I'm looking down at my daughter who is sitting here awake and wide-eyed on my lap. It is still weird to say "my daughter"! When I look at the pictures Scott took right after she was born tears come to my eyes and when I look at her sitting here I feel such overwhelming love! It's amazing - I knew I'd love her but I was told that I'd couldn't understand how much until she was here - you were all right!
So, we document her birth so that I can remember the details. This is a post more for me so I apologize up front for what will be long and probably have way more detail than you would ever want to know.
Sunday morning we went to church. I was having contractions that were a little more intense than normal but last week I stayed home from church only to have them slow down and get lighter. I was so disappointed to have to go back to work Monday after having been so sure that I was going to have a baby over the weekend. I didn't want that "false hope" again so we headed to church.
After church at about 1:00, I was feeling the contractions a little bit harder and they were 6 or 7 minutes apart. By 2:00 dinner was ready and I had a few bites but then decided maybe I'd better not eat. The contractions were 4 minutes apart and more painful. After calling the hospital and being told, "don't come in until they are closer than 5 minutes apart and are intense" we decided to go in. I wasn't sure what "intense" really meant because I've never been in labor before! However, once we were in the car, the contractions started in earnest and I decided that they were probably "intense".
We got to the Intermountain Medical Center labor and delivery ward at about 3pm and checked in. I was okay between those contractions while we checked in and while they got me and the baby all set up on the monitors, but the contractions themselves kept getting worse and worse. It seemed that by the time one would stop I'd have time to catch my breath and then it would start again.
The nurse checked and to my dismay, declared me still 1 1/2 cm dilated! How could it possibly be that I'd had contractions all week and really painful ones for an hour and not have progressed any? I was terrified that they'd say "go home and come back in a few hours". I'm still not sure what it was that made them decide I could stay but I am eternally grateful.
By 5:45 I had dilated to a 3 and they decided to track down the anesthesiologist so that I could have an epidural. They had some trouble because the one on duty wasn't answering the page and the shift was changing at 6:00 and the new Dr. wasn't answering either. In the meantime, the nurse was trying to find a vein in my forearm or back of the hand so she could start an IV. She stuck me, unsuccessfully, 5 times. Finally around 6:20 or so, the anesthesiologist came in. He tried one last time to find a vein on my hand (stick # 6) and then gave up and did it in the crook of my right elbow - not the most ideal spot because it meant that I then couldn't bend my arm much.
Luckily, after all that, the epidural itself went without a hitch and in a few minutes, the juice was flowing and my contractions were almost ignorable. With each contraction, my uterus, being so high still, would press on my ribs so even though I couldn't feel the pain of the contraction, I certainly could feel each one because of the compression of my ribs. Scott and I then settled in. We figured that we'd have a baby around 1 or 2 in the morning. Not so.
After checking every two or three hours, things were progressing in single centimeters. at 6 I was 3 cm, at 10:00 maybe a 5 and by 6:00 am I was finally at the blessed 10! The resident doctor on call came in and checked me and said that my water looked like it would break with the next contraction or two and that now that I was 10 cm and fully effaced, it was time to "rest and descend". What? I thought that once you got to a 10 you were ready to push - what in the heck is this "rest and descend" stuff?
At 7:45 or so (water still not broken) my doctor came in to check on me. He broke my water and they found maconeum in the fluid. This basically means that the baby has pooped already and is respirating the dirty fluid. He said that they would call the NICU to be present at the birth so that they could make sure that respiratory-wise she was cleaned out and ok. He then said that pushing takes awhile and that he was going to finish his rounds upstairs and then go to his office visits at the clinic. When I had pushed for awhile and her head was crowning, he'd come back to deliver the baby.
The nurse then got me ready and we pushed through the first contraction. She offered to let Scott come over and take a look - he politely declined. She did say that the was in charge of one leg - I don't think he really that but he was a trooper and helped out. After the first contraction, the nurse said "Wow, that is a lot of dark hair! This may not take as long as we thought, I'd better go tell the doctor to stick around". That was a relief. After what was now 18 hours of labor, I felt that I deserved something to go smoothly and quickly! The doctor came back and gowned up and the nurses came (all 5 of them) and we got going. I told the doc that at least he wouldn't be missing my appointment that day which was scheduled at 8:50! After 35 minutes and through 4 or 5 contractions, she was here! I was just getting down the whole process of pushing but at 8:40 she was here!!
They plopped her up on my tummy for a few minutes and I got a look at that hair! Scott declined to cut the cord and they gave her to the nurses. I watched them put a tube down her little throat to suction out the gunk from her throat. They weighed and measured her - 7 lbs 13 oz, 20 1/2 inches long - and declared her perfect. I got to hold her finally for 2 or 3 minutes and then, with Scott in tow, they whisked her away to the nursery to finish making sure she was all cleaned out. She had been kind of gasping and not really crying which worried them so I was glad to hear that they were going to make sure she was alright.
They took the next hour or so to unhook me from all the stuff and get me moved up to the recovery room. After a bit, Scott and the baby met us in our room. She had a clean bill of health after they suctioned out a huge amount of crud from her stomache and throat. The nurses gave her her first bath and then I finally got to hold her uninterrupted.
We stayed two nights in the hospital and now here we are, back home and now we are a family of 3 (or 5 if you count the dogs like I do).
Toby didn't want to leave her side when we brought her home, he would follow me from room to room and whined at the end of the bed when we put her in her bedroom and all retired to ours. It was very sweet and just what we expected from him. Jake is so much better than we thought. He was interested in Madelyn but was quite nervous. He didn't bark except when she started flailing around and crying and then he let out a little bark and left the room. All in all, they are doing fabulously with her.
Scott is a great dad. He holds her a lot and I caught him laughing at something she was doing yesterday. I can't remember now what it was, I'll have to ask Scott and post about that later.
I'm sleeping better than I expected that I would - knock on wood. Maybe the total exhaustion kicks in after a few days. So far, so good. We are happy.
The End
