Alex and I welcomed a beautiful baby girl June 19th at 3:35 AM after a long 26 hour labor. She weighed a healthy 8 lbs and measured 22 inches long. I wanted to write a blog post about her birth story.
Avery’s due date was actually June 16th and we were very eager to meet our girl! Our Dr. had us scheduled for an induction on the 22nd. I was very upset, as I did not want to be induced and really wanted her to come on her own. My original plan was to try to have her without an epidural and I have heard horror stories about pitocin and knew that I most likely wouldn’t be able to have her without having an epidural if we were induced.
On Wednesday, June 17th, we had a doctor’s appointment to see if there was any progress. The previous appointments had shown no progress in the softening of my cervix even though I was trying everything to get labor kick started! When Alex and I went to the appointment, we were bummed to hear that I still wasn’t dilated. I went home pretty upset because I just knew we were going to have to induce if she didn’t come soon.
Wednesday evening, around 8:00 PM I noticed that I was starting to show signs of my mucus plug passing. I hopped online and read that it could pass a week before labor can start, so I just thought to myself…well at least it is some progress. About 1:00 AM on Thursday, I started feeling some cramping. I chalked it up to part of the mucus plug passing. I was up and down going to the bathroom all night. About 3:30 AM, I finally got myself to sleep and woke up about 6:00 AM to continuing cramping.
I started to notice that the cramping was not all the time, so I jumped into the bathtub and started timing them. Alex was sawing logs and I decided not to wake him until I was sure this was it. I text my mom and told her what was going on. She called about 7:00 AM and wanted to know if I thought she needed to start heading this way. Alex woke up when he heard me talking to her and hopped out of bed to start getting things together just in case we would need to be heading to the hospital.
My contractions were anywhere from 40 seconds to a minute or more long and they were anywhere from 3-5 minutes apart. In our childbirth class, they told us to head to the hospital when they were 1 minute long, 5 minutes apart for an hour. Alex didn’t think I was really in labor, but I called the Dr. as soon as they opened because I was concerned that they were already so close together. She said to go ahead and head to the hospital.
I was prepared for them to send us home, as I have heard of several women heading to the hospital only to be turned away because it wasn’t quite time. When we got to the hospital, they sent us to triage where they checked me to see if I was dilated and hooked me up to track my contractions. We were dilated to 1.5 cm at 10:00 AM when we got to the hospital. They wanted me to walk around the hospital for an hour or so and then they would check me again. At 11:15 AM they checked me again and I was at 3 cm. they decided to go ahead and admit us at that time.
We got into our labor and delivery room and had phoned our parents that we were officially in labor. By 4:00 PM, were were already at a 6 and I thought she was coming quick. An hour later we were still at a 6 and my contractions were coming hard with only 2 minutes in between. Some of the contractions were right on top of each other, so they were like 2-3 minutes long. I decided at that point an epidural was the way to go. I managed quite awhile without it, but I was exhausted.
I was immediately relieved and happy that I made the decision to have the epidural. I could still move my feet some and the pain was gone so I was able to relax a bit. I never could sleep because the thought of holding my baby girl soon was more exciting than any Christmas Eve I had ever had! I do believe it helped me conserve some energy for the actual delivery and highly recommend it! It took us awhile to start getting closer to a 10. Alex was convinced that the epidural slowed down the labor, but the nurse said it also could have been because my contractions were so close together that progress had stalled out a bit. Either way we were getting closer and closer to the birth of our beautiful baby girl! Our nurse, Chris decided to give me some pitocin to speed things up a bit. She was an awesome nurse that helped take really good care of us. Her shift was over at 7:00 PM and we got a new nurse named Tatum that was equally as awesome! I felt very blessed to have had such great people taking care of us!
My mom and Troy made it to the hospital about 7:00 PM. My cousin Tim was in town for work and had barely beat them to the hospital. He was supposed to be at a Royals game, but decided to come see a new life instead. It really made my day that he chose to come see my baby girl over baseball and beers! Thanks Tim! Too bad Avery had other plans as he had to head back to the hotel before she came due to an early flight back to Amarillo. Alex’s parents got to the hospital around midnight.
About 2:00 AM, I started to feel the contractions as my epidural wore off. I was having to really breath though them and was debating on getting another one. Tatum came in told me that I was at a 9.5 and she was afraid if I had another epidural that I wouldn’t have been able to push for another 1-2 hours. About 2:55 AM, it was time to push!
After my first push, Tatum said, “Are you sure this is your first baby?” I said, “Yeah, why?” She then proceeded to tell me I was a champion pusher and that if I kept it up, we would have a baby here in no time! This was music to my ears are in our childbirth class, we learned that some first time moms can push for 2-3 hours! I had my baby girl out in 40 minutes! I was surprised that the whole time we were pushing, the Dr. was not called in until she was crowning. I am very thankful I had such a great nurse coaching me through it! Alex and my mom were both in the delivery room cheering me on with many words of encouragement. I remember my mom was holding her breath with me through my pushes and Alex telling me over and over what an amazing job I was doing.
The second she she came out, I remember the Dr. pulling her out and someone saying she had passed meconium during the delivery. That meant the tarry first poo baby girl had been saving up was passed during delivery. I watched the Dr. clamp her umbilical cord and cut it. My first thought was…hey Alex was supposed to cut that. They had to get her cleaned off immediately and suctioned out so that she didn’t inhale any of it, which can be very dangerous..
It seemed like eternity before they got her cleaned up. I was getting very impatient as I hadn’t really gotten a good look at her yet. If she hadn’t had the problem with the meconium, they would have placed her on my chest for skin to skin right away and just toweled her off while she was on me. I was laying there watching them clean her off and get her footprints. One of the nurses asked if I wanted them to get height and weight before handing her over and I was like, “No! Give me my baby!” Alex said I was a little demanding, but I couldn’t wait to get my hands on my baby girl! Finally they placed her on my chest and gave us some warm blanket. It was the best moment of my life. I looked over at my husband and we were both in tears. It was so beautiful.
