The dramatic entrance

I have a million things to say but don't have the energy to say them. But things are going well. We are finally getting in the swing of things and I must say there are a lot less tears for both Josie and myself. Without getting too graphic and in too much detail here is a rundown of her birth story. The evening of her due date (Aug 24th) I decided it was time for her to come out, so I went on a really fast, uphill walk for about 2 hours on the trails behind my house. I don't know how far it was, but according to Nick it was too far. Now before you freak out, Nick knew the exact trail that I was on, and it was not far from a road. He was at work and I was in the park so technically he could have run code to come get me (with his lights and siren on). I started to feel sharp pains that lasted about 20-30 seconds on my way home and I thought, "are these contractions?" But they weren't that bad, so when I got home I mowed the lawn. There were a few of these "sharp pains" that I had to stop mowing and breathe through, so when I was done I decided to take a shower just in case I was actually going into labor. I didn't want to be sweaty and smell like cut grass if I had to go in. So I got out of the shower about 7pm and they were getting much worse so I called Nick to tell him that we might be going to the hospital tonight. He was going to rush home right then, but I told him to take his time, they were not too close together. But a bit of my family history was making him weary. Both my mother and grandmother had their babies all within 2 hours of their first contraction. There was no way to tell if this was going to be my future as well. We live about 30 minutes from the hospital and neither of us wanted to have this baby in the car... So when Nick arrived home, we walked around the block until they were about 5 minutes apart and close to a minute long. But I could walk and talk through them at this point. So I called my doc on her cellphone to ask if she wanted me to come in (see above family history). She said to wait an hour and see if they get worse. So Nick and I proceeded to walk around the block over and over. Within 45 minutes they were definitely closer, harder, and I could not walk through them. So we headed in about 11:30pm. We got there at midnight and I was 3cm and just to make sure it was not pre-labor they had us walk around the hallways for an hour to see if I progressed at all. By 1am I could not walk or talk through a contraction, in fact I had to brace myself on the wall, and when checked again I was 4.5cm. So we were admitted at 1am.

I continued to walk around the room and tried to relax, but couldn't sit or stay still for any contractions. So I walked around as long as I could. I wanted to wait as long as possible before I received the epidural because I had heard they can slow your labor down. So I made it to about 6cm and my contractions were about 1 minute apart and 1minute long. I was pretty exhausted since we had not slept at all and it was 5am. So epidural in I was able to sleep a little, only thing is that my contractions slowed down...bummer! So my doc broke my water to see if we could speed them back up, and they did a bit, but not as fast as before the epi. So in comes the Pitosin, yuk! And we sat and sat until about noon before I was ready to push.

The pushing then began, and 2 hours later I was still pushing with not much progression. It was really hard to hear "that was great, keep pushing exactly like that" with nothing to show for it. What we didn't know at the time was that Josie had flipped herself over and was posterior and at a weird angle. So my doc (with a very worried look on her face) suggested that we call in the hospitalist to try suction. At that point I was ready to try anything, so in comes a whole team of people. The doc and hospitalist told me that they would try to suction 3 times and after that a c-section would be required. Not only did they suction more than 3 times but they tried for a half hour. And just when the nurse anesthetist came in to start prepping for the c-section, miss Josie Mae popped out! She was blue grey and it seemed like she didn't cry for minutes (although my mom said it was seconds). Nick and I both instantly burst into tears of joy. She was quickly whisked away by the NICU team and thoroughly checked out. She scored an 8-9 out of 10 on the APGAR test even with the massive bruise and laceration on her head. She was perfect!

She also has a liver of steal because her billirubin was back to normal by the 3rd day. Everyone was pretty amazed that she didn't need any light treatments. She did have a massive headache for the first 2 weeks of life, but other than that she was in great shape. I guess I went into more detail that necessary but it was a pretty intense experience.

The funny thing is that when people hear the story they almost always tell me that the next one will be so much easier so not to worry. But I have to say I would do it again the hard way in a second because the prize at the end was worth it a hundred times over. I would have pushed for days just to get my sweet girl.