The Barton Blog!: Adrienne Hailey Barton

Haddy giving my belly a kiss right before I headed to the hospital!

A lot has happened since our last post, and I meant to update the blog before I went in to have the baby so everything would be in order, but nothing ever goes according to plan, does it? And I need to write all this down while it's still semi-fresh on my mind.
Birth story:
It was February 24, 2015. I was 38 weeks and 2 days, scheduled to be induced the following Monday, and just going in for my routine visit that morning. I had a concern because the palms of my hands, my legs, and my feet had been really itchy, like REALLY really itchy. Like scratching-so-much-I-had-bloody-legs itchy. I normally wouldn't have associated this with a complication of pregnancy, but I recently had a friend tell me about her experience with these same symptoms during one of her pregnancies, and her doctor inducing her because of it. Well, I told me doctor about my itchiness, and there was instantly a change in his face....long story short, I had something called Cholestasis, which is when your liver suddenly stops functioning and pushes all the bile out into your bloodstream, which is what causes the itch. The doctor told me they'd probably have me induced that day instead, which I think is secretly what everyone hopes to hear on their 38-week routine visit, but doesn't actually expect. Even though it was only a week from when I was originally going to be induced, I felt so unprepared! They had to do some labs before they admitted me to know for sure, and while I was sitting in the hospital waiting, I had the opportunity to google "Cholestasis"....which I don't recommend. What I learned was that women with Cholestasis have higher stillbirth rates, and I had been having these symptoms for quite some time before I told the doctor about it, so I was freaking out a bit. Well, a lot.
I had started pre-laboring that morning right before my appointment, as if my body knew what the doctor was going to say, and it started getting much worse throughout the day,as did my stress levels from not hearing from the nurse yet.... Once 4:00 hit, I called and decided to let them know about my pre-labor and see if that affected their decision. It did.

Killing time, waiting for baby!

When I got to Labor and Delivery, I was already dilated to almost a 4 and 80% effaced, and things moved along VERY quickly after that. It was really a wonderful experience! They started me on the Pitocin but took me off 15 minutes later, the doctor decided to do a cervical ripening drug first. So they did that, and my contractions started picking up speed. I wanted to wait as long as possible for my epidural, since with Haddy's birth I never felt even one contraction, having gotten the epidural before they even started the induction (talk about wuss...). I wanted to know what being in labor felt like, and, still being a wuss, I didn't last long! The weird thing for me was that even though the contractions were painful, I would've held on a whole lot longer if every time I got a contraction, I hadn't felt like my bladder was going to explode!! Seriously, that is one thing I never expected. I knew a contraction would be coming because all of a sudden I'd feel like I had to pee, bad. Really really really bad. And then as the contraction faded, the need to pee would fade as well. TMI? Sorry. I told Justin afterwards I didn't know what I was more thankful for, the epidural or the catheter. Anyway, about 5 minutes after I got my epidural, my water broke on it's own (for some reason I was really proud of that), and about 10 minutes later we had a baby! Bada-bing, bada-boom. Justin had gone out of the room for a minute to get a drink, and when he came back in the whole team was there and I was pushing....he'd almost missed it!
Adrienne was born that night at 11:30, she weighed 7 lbs 6 oz, and was 20.5 inches long. Our very first impression of her was how much she looks like Haddy! And the amount of dark, beautiful hair she had.
Choosing her name was a little more difficult than labor.... Justin and I had been disagreeing on names for 9 months, and I was nervous we'd never find one we both liked. I'd been keeping a list on my phone of names I'd heard and at least semi-liked throughout my pregnancy, and by the end of my pregnancy there were about 50 names on it. We wrote down our favorites in order, and Adrienne was the first one that crossed over. The runners-up were Bridget and Gretta. We tentatively picked Adrienne and thought we'd sleep on it to make sure, and the next morning I looked over at Justin and said "I think it should be Adrienne Hailey Barton..." and literally right then, the sun came up over the mountain and shone right on her face! We took that as confirmation it was the right name.
Adrienne is 5 weeks old. She is a sweet little baby who knows what she wants, and when she wants it. When she's ready to eat, you know it. She's very healthy so far, but due to Haddy's Hip Dyslpasia, we took her into Shriners Hospital to get her hips checked out as well because it's very hereditary. She doesn't have Hip Dysplasia, but it turns out she does have shallow hip sockets, which could cause a lot of problems later in life, so she has to wear a brace 22 hours a day. I'm not sure for how long, but I think it may be a while. She has to go in every two weeks to get it adjusted. Not ideal, but I'm so thankful for early intervention! Our experience with Shriners has been so amazing from day one. If we are ever rich, we will be making regular donations there!

All that's missing is a parachute, right?

Anyway, we are so excited to have Adrienne in our lives! Haddy is loving her baby sister and has been so cute with her. My number one blessing in life is my sweet little family, I love them and am beyond thankful for the Gospel and Eternal Families. If there were no other reason but being with my family for eternity to motivate me to do the difficult things asked of us in life, it alone would be enough.