On our first trip to the hospital early in the morning, my contractions just stopped, I could not believe it. They had been constant for a couple hours and then gone. I still went in to be checked, just hoping that maybe this whole 'having a baby' was so new to me that maybe I was 'feeling' it wrong, but that was not the case, and away we went. I walked, and walked and walked, I was determined to have our girl and have her SOON! The walking helped, helped because we actually had four important places to visit that day, and now we had the time to go. Unfortunately by the time we got done walking all over Zurich, I was feeing great, and no amount of jumping, walking, or running was going to bring me back to the hospital. So, weighted down by our 'hospital' bag and the pregnant blob I was, back home we went.
We climbed up the mini hill, up the fourty-two steps, and opened the door to our flat, and said, 'This is NOT what I was thinking when we left this morning.' We were disappointed, but knew it was not our timing, but the Lords. We napped, well Will napped and I tried to, but within an hour of laying down, those pesky little contractions were back. I ignored them...ha, I 'tried' to ignore them I mean, i figured it was just going to be another trick on us already, so why react. RIGHT....my heart started beating fast and
I started to time them, 10 minutes apart, 10 minutes apart, 10 minutes apart...WAHOO! Their back baby!
I was checked in at 7:00pm and had so much energy I was READY! By 11:30pm that energy was gone and I was not so ready any more. After being awake for 21 hours, and dilated to an 8, it was epidural time. The only good thing about the epidural, well two things related to each other, it helped the pain so much, that I got a few cat naps in. The bad news, it did what I was afraid of, slowed everything down DRASTICALLY! And after a couple hours, our little baby was complaining too which caused me to shift from side to side on the bed to see what worked best for her and her heart rate. She was not helping the cause though and in no hurry to come out, water was not breaking and even when they did break it, she still wanted nothing to do with entering the world, she knew what awaited her, we still had no idea.
At 5:02am, Mayla Grace Ellis entered the world. The next thing I know, she was THROWN at me and they were wiping her off. I looked down and saw them working so fast to clamp the chord and then handed Will the scissors and had him cut the chord. I missed seeing it as I was looking down at our girl and I knew right away.....I knew something was wrong. I had a gut feeling and I was scared.
The pediatrician then took her from my arms and they started checking her over..she made a few short cry’s that were the sweetest sound, as I watched them work my husband echoed words of praise and excitement in my ear as he shed tears of joy. I was emotionless, unable to process how I felt. They laid her back on my chest again, and I all I could notice was the pale coloring and blue tint to her skin, I knew something was wrong and instantly put up a wall between me and my daughter. I couldn’t bond with her and felt scared. After 2 short minutes, they took her from me again, and my heart broke, I knew this was not the way it was suppose to go. I told Will to go over by her and pray over her, something was not right. They had some different machines around her and were checking her oxygen. I could barely look over at her, it hurt and I was scared. I just kept praying and pleading with God that nothing was wrong with her, little did I know what awaited us.
In rolled an incubator looking box, and they took Mayla down to Neonatal, I laid there, motionless. Was it all a bad dream? What just happened? Where was my little girl. The pediatrician, doctor and midwife all came back in the room after what felt like days, doors swinging open slowly, as if it was the opening scene to a movie, I panicked and held my breathe, I wanted to close my ears too as I could tell by their faces, it was not good. I thought for sure she was gone. They informed us Mayla was only getting 85% oxygen on her own, and had either a heart or lung problem, but in all the tests they ran, they could find nothing wrong and they needed to send her to the children's hospital for further evaluation. Will and I clutched each other and lost it, I wanted to push the stop button.
We were able to visit Mayla in the Neonatal unit and touch her hand through the holes in the plastic 'box'. Our midwife informed us we should take as many photos as we could. Those words were not reassuring and I thought she knew something we didn't. Our time with her was short and ended abruptly when the children's hospital arrived to take Mayla by ambulance. I wanted to go, that was our little girl they were taking. We clung to each other and fell on our knees in prayer. Two hours went by before we heard anything and then finally the call. They had found the problem with Mayla, switched heart valves. They had already done a procedure on her within the hour she was born in neonatal that had helped keep her alive to this point, Praise The Lord, she was already our Miracle Mayla.
When I walked into the Intensive Care unit, I felt like I was visiting a ‘different’ baby, not mine, maybe one of a friend. I didn’t think she was mine, I wasn’t sure I wanted her to be mine. I looked at her and all I could think was I wanted to start over, I wanted to go back home, be pregnant again and deliver a different baby, not one that had a heart problem, not one that needed open heart surgery, not one that needed all these tubes and wires attached to her. I wanted the baby I had dreamed about, longed for, and been so excited about.
I left to go pump and it hit me like a two by four. Will could see our baby girl beneath the wires, what was wrong with me..i only saw wires, and tubes, and pain...I didn’t see a baby, not my baby. The baby I dreamed about was not the same one laying with those machines all around her, when would I wake up, when would it be over? I finished pumping and was scared, scared of my next move. How do I tell my husband all this, how do I share these feelings I’m having about my daughter, how does this get better? I was trying to gain my composure, pull myself together so no one would know of the freak out I was experiencing deep within my soul. This was all a bit hard as I was crashing fast and going deeper and deeper. I was just about to walk out when my husband walked in. He took one look at me and I obviously didn’t do a good job ‘pretending’ life was perfect. He saw the hurt, the pain, and the fear written all over me. He asked, ‘what’s wrong?’, and without hesitation the flood gates opened and in the navy chairs of the dim lit pumping room, we embraced and I spilled my whole hurting self to him. We held each other and sobbed like I have never cried before. Through the tender yet firm embrace of my husband I felt the Lord’s presence in that room. It was at that moment the Lord said, ‘I’m going to heal you just as I heal Mayla’.. I didn’t know how and I was still scared to death, but I knew the three of us could do this. We cried out to the Lord, and he heard our prayers, healing was beginning as I stood up, ready to face whatever was thrown our way.
If you followed our story while Mayla was in the Hospital, you know that Will wrote an update every night for facebook, so while he was doing that, I was compiling my own journal and updates, 42 pages long to be exact, and that's where a lot of this comes from. I've put myself back in a lot of those moments and it's brought up a lot of emotion for me. But we have come so far, based on how Mayla started, I never pictured her doing any of the things she is doing now, it was a protection thing, and one that took me a long time to let my guard down on. We are blessed to have her and blessed to have her story. We are fortunate she only had to have one surgery and won't need any more. She is a very special girl, Jesus knit her back together, and even though her heart is 'backwards' compared to others, she is perfect! It's been a fun journey thus far, and a lot of you have been along for the ride since day one, and we thank you more than you will ever know. She lights up our every day and we continue to pray she takes that beautiful smile of hers, the Love that has been poured on her, and she shares it with the world. God performs miracles every day, and Mayla is proof of that.
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