Katie: Birth Story

I've finally had some time to sit down and really type out Katie's birth story, and how she got here a week earlier than we had planned. 

Her birth story starts with my doctor's appointment on May 26th. I was scheduled for a non-stress test that afternoon, with a planned C-section scheduled for June 3rd. During my non-stress test, Katie was not wanting to move around much once they put the monitors on my stomach. She kicked the whole  way to my doctor's appointment, much like the last non-stress test I had two weeks before. Stubborn child we have on our hands!

They had me drink some ice water, and that got her moving around. The nurse came in and said that things were looking good, but they wanted me to stay hooked up for five more minutes. It wasn't long after that that I noticed the screen where baby's movements and heartrate are monitored showed that her heartrate had dropped to 89. I brought that to the nurse's attention, and she had me roll over to my left side and left the room. She came back a minute later and said that they wanted me to go over to the hospital and repeat the test over there. She also told me to go ahead and have Eric meet me there.

So to the hospital I went. I really didn't think much of it at that point. They wheeled me up to a labor room, which happened to be the same room that Jordan was born in almost a year before, and hooked me up to their monitors. Katie was moving more at the hospital, but I did notice that her heartrate was still having some dips down into the low hundreds. 

Eric made it to the room and I think my emotions finally got the best of me. I broke down crying to Eric. I was scared that they would send us home. I was scared that they would tell us we were having our baby now. I was so scared of losing this baby after having almost made it to the end. 

The nurse came in while I was crying, and made the comment that she was surprised how composed I looked coming into the hospital, and she had wondered how I was really feeling. She did reassure us that the non-stress test did look good, and she thought that the lower moments of 120's were just baby's resting heartrate and not necessarily dips in baby's heartrate. We talked about how there were still some lower dips as well. She left to go call Dr. Haller and see what she recommended we do.

When she came back, she said that Dr. Haller was on her way in and we were having the baby that night. 

Woah I wasn't prepared for that!

I mean, we literally had nothing ready. Just the night before I had packed a few clothes for myself in our hospital bag. Eric had nothing packed. We had nothing packed for the twins. Nothing ready for the baby. We didn't even have the infant seat in the car (though we had installed the base that weekend before). 

All sorts of things raced through my mind. I wanted to do one more fun thing with just us and Brayden and Ashley before this baby arrived. We were planning on going to the Aikman Wildlife Adventure that Saturday with them. 

I thought about how I had wanted to spend my last night with just the twins giving them all my love and attention and helping them prepare for what would be happening. The last time I saw them before Katie was born was dropping them off at daycare that morning with a quick hug and kiss and wave goodbye out the window. 

I wanted to take one more belly picture. I wanted to weigh myself one more time. I wanted to measure how big my belly had gotten. I wanted to attempt to do a few low key maternity pictures with Eric, and maybe the twins (though my expectations weren't high with that last thought ha!). I wanted to mentally prepare myself for this huge life change that we were about to undertake. And suddenly all those things were taken away from me.

Now we were making phone calls to our parents, having my mom and dad go to our house and get things for the twins, while we had Eric's mom and dad go to our house and get things packed for us to bring our bag and car seat to the hospital. Oh, and to let them all know that their newest grandbaby would be born that night! We also got to video chat with Brayden and Ashley for a few minutes and let them know that I was having our baby that night. Ashley gave us the cutest little surprised face with her hands on her cheeks and everything ha!

They started prepping me for my C-section, and a little before 7 Dr. Haller came into the room asking if we were ready to have our baby! As they wheeled me back to the operating room, one nurse mentioned how much I must mean to Dr. Haller since she decided to come in on her night off to do my C-section. She wasn't even the doctor on call. We really lucked out having her as our doctor through our entire journey to having a family.

My C-section went flawlessly, and at 7:21 PM, we found out that we were now the proud parents of another baby girl! Katie Jo Schackmann weighed in at 6 pounds 7 ounces and was 19 and 1/2 inches long. Much like her older sister Madison, she has some of the longest fingers and toes I've ever seen on a newborn. 

(And as a side note, Dr. Haller told us that Katie had a lot of her cord down by her head, which is probably why we were seeing the drops in her heartrate. There was talk of potentially trying to do a VBAC since I only needed a C-section due to the twins being transverse. But she let me know that if we would have attempted that, I would have needed to have a C-section anyway due to the location of her cord. It's safe to say that I'm so glad Dr. Haller made the call to just have Katie that night instead of waiting. There's no telling what could have happened if we hadn't just delivered that night.)

Needless to say, we were in love from the moment we laid eyes on her.

We were lucky enough to get to have visitors during our stay, and Katie enjoyed cuddles with her aunts and uncles, as well as grandma. The rest of the grandparents weren't able to make it in during our hospital stay, but got to meet Katie soon after we got home. 

Now that we are home and nice and settled in, we just have to figure out how to function being officially outnumbered. It's going to be a wild and crazy ride, but we are here for it!