Birth Story

For those who want to hear how things went:

I went in for my 40 week check-up on Friday afternoon.  I was dilated to a 3 and decided to let the doctor strip my membranes which can sometimes help speed things up (this doctor was sooo much nicer about this than the doctor with Karys was!).  I began having very far apart contractions that night - like an hour and a half apart - and they continued into Saturday.  My mom came down on Saturday to do some shopping for my sister's wedding and since I was still having contractions that had moved to every 45min or so she decided she ought to just stay and wait.  We went to Lake Padden where Cameron and I went for a good walk on the trail around it and it got down to 20min apart.  So we put Karys to bed, got everything ready, my mom cut Cameron's hair and he took a shower...when he got out of the shower we told him to load up the car and call the doctor and the hospital and let them know we were coming (4-5min apart now and getting painful for about an hour).  So we got to the hospital at about midnight, on her due date no less.

I got all set up and checked and I was around a 6.  After waiting for a little bit the nurse phoned the doctor and kind of gave him a "where are you?" call.  Anyways, did just fine breathing through everything for a couple of hours and then things were getting really painful and closer together so I asked for an epidural since they said I was only at a 7.  About 40 mins later or so I was getting my epidural and according to Cameron the anesthesiologist said something along the lines of "uh-oh we better hurry and finish up"...I guess things were progressing a bit faster than they thought, though how he could tell I'm still not sure.  So he got me all set up and shortly after I told the nurse they better check me because I felt like pushing....yeah, nurse called the doctor in and my water broke and nearly tripped him (like it gushed off the end of the bed!), and of course I felt like pushing because it was time to push - go figure.  Then it was a little bit crazy for a bit.  The doctor was trying to gown himself up while he told the nurse to get another nurse there "like now!".  They put an oxygen mask on me and finally got the bed all set up for delivery in the midst of me pushing.  Oh and remember that epidural?  Since it hadn't been more than around half an hour it was most definitely not fully in effect - hello baby!  So it was about 15min of pushing to get her out and Cameron said there was a lot of me hollering "Take her out NOW!" or similar other phrases.  The umbilical cord was looped around her neck twice but the doctor got it off of her pretty quickly, and then she cried very loudly (or screamed depending on how you look at it) for about an hour and a half.  The funny thing is that now she's a pretty easy going baby unless she's hungry. 

So they said beginning to count active labor when I got to the 5min painful contractions it was about 5 hours of labour with 15 min of pushing....it felt really fast (I don't know how my other family members with even shorter labors did it).  But overall it was much nicer beginning naturally versus with Karys.  And there was almost no tearing this time and recovery has been so much quicker.  The nurses couldn't get over the baby coming on her due date and my water breaking on its own.

So glad she came safe and sound.  And I have to admit I was praying she would come that weekend so that I could have time to recover before the wedding.  So grateful that prayer was answered!