*Maysa Rinderknecht*

March 30, 2011

5 lbs. 13 oz.

18" long

4:58 p.m.

Our sweet little girl joined our family 12 days early and we are so glad she is finally here and just as perfect as could be. The last couple months of my pregnancy I was measuring small, for example at my last doctors appointment at 38 weeks I only measured 32 weeks. When I was pregnant with Kenzlie and Jensyn I was small as well but not such a drastic difference, which had my doctor pretty concerned. I had to have 2 growth ultrasounds just to make sure that everything was okay with the baby and to see how big she actually was. She measured only a week behind my due-date each time. On Wednesday morning I hadn't felt the baby move for a while.... I got in the bathtub, drank some orange juice tried everything which usually gets her moving around - still nothing. I decided to call my doctors office (which was my doctors day off) and see what they thought. The doctor on call told me to go straight to Labor & Delivery to be monitored. I called Jeremie at work and told him what was going on and he said he would be on his way home. I called my mom at work and she came and took Kenzlie and Jensyn while we went over. Jeremie's sister works at my doctors office and talked to the doctor on call and had us come in for another ultrasound before we went up to Labor & Delivery. The first thing checked in the ultrasound was the heartbeat..... what a relief the heart was beating and we could see breathing as well. I felt so much better already! The head, stomach, and femur where all measured, the stomach was measuring extremely small compared to the other two. The next thing checked was my fluid levels and then they watch for movements from the baby during the half hour physical. She still wasn't moving..... Next was a NST (non stress test) they buzzed my belly at the start of the test to try and get her to move. After only being tested for about 5-10 minutes the doctor told us that the baby wasn't responding at all to the test and instead of waiting for things to get worse they were going to take the baby that day. We got checked into Labor & Delivery and they started me on the IV's around 1:00 p.m. at that point I was only dilated to a 2. They told me that since the baby hadn't passed the NST that they were going to prepare me for a c-section as well just in case. After about an hour the doctor broke my water and told us that he was going into surgery and would be out around 5:00 so he would check with us then. The baby's heartbeat dropped drastically at 2 different times and they had to put me on oxygen to get her heart rate back up. I got an epidural around 3:00 and things went pretty fast from there. Before we knew it I was at a 10 and ready to push.... I ended up having a nurse practitioner/mid-wife do the delivery since it was before 5:00. After only 3 or 4 sets of pushes she was finally here. The cord was wrapped pretty tight around one of her little arms, but other than that she was just perfect. Just like her big sister and brother she got tons of comments on her LONG eyelashes. She had to be monitored more often than most babies because she was "SGA", small for gestational age. She had to have her blood sugar tested 3 times a day and we had to stay in the hospital for 48 hours before we could go home.

The day before she was born. (I hate pictures of myself, yuck)