. Savage put Melissa on a 24 hr urine collection. This was slightly amusing considering she had to go to school. We won't bore you with the details, but Melissa was pretty creative in her efforts to covertly walk on campus with her urine-capturing apparatus. Though, it was fun in a weird way to see how much she peed each time.

Wed, August 29, 2012
Technically, Melissa didn't start collecting till 7 am this day.

Thursday, August 30, 2012
We dropped off the sample and got some blood taken at 10:30 that morning.

This is when the magic really started to pick up. Joseph was in the middle briefing Capt. Hart at the detachment when Melissa started calling him. She called him 5 times in a row which is as apparent as a smoke signal in the rain forrest that something was going down. Eventually, Capt Hart told Joseph to answer the phone. When he did, Melissa told him that her 24 hr urine sample had an over abundance of protein in it, which meant she had pre-eclampsia. They usually start worrying if your protein level is above 300, Melissa's was above 5,000.

After getting the phone call to come in ASAP, we drove to Dr. Savage's office (Joseph was told to get goin by Capt. Hart.)  They tested her blood pressure, which was supposed to be under 140/80 for everything to be okay.  It was 152/90.  That mixed with the protein levels got us sent immediately over to labor and delivery in the hospital here in Provo.

Once we got to the hospital they hooked Melissa up to several monitors, a fetal heart monitor, a contraction monitor, a blood pressure cuff, a heartbeat monitor, and other things we just can't remember, iv's and a catheter.  Her blood pressure was steadily rising (171/92), and things just weren't looking good.

They frist started Melissa out on Magnesium, which was supposed to keep away seizures that come from eclampsia, but ironically also can be used as a labor stopper, so we were already fighting against the odds.  Many may know first hand what Magnesium does to you:  severe nausea, hot flashes, sever swelling, etc...  It was NO fun. (and 48 hours from now Melissa is still on it. Gross)

1:30 The doctor comes in and breaks Melissa's water.  That gets the contractions to really start going.

To get the induction going they first started out with something similar to pitocin (like oxytocin, but it started with a C, we can't remember) which was supposed to start things out pretty smooth so she didn't go anywhere too quickly.  The contractions started getting pretty painful about 9 hours into the induction, so Melissa took an epidural then.  It only worked on her left side for the first few hours, but luckily the right side started to kick in by about 6 am and Melissa could get a little sleep (well as much sleep as you can get by having your vitals checked every ten minutes, and lets not even mention the silly IV alarms.  Joseph claims he almost threw it out the window he was so tired of hearing the sound).  At this time Lydia was handling everything like a champ, no distress or problems yet.

Around 6am they checked Melissa and she was at 3cm and 80% effaced.  They started the pitocin to really get things rolling (Friday August 31, 2012).  Melissa was super glad she had the epidural at this point, because the right side was already very painful and it was supposed to be numb.  The cycle for the next 13 hours were constant contractions, throwing up every time Melissa ate too many ice chips, pain in the right side from where the epidural didn't work, and monitoring everything very closely to make sure Lydia was handling it all.

By the time 6pm  rolled around, Melissa was completely exhausted.  After 15 hours on pitocin, she was still only at a 4.  Her body was devoid of energy and just hadn't had a chance to recuperate.  This is about the same time Lydia began reacting badly to the pitocin.  Her heartbeat would drop to dangerously low levels after each contraction.  This is when the decision was made to get Lydia out of there because she probably couldn't handle whatever it would take to get to 10 cm.

6:36pm Friday night Lydia Eve Neary was born: perfect in every way :)

Lydia was quickly cleaned and put into Joseph's arms. He was very excited and glad to see that Lydia was so calm during the whole process.

Post Partum:  It took about 24 more hours to get the high blood pressure to go down and for the doctor to feel comfortable taking Melissa off magnesium.  She now feels a LOT better (besides the incision pain of course).  Lydia has done well except for being jaundice.  She gets to stay under the billi lights full time except for eating.  After all is said and done we have been blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby.  We would do it all again in a heartbeat as long as we got he same result :) (and only if it lasted a heart beat!)