Delivery

We have had a busy week since our last post of nursery pictures. Well here it all goes. Long story and you will get all the details...well maybe not all the details but the most important ones.

I was 39 weeks pregnant last week. However, I thought Bailey would be late, but obviously I was wrong. Tuesday I was scheduled to visit my awesome Doctor (Leigh Lewis). Around 9 am I received a phone call from her office saying we needed to reschedule my appointment because she had to deliver a baby that afternoon. Much to my disappointment, I rescheduled for Wednesday after school. Well around 10:30 am, during my class' small reading group, I thought my water broke. So during lunch I called the doctor again to see if they would be able to see me today! I was able to get in but with a nurse practitioner. I've seen her before, and she's wonderful, but she wasn't my doctor. So she ran some tests and concluded that it wasn't my water. Great! I felt so stupid for thinking it was my water. So back home we went.

In a way I was excited it wasn't my water, I had an appointment to get my toes done and my eyebrows waxed at 6. Well without knowing, my water broke before I left the house to go to the salon. I didn't think it was my water because a few hours earlier the tests came back negative. So I went to the salon and got all beautiful! :) Then I headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things. (good thing I did!) After all this running around I came home and went to sleep. Around 3 am I started to feel contractions. They were very random and weak. So of course I didn't think anything of it! Around 5 am they got a little stronger so I went downstairs, trying not to wake up Lane. About an hour later I decided to call the doctor, finally a good decision! She wanted us to come in right away. I showered, ate breakfast, then woke up Lane for what I thought was going to be a wasted trip to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, I was checked by the nurse (Ginny). And what you know, my water had broken! At that time, I looked like we were going to have a baby sometime today. Dr. Lewis came down to check me and I was only 1.5 centimeters. This was the exact same as week 38's doctors appointment. Since I had not made any progress and my water had technically broken at 6 pm the night before, she had some concerns. They started me on antibiotics as well as pitocin (a drug to speed up labor). This all happened around 8 am. I labored naturally for about 4 hours. This was very uncomfortable to say the least! I tried the birthing ball, a rocking chair, and the hospital bed, but nothing was comfortable. Around noon I wasn't getting any relief from the contractions. They were recording off the contraction chart and back to back. I decided to go ahead and get an epidural. I really wanted to try natural birth, but looking back now...what was I thinking!

I was 5 centimeters and fully afaced...making some progress! The anesthesiologist came in to shoot my back with some heavenly drugs. I believe I told him several times he was my best friend! Getting the epidural was not painful at all. Lane watched the whole thing and he got a little nauseated. It was more to it than he thought. All I know is I'm so glad I got it!

No more than 5 minutes after getting the epidural, there suddenly was 7 nurses and Dr. Lewis in the room with me. I was still laying on my side from the medicine. One nurse put the oxygen mask on my face, another gave me a shot in my arm, and the others were rushing around the room with a purpose. Finally I took the mask off my face and asked what was going on. Basically I was told that Bailey didn't like the epidural. Things had been progressing so fast then I got the drugs and my body relaxed, she didn't react well to that. They were unable to find her heartbeat! SCARY, to say the least. Once everything calmed down and both Bailey and I were doing fine, labor got easy! I was a chatty Kathy, Mom and Lane were in the room and all I did was talk for about 3 hours straight.

After Dr. Lewis saw all her patients for the day she came back down to check on me. This was around 5:30pm. I hadn't made much progress, only one centimeter in 3 hours. (after the scare they took me off the pitocin) She told me she was very concerned with my lack of change and that my water had broken for 24 hours now. So she said if I hadn't delivered by 8, they would have to do a C-section...not something I wanted. They put me back on the pitocin, trying to help things along. Well it worked and worked good and fast! The nurse checked me at 6:10 and I was ready to push! Awesome all the drugs worked!!! This was the good news, the bad news was that Dr. Lewis wasn't going to be able to deliver me. However, Dr. Reinhardt was on call and he was fabulous.

I pushed for about 50-60 minutