We really have to start the story of Calista's birth when she was just 5 months in utero. We went in for the routine ultrasound to find out gender and to ensure that everything was intact and growing as it should. We found out that we were having another girl!!!!! This came as no surprise to us as Travis and I have both felt that we would have lots of girls and we were so excited to be having our third precious daughter. about a week after the ultrasound the Dr. called and said that there was a problem with her kidney and he was referring us to a perinatologist. So began the journey. We found out that Calista had hydronephrosis, meaning her kidney was retaining fluid. This is the most common thing found on ultrasounds and in most cases the kidney clears itself up, unfortunately that was not the case with Calla. Her kidney kept getting worse and even spread to her ureter. We had to go from monthly ultrasounds to weekly ultrasounds and at 39 weeks the Dr.'s decided it was time for her to come. We scheduled the inducement for the 23rd of January, when the long awaited day came, my parents came the night before to stay with the girls. We were supposed to be at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning, but the night before I was so nervous, and so worried that we didn't have a name picked out that I didn't fall asleep until 3:00 in the morning! Travis thought that head set an alarm for 5:30. I awoke to the sound of a school bus passing by, I jumped up looked at the clock and saw that it said 7:30. I woke Travis up and we rushed to the hospital. We arrived at 8:00, I was already dilated to a 3, so they started me on pit and ordered the epidural. At 8:45 they gave me the epidural and at 9:00 they broke my water. I began laboring rather quickly ( I was already at a 5 when the Dr. broke my water). unfortunately the pain began to return so the anesthesiologist came in to give me a booster ( they said that sometimes when you go so fast the epidural can't keep up.). at 11:00. I stalled at a 7 finally after an hour my body pushed through it and after that I started dilating very quickly, by 12:40 I was ready to push, but once again I could feel quit a bit and I was in pain. I pushed about four times and out came the little cutie. It hurt like heck, but I was glad to have her out. They immediately put her on my chest and the love connection was instant. She breast fed immediately and I was smitten. She scored an 8-9 on her apgar, and urinated almost immediately, which we were thrilled about because that meant that her other kidney was working. We were absolutely in love. They did all the blood work and they came back great, no sign of kidney problems. My pain afterwords was minimal this time which was really nice. The second day they did an ultrasound on her and it came back that her kidney was in the severe category, and so she still needed to have all of the tests. Darn!!!! We were glad however that she got to come home with us and we we are scheduled to do more tests in the next month. She is on an antibiotic and is an easy baby so far.
