Elisabeth (Lisa) Jane Mitchell

On Sunday December 18th, 2011 Lisa entered our lives. She weighed ~7 pounds and was 20.5 inches long. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes on. I never knew I could love someone so much. Vance and I are overcome with love for our baby girl. The following pictures were taken by my very talented friend Alana.

I wanted to record a few thoughts about how she got here. Little Lisa was frank breech throughout the entire pregnancy, so we scheduled an ECV (external cephalic version) on Wednesday December 14th to try and turn Lisa to a head-down position. The ECV procedure itself was not too painful (it was uncomfortable, but I listened to some music and used yoga breathing to relax and it was not too bad!), but was unsuccessful. We scheduled a c-section for December 29th (today!). At the time I was heart broken. I am not entirely sure why. I guess I just really wanted the experience of pushing her out of me. I felt frustrated that I had spent so many weeks attending a natural child birth class and that I had hired a doula, only for me to never even have a chance at a natural child birth. I was also disappointed with a much longer recovery time.

The next couple of days (after the ECV) I had a lot of cramping, which is a typical side effect of the ECV procedure. By Saturday the cramping had subsided, and I was feeling much better. Early Sunday morning (Dec 18th), I woke up to pretty strong cramps. I just figured that I was feeling more of the cramps as a side-effect of the ECV. I decided to take a bath to relieve my pain. When I got out of the tub, as I was drying off, I noticed some fluid trickling down my leg. At first, I did not think much of this... I thought it was just from the bath. I then walked into the living room when probably another 1/2 cup of fluid spilled out of me. At this point I started having thoughts that my water may have broke. I was a little unsure because I had learned in my Bradley class that for 80% of women, their waters break when they are between 6 and 10 cm dilated. As fluid continued to spill out of me, I called my mother and my doula to make sure that I was right in thinking that my water had broken. Both my mom and my doula agreed that I was in labor.

Vance and I quickly got our things together and arrived at Rose around 9 am. The nurse was very quick to get me admitted and prepped for a c-section. Because it was a Sunday and my doctor had gone out of town the previous day, I had to wait for the on-call doctor to arrive. Although the doctor was paged around 9 AM, she did not arrive until about 2:30 PM. This meant that I got to experience several hours of labor! I know it sounds silly to be excited about this, but it was an experience that I was truly looking forward to! I only dilated to ~3 cm by the time I went in for a c-section, so I did not get to experience active labor, but I did get to feel lots of contractions! I had previously hired a doula (Debbie Sheets), so it was great that she actually got to help me through a lot of the contractions.

Going into the operating room was a scary experience for me. There were so many people doing things to my body, I felt little to zero control over the situation. During the surgery, the surgeon and nurses were listening to a Christmas pandora station. As they were pushing baby Lisa out of me, "O Holy Night" sung by Josh Groban was playing on the radio. I felt like it was so fitting. Once the c-section was over, they immediately gave her to Vance and I heard her cry. It was a surreal experience.

After Lisa was born, and I had her in my arms, I felt silly for shedding so many tears over the fact that I was going to have a c-section. Once I got her here, I realized how much it just did not matter.

The recovery from the c-section was painful at times, but overall not too bad. I was unlucky in that 5 days after the surgery, when my staples were to be taken out, about 75% of my incision reopened. The doctor pulled the other 25% open manually, which I think to this day is one of the most painful experiences of my life. I currently have an open wound that is healing by secondary intention (from the inside out) which is slowing me down quite a bit. When this type of reopening occurs, the healing time is at least twice a regular c-section, and can be up to 3x as long.

I am very fortunate, however, that I have a husband that has been well trained in his general surgery rotations to care for this type of wound. He dutifully changes my dressing twice a day and has been so kind to me. He is the nicest doctor I have ever had in my life! My love for Vance has grown so much seeing him care for me and his daughter. I feel like the luckiest woman alive and I am grateful for this trial because of the increase love for my husband I have gained from it.

Becoming a mother has so far brought me more joy and been much more difficult than I had expected. I have never been so tired, but also never so happy. I have never felt so much pain, but also never so much joy. The past 10 or so days have been the best of my life.