Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Part 2 - Elli's Birth

I arrived at the hospital at about 10:30pm.  By the time I made it up to Labor and Delivery and they hooked me up to the monitors, I was contracting every 2-3 minutes!!  The nurse checked to see how dilated I was and I was 4cm.   She told me that she definitely thought they'd be keeping me because at 4cm and contracting every 2-3 minutes, they'd be nervous to send me home.  I remember having a little "argument" with her saying that they couldn't possibly be keeping me...I think I was expecting to be sent home at least once.  All of a sudden reality was really beginning to hit that I may not leave this hospital without a baby in my arms!!  So I called my parents immediately and told them to start making the 1 1/2 hour trip to the house so that Nate could then come join me.  I was expecting his arrival around 12:30am or so.

I walked the halls for a bit.  And at midnight, the resident came in my room to check me.  I was only 4 1/2cm!  Grrr.  I was nervous that they were going to send me home.  My parents would've just been arriving at the house only for me to show up shortly behind them!!  Luckily, they told me they would give me another couple hours to see what happened.  So I texted Nate the update and then went for another walk.  It was at some point during that walk that he arrived at the hospital and so graciously walked the halls with me.

At 2am when I was checked, I was 6cm.  I was hoping for more given that my body had already done this before, but oh well, we were moving in the right direction.  They said at that point I could have an epidural. It took just under 3 hours to finally get it because the anesthesiologist listed as on call wasn’t actually on call! So it took some time to find out who was!

During this time, as I was breathing through every contraction, Nate was drifting off to sleep.  Not a big deal, we both had been awake since 6:30am the morning before, so we were tired and one of us might as well get some sleep.  At least twice (but maybe three times), he startled himself awake, looked over at me and would say "honey, why don't you try to get some rest."  Ummmm, excuse me!?  How about YOU contract every 2-3 mintes for 90 seconds at a time and see how much rest YOU can get!!!  I didn't say that.  I sure thought it though!  We think that in his groggy state, he actually thought that I had already received the epidural and that I should now relax.  Ha.  Umm, not so much.  This is painful work!!

Finally at 4:45am, I got the epidural. When I was checked again at 5am, I had stalled out at 6cm!! I couldn’t believe it! I contracted for 3 hours with absolutely no change.  Talk about feeling defeated!  They asked if I wanted them to break my water and I said that I did. I figured that something had to kick start this process again!

At 5:45am, the doc came in to break my water. And at 7:14am, realizing that I hadn't given my mom an update all night, I made a call to let her know that things had slowed down a bit and it might still be a while. Just as I said that, I said “I gotta go, I’m feeling a ton of pressure.” The nurse checked me 2 minutes later and her eyes got really big. She said “uh, yeah, there’s a baby sitting right there!” She grabbed the doc quick who came in and said “let’s give a little practice push.” Half a push later he yelled at me to STOP and frantically started searching for some gloves. I had no idea why I was told to stop.  I actually thought something was wrong because I couldn't feel a single thing (this epidural was much denser than with the twins, I felt quite a bit with them).  So when I was yelled at to stop, I had no idea that she was crowning with just that little half of a push.  After the doctor got his gloves on I was instructed to begin pushing again.  In one push, out came her head. And with one more push the rest of her body slid out at 7:25am. So much for things slowing down! I went from 6cm to baby in 1 ½ hours and just 2 1/2 little pushes!

After asking Nate to announce the gender (because we didn’t know), they placed her on my chest. My immediate thought was that she was definitely bigger than Alivia (who was 6lbs 15oz) but not *that much* bigger. Sure enough, when they weighed her, she was exactly a pound and a half larger at 8lbs 7oz and I was absolutely shocked!

Our lives forever changed on September 13, 2010 at 7:25am when this chunky, gorgeous, amazing, beautiful, incredible, perfect baby girl graced us with her presence.  I was awestruck.  Nate was teary-eyed.  We created another absolutely perfect baby girl.  Miss Elliana Jo.

