Little Miss is here! We love her and are terrified by her at the same time. She will be two weeks old tomorrow, so I thought I'd better get her birth story written down before the forgetting mechanism that ensures women will have more than one baby sets in. So here we go...
*Disclaimer-- Everything about childbirth is disgusting. Amazing, yes, but also disgusting.*
I guess the first place to start this story is with how much I love my doctor. Erik says it's a little creepy to love your gynecologist that much, but I do. So you can imagine my distress when I found out that he was going out of town for 2 weeks, leaving right on my due date. I definitely said something polite like "oh I understand" in my appointment, and then sat out in my car and cried for 15 minutes. I liked and trusted my doctor, and I wanted him to be the one to deliver my baby. On top of that, I was progressing pretty quick for a first baby. At 37 weeks I was 70% effaced and dilated to a 3, so Dr. Beach and I decided to see if we could push things along by stripping my membranes at my 38 week appointment. For those of you blissfully unaware, stripping the membranes basically means the doctor runs his finger in a circle during your cervical check and breaks all the little strings connecting your fluid sac to your cervix. I was really worried it was going to hurt, and I think it does hurt for a lot of women, but it didn't hurt me at all. Dr. Beach was pretty sure this would send me into labor, and agreed to induce me before he left if it didn't. My mom switched her plane ticked to come earlier, and we prepared to have a baby
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| Final belly shot-- 39 Weeks, 3 Days |
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| All Ambiened up and feeling good |
On Tuesday, May 14th we picked my mom up from the airport at 11:30 pm and checked into the hospital at 12:00 am. The nurses started me on pitocin (a drug that starts labor) even though I was already having mild contractions. They then gave me enough Ambien to drug a mid-sized horse and we all slept for like 6 hours. I could definitely feel my contractions at this point, but they weren't even bad enough to keep me awake.
At about 7:00 the next morning my doctor came in and broke my water. It is seriously mind-blowing how much water was in there. It gushed and gushed and then would spurt again every time I shifted. This is when labor got real for me. My Braxton Hicks contractions just felt like the baby was stretching really big inside of me. I had been having those for the past 3 months. Real contractions felt like a burning that started in my back and came around into my stomach. In keeping with the theme of my pregnancy, real labor made me throw up like crazy. Like a true pioneer woman, I put up with real contractions for about 20 minutes before requesting the epidural. It took the anesthesiologist a few minutes to get to me, so I did "real labor" for about an hour total.
I spent the next few hours going between shallow sleep and throwing up. The epidural didn't take great on my left side, so I was still pretty uncomfortable. At about 11:45, my doctor checked me and I was dilated to a 9 and ready to push. I pushed through 3 contractions (about 8 minutes) and she popped right out. Erik stayed up top with me and held my hand, while my mom and mother-in-law were in on the action, helping me hold my legs in the ever-so-flattering frog position. My mom cut Baby's cord, I sprayed some birthing fluid on her shirt, and we had ourselves a baby. She cried right away so I knew she was breathing and doing well.
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| First family picture, but probably not one we will hang on the wall |
Right after Baby was born the nurses took her to the other side of the room to weigh her and check everything. While I was pregnant I thought I would be anxious for them to finish and bring her back to me, but honestly, when it actually happened I was so exhausted I could hardly see straight and I was just fine with them taking their time. This was initially confusing to me, since I had been napping all morning and slept decently the night before, but then I realized that whether I was feeling it or not, my body had been in labor for more than 12 hours and then pushed out a human being. When the nurses brought her back to me, she was all over the whole breast-feeding thing, latching before I even really knew what was going on. Halfway through her first feeding I had to quickly hand her off to my mom while I finished my last throw-up. Don't take serious pain killers on an empty stomach, folks.
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| Dad and Baby. I think she looks a little like a garden gnome in this one. |
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| Little one is not quite big enough for her newborn clothes yet |
So that's how it all went down. We stayed two more nights in the hospital and then came home. My mom stayed for the next week and a half and helped, and now we are finally on our own. Heaven help us.
Questions you are Wondering, but are Too Polite to Ask
Did you poop on the delivery table?
Nope, I did not. However I have been unable to have a successful bowel movement without the aid of laxatives ever since Baby was born, so clearly pooping is not one of my strengths.
Did you tear?
Just a little bit. I remember right after Little Miss came out, I looked down and Dr. Beach was sewing me up with this big long red piece of thread (thread? stitch material?) and my heart sank. I was still numb, so I couldn't feel anything and had no idea how serious the damage was. He only had to do 2 stitches, but they have definitely been pretty sore and stingy, so I have a whole new compassion for people who tear much worse.
How's your body after baby?
Ummmm....strange. I gained 15 pounds with my pregnancy. When I left the hospital I had only lost 9. That seemed like a really small number to me seeing as Baby weighed 6 lbs 6 oz, and I had lost so much water and blood, plus the whole placenta deal. However, over the next few days the rest of the pounds went away, and I'm actually sitting at about 2 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight. However, it doesn't look like it. When I first went to the bathroom after giving birth and saw myself in the mirror, I was actually really disappointed. Everyone told me you still looked 5 months pregnant right after birth, but I looked more like 8 months pregnant. It's not nearly so bad now, two weeks out, but it's still pretty poochy. I have been wearing a belly band like 23 hours a day, and I highly recommend it. I don't know whether or not it's helping my uterus shrink faster, but it definitely makes me feel more tucked in and gives me some back support while I'm breastfeeding. I didn't get stretch marks, but I still have this nasty brown line that starts at the top of my stomach, circles my (highly misshapen) belly button, and heads down. Word on the street is this line goes away, and any time it decides to is great with me.
The one upside is now I have great boobs. I've always been pretty flat, so having some cleavage that isn't aided by a push-up bra is kind of a nice change. Of course the price for these is a little person gnawing on my nipples for roughly six hours a day, but I'm getting to the point where they are not nearly as sore.
Would you ever consider giving birth again?
I think so. I did not like being pregnant. Some women really like it and feel spiritual or feminine or something. I mostly felt frumpy and nauseous. However labor and delivery was not nearly as bad as I expected, thanks to modern medicine. I've been telling people I would way rather do another labor and delivery than another first trimester. And at the end of the day, it's pretty cool that Erik and I made a human, plus she's pretty stinking cute. I super don't want to be pregnant again anytime in the next few years, and am actively researching long term birth control, but sometime in the future we will probably try for another one.
That wraps up a very long post. I will end with what you all actually came here for, a zillion pictures of my sweet baby.
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| I call this one her turtle face |
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| A picture of the two most important things in my world |
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| Baby with her Nona |
