First of all, congratulations!!!!
Secondly, I am terribly sorry for Michelle and her dad - that is truly tragic! And I cannot even begin to imagine how stressful that must have been during pregnancy!!! She is clearly a very strong woman!
Her delivery sounds like a carbon copy of mine with Jude. I was in labour for 19 hours and did everything but hang from the ceiling, but he was going nowhere. His heart rate basically stopped every time I had contractions and the idiotic midwives were so hellbent on "natural birth" that they put his life at risk. Eventually I was also rushed in for an emergency C-section. Jude still has a little mark on his forehead to this day, like a burst blood vessel sort of thing... from all the pressure that was put on his head where he was "stuck" during labour.
I am glad to hear that things seems to be settling down and you can enjoy new ventures and bonding with your baba! Congrats again to the both of you. x
hey @jaynie, thanks for the kind words! Sounds like a tough time you went through as well. It is certainly a tricky situation. We still question to some degree if there was no other choice, since the hospitals in this area seem have an unusually high level of C-section deliveries. The latest stats from our hospital suggest nearly 40% of births there end in C-sections, which seems nuts!
That's not to say we doubt that it was the correct course of action in our case, but it does make you think... Hospitals seem to follow the "better safe than sorry" mantra, especially as it's a win-win situation for them.
Not only do they make more for C-section deliveries (4 day hospital stay covered by insurance versus 2 days for vaginal delivery), and of course the additional cost of emergency surgery. On the flipside, if anything goes wrong (as happened in your case), the liability they face could be through the roof.
That said, I'm so happy to hear it worked out okay for you in the end. Not sure exactly what Jude has, but it does seem that marks such as these do tend to disappear on their own over time, or at least fade quite a bit...
Link: Infantile Hemangiomas: About Strawberry Baby Birthmarks