She's Here!

I woke up at 2:30 am yesterday with very irregular contractions, but they were fairly intense, so I knew they were different than all the Braxton Hicks contractions I'd been having. I stayed in bed and found that just changing positions during a contraction helped enough to manage through them. I decided around 6:00 am that I wasn't going into the office because they were beginning to get more painful. Mick went in to work but left his stop watch with me, and I kept track of contractions on and off.

By mid-morning, the contractions were coming about every 10-15 minutes, but still not consistent. Sitting on the birth ball or kneeling with my arms on it seemed to help me breathe through them and take some of the pressure off.

Around noon, I noticed they were about 8 minutes apart and lasting 80 to 90 seconds each. Mick kept calling to check on me, and it was around 1:00 pm that he could tell by my voice he needed to come home. He got home around 1:30 and made some scrambled eggs and toast for me. I ate them, but they didn't stay down long. I thought at that point I was probably farther along than I realized, but Dr. Graham had told me to call when I'd had contractions every 5 minutes for at least an hour, and I was afraid I'd get to the hospital and they would tell me I was 1-2 cm dilated and needed to go home.

Around 3:00 pm, contractions were between 5-7 minutes apart and much stronger, so we called the doctor. The office is closer to us than the hospital, so they told us to come in and they'd check me before we went to the hospital in Friday afternoon rush hour. By the time we got to the office at around 4:00 pm, the contractions were much more painful, and about 3-4 minutes apart. The doctor looked at me and said I'd waited too long to call. Once she checked me, she said I was 6 cm dilated and needed to get to the hospital.

We got in the car and made it to the hospital in about 30 minutes. By the time we arrived at about 4:45 pm, the contractions were so intense I didn't think I could stand them anymore, and felt like she was going to be born in the car. I wasn't trying to push, but there was so much pressure, and since I was sitting up, gravity was working with her too. Mick and I were both panicking a little, and he parked in front of L&D and ran into the hospital. A minute later, he ran out with about 6 nurses behind him. They brought a wheelchair and got me inside and to a delivery room at 4:54 pm. I really wanted to have a natural childbirth, but I had lost confidence in myself by the time we got in the room and was asking for something for pain. The doctor checked me and told me I was fully dilated and ready to push, and there was no time for medication.

The first time I pushed, my water broke and there was meconiumin it, but they were monitoring her and said she was doing fine. The doctor said with a couple more pushes she would be out. I pushed again and he told me he could see her hair. The next push, her head came out and the umbilical cord was wrapped on the top of her head. The doctor moved it and went ahead and cut it so she could come out. One more push and she was out! I couldn't believe it when I saw her, and I think Mick felt the same way. All this time, and she was finally here.

They checked her out, dried her off, weighed and bathed her right in our room, so she never left our sight. Mick took lots of pictures, but the camera battery is dead right now, so I'll post them later. While the nurses were taking care of Emily, one was still taking care of me, massaging my uterus to get it to start contracting back down. There was a lot of bleeding because she came so fast, so they started an IV with pitocin to help with the bleeding and contracting after the placenta was delivered. We were in the L&D room for about 2 hours after she was born, and then were moved to a regular room in the Family Centered Care unit.

Emily Claire was born at 5:12 pm, 18 minutes after we got in the hospital. She's 19 inches long and weighs 6 lbs, 8 oz. We're all doing fine, and she's more beautiful than we ever imagined :).