Our first time holding our precious Baby Elli.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I want to tell a story...

And that's the story of Elli's birth.  It all begins the morning of September 12th.  It was a Sunday.  Nate and I had plans of going to church, but being heavily pregnant, I knew I couldn't wrangle with two not quite two year olds through a church service.  So we had arranged the night before to have one of our good friends, Kristin, here to watch the girls.

When we got in the car that morning, I immediately told Nate that I didn't think I could do it.  I definitely felt off and sitting on a hard, wooden pew for an hour didn't sound appealing in the least.   I had quite a suspicion that I was in early labor.  So we drove around for a little bit, too embarrassed to go back to the house to tell Kristin that we brought her over early in the morning to watch the girls for nothing.  We eventually stopped at a restaurant to get some breakfast.

After we ate breakfast we migrated back home and let Kristin leave.  It was about 9:30am at this point.  I honestly have no recollection of what I did with myself for the next several hours.  In retrospect, the same thing happened when I was in early labor with the big girls.  I zoned out fairly large chunks of time!!

Anyway, the Packers were playing at 3:15pm and I remember telling Nate during our car ride around town how weird it would be if I went into labor during the Packer game.  It was Sunday the 12th and that's exactly when I went into labor with the twins!!  Except my labor with the twins began during a 12:00 noon game on Sunday the 12th.  And then I remember saying it would be even more weird to deliver the new baby Monday morning because the twins were born Monday morning the 13th.

If only I knew during that early morning conversation what we were in for!!  I remember sitting in the kitchen watching the game on a tiny 13 inch TV while the big girls watched Sesame Street on our 55" TV in the living room.  It was about 4:30pm or so.  And I remember being so thankful for that big screen TV to entertain the girls because by this point, I was pretty gosh darn positive that I was in labor and was pretty uncomfortable.  I still hadn't said anything to Nate because I was worried things would fizzle out.

My labor nurse from the twins' delivery texted me at 6:00pm asking me how I was doing and I responded by telling her that I was contracting every 6-9 minutes but most weren't terribly painful.  Quite uncomfortable, yes.  But not what I would really call painful.  By 8:30pm, I texted her again asking if she knew who was working the overnights because things were picking up.  Nate and I finally got the girls to bed and I timed my contractions even closer.  They were about 5 minutes apart and beginning to last much longer and become more painful.

Nate asked me what seemed like a hundred times "do you think this is it?"  And each time I responded more abruptly and more annoyed, "Nate, I don't know, I don't KNOW!"  And I honestly didn't.  I was expecting to have loads of back pain because that's what I had with the twins.  That's all I knew labor to be.  So when I didn't have *any* back pain, I was seriously wondering if I was jumping the gun.  In hindsight, thinking about how much that question irritated me and how I was snapping at Nate to leave me alone, I should've known I was in labor!!  Haha, oops.  Sorry hun.

After storming off into the bedroom after Nate asked me (yet again, mind you!) if I thought it was the real thing, I emerged dressed and ready to go.  It was 10pm and Nate was wondering what in the heck I was doing.  When I stormed off, annoyed that he asked me the same stinking question that I gave the same answer to every 10 minutes, I told him I was going to bed.  However, when I got to bed, I realized I couldn't lay down.  So I got dressed to go to the hospital!!

Nate took a couple pictures of me as I walked out the door.  I stood by the car door, waiting to have a contraction before I jumped in the car to make the drive.  Yes, I drove myself.  I figured with contractions every 5 minutes apart, I would only have to have 2 contractions before I arrived.  And being that it was late, late at night, I didn't want to call any neighbors over just for me to be sent back home a couple hours later.  Let's face it, I had 5 preterm labor admissions with the twins, which I was happy to be sent back home after.  And then I had one false alarm with them before the real deal.  So we agreed that I would go alone, hopefully establish if I was indeed in labor, and then make some necessary phone calls if needed.

To be continued...