We are so happy to announce the arrival of our sweet little girl, Maggie June Pebbles, born at 11:25am, March 15th. She weighed 8 lbs 3.5 oz, and the anticipation of her birth was the best birthday present I could have ever asked for!
For those of you that want the details (hopefully without too much TMI), here is our Labor and Delivery story:
Since my last blog post, all my time was spent either nesting, shopping, eating, going to the doctor, or watching Canadian Men's Curling during the Olympics to the point of obsessed insanity. That, and trying to find some way to make my body comfortable while my pelvic joints were screaming in pain by the end of each day.
I was due on March 7th, and when that day arrived with absolutely no indication of imminent labor, I began to wonder about a few things...like, "Will I be sharing my birthday with Baby?" and "Is she going to get here in time to still be a Pisces?"...you know, important stuff:) While I loved being pregnant, I was ready to have my baby, and was getting emotional about the wait. I think every status update I posted on Facebook was some impatient rambling about not being in labor. After my appointment on my due date, we decided to come back and have the doctor strip my membranes on the 9th to see if that would help get things going...it really didn't. Then I tried eating eggplant Parmesan. That didn't do much either. Then I started thinking that maybe she was holding out for a piece of in-utero birthday cake...like a last indulgence before a long haul of breast milk and formula? Turns out I was right! We had our cake late Saturday night as a little early birthday celebration, and at 5:35am on Sunday March 14th, on my 33rd Birthday, my water broke. I was so excited! It was the best present ever!!
We checked into the hospital at about 8am, where they did a test to confirm that it was amniotic fluid I was leaking and not urine:)...and the test kept coming up invalid. I knew that it was my water, there was no question in my mind. It took several tries and finally an actual doctor to confirm it. I guess they wanted to keep my blood pressure up:) I wasn't having any contractions at all, and was only 1 cm dilated, so they checked me into the pre-labor room and hooked me up to the fetal monitors where I would remain for the rest of the day. I was given something to start ripening my cervix, took the first dose at about noon, second around 4, and then waited. And waited. And waited. I had lots of visitors though!! My parents came to see me, my good friends Autumn and Mitch came with their son Grayson (and brought magazines!), and John and I ordered lots of food from the hospital cafe which has the most delicious Mac n' Cheese ever! I spent the whole day just hanging out waiting for labor to start.
Then, right around the time Sally and John's parents arrived armed with Birthday presents and ready to celebrate, I started having real contractions. It was right about then that I realized that this was the first time I had actually had contractions. The tightening and hardness that happened a couple of times in the previous weeks did not count. These hurt. Like hell. I tried really hard to enjoy the time with family, Sally gave me an adorable pair of earrings and both parents spoiled me with $$$ to pamper myself after baby, but it was really hard by this point because I was in a lot of pain.
Oh, and those monitors, yeah...they weren't recording my contractions. I was fighting the urge to unleash strings of profanity about every 3 minutes...but the machine basically said nothing was happening. Finally a nurse gave me a clicker so I could press a button every time I had a contraction. That made me feel slightly better about my situation, and was really rallying that by my 8pm check, I would finally be at 3 cms and then they could check me into labor and delivery, and I could get my epidural!
8pm finally arrived, the nurse came in to check me and sent everyone out into the hall to wait. I couldn't wait to hear the good news...
that I was still only 1 cm dilated.
This would be the point where I nicely asked my husband to please send everyone home immediately and firmly asked the nurse to please give me something to take the edge off... something which my doctor had told me during one of my weekly check-ups that I was allowed to ask for, God Bless Her! It took a little while, but finally the nurse came in sporting a large needle with Morphine in it, which was promptly jabbed into my ass cheek. I felt nothing but glorious happiness.
The drugs helped a lot. I highly recommend all pain relieving medications your doctor will allow during labor. I could not have done it without that shot. The next 3 hours were just a haze, all I did was get through each contraction, and then zone out until the next one. Finally, at midnight, I had made the magic mark of 3 cms...YAY!!!
They moved us to our Labor and Delivery room, and about 30 minutes after checking in and meeting my night nurse, I got my epidural. That all went pretty smoothly, the anesthesiologist basically commanded John to the other side of the room because they told him they only wanted to deal with one patient. Then it was back to waiting. I heard that you can sleep after the epidural. I guess I heard wrong. My monitors were back on and now instead of the contractions not being picked up, this time it was the baby's heartbeat that kept disappearing off the screen. Lovely. Couple that with them having to keep flipping me from one side to the other every couple of hours, I got about 2 hours sleep between 7am and 9am.
But, at 9am, the doctor-on-call arrived to check my progress and I had made it, I was fully effaced, 10 cm dilated!! They informed me that I was ready to push, they said I could rest for an hour and then we would start. They sent John to eat breakfast, and my new Labor nurse (the best nurse EVER!!!) took her quick breakfast break too. I just hunkered down and tried to prepare mentally for the last haul, the part I feared the most.
I have to say that for all my fears about labor, the pushing- the actual delivery- was the easiest part! I think I owe a lot of that to my amazing labor nurse, who was the best coach. She made every part of that delivery calm and simple, for both me and John. They were chatting between my contractions like they were besties, and then she'd be right back to me and focused on the counting and my breathing. I really think that when my Doctor finally pulled Maggie out and held her up, I think that half the shock I was feeling was that it was over, and that it wasn't horrible! Of course, let's remember that I was numb from the waist down, but still! Easiest part.
There were other parts to the story, like my accurate premonition that (like waiting for the birthday cake) the baby wouldn't come until my doctor made it back to work after a weekend away for her son's hockey tournament. The amount of actual involvement John ended up in during delivery (much more than either of us had planned), that it took us until just before we checked out the next day to settle on a name...the whole experience from beginning to end seems filled with countless amazing memories. I can't believe we made it through, and that we're finally parents.
And with that said, my little pumpkin has just woken up from a rare afternoon nap so it's time to go!
((((((hugs)))))) from the whole fam...
Thanks for all your well wishes and love during this amazingly wonderful journey!!!
I cant wait to share our adventures with you!
