Introducing the Fabulous Miss M

She's here! She's here! She's here! We are now a four top (or a “four pack” as was often used to describe my family growing up, much to my little sister's irritance after awhile.) The Litts are now the quintessential suburban couple with 2.0 children (well, it's really something like 2.4 children, but my assumption is that in order to get .4 children, I would have to be constantly pregnant. Yeah...no thank you!)

I'm not sure how to start this birth story since it's a bit different than Ben's birth (i.e. totally unplanned). With Ben, I had lots of time to contemplate how he would be born and his birth date was sort of assigned to us.

However, with this little girl, things didn't go as planned (I wonder if I'll be able to look back on this post during her teenage years and say, “Yep. From the get-go, she was a wild card. Always keeping us guessing. Oy vey!”) Our daughter is probably one of the few children in the world with three birthdates, though only one is the official date. She was estimated to be due on February 7, 2011 as per the handy-dandy pregnancy wheel. But being the special patient that I am (high risk, yada, yada, yada), we were actually scheduling her birth via repeat c-section for January 27 (this Thursday). She (and my placenta) had other plans.

This is where her story begins...

The Monday that she was born, I had my regular check-up with my OB. At that appointment, my blood pressure was slightly elevated. This was pretty unusual for me as my blood pressure had always been normal and even a little low from time to time. At first, my doctor was not overly concerned but asked me to come back in that Friday and have my blood pressure checked again, just to make sure.

Friday morning came around and after I dropped Ben off at preschool, I headed to my doctor's office. My doctor was in surgery that morning, so I saw one of her partners instead.  The nurse took my bp and got a reading of something like 138/89, but she wasn't sure that was accurate since she was having a hard time hearing. She called in another nurse to re-check my pressure and that nurse got magic "pre-e" cut off of over 140/90.  Not a good sign. I was trying to be calm and think about the positive. I didn't have high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia with Ben, so this was startling. The doctor-partner came back in, and as sweet as can be, told me I was being sent to the hospital for a 24-hour bp evaluation. Depending on what those numbers looked like, my regular OB would decide if I got to go home to be on bedrest or we were having a baby that weekend.
After a quick trip home to get some stuff and to coordinate care for Ben, Andrew and I headed to the hospital.  I got checked in, changed, and hooked up to the automatic bp cuff (or as I like to call it, Boa the Constrictor!) I got an IV from the oldest practicing nurse in the United States (seriously! I think one of the other nurses said she was about 75 years old and had not intention of retiring!) Every 20 minutes or so, Boa would squeeze my arm and spit out my fate in the form of systolic/diastolic numbers. I was hitting 143/78. 150/89. 158/90. And so on. For two hours my pressure steadily climbed until I hit two in a row in the 180s/90s. My OB was in my room for both of those numbers and every time my blood pressure would hit above 170, her sweet little face would contort as if she smelled the world's worst fart. It didn't take long to get a diagnosis with those numbers: severe pre-eclampsia.
With pre-e, there is only one cure: the baby has to be delivered. My doctor had hoped we'd at least wait until the 36 weeks mark (which was 2 days away) to deliver, but after those readings, it was definitely go time.
Not even an hour after my OB told me, “We're having a baby tonight!”, the anesthesiologist and his nurse anesthetist came in to get me ready for surgery. I was wheeled into the OR at 6:30. At 7, I got the spinal and at 7:14 PM, out came the cutest, reddest little girl, screaming and a hollering!  She was perfectly healthy and beautiful! Margaret Olivia (who we call “Molly) was born January 7, 2011 at 7:14 PM, weighing 6 pounds, 10 ounces and measuring 19” long. Not bad for an early bird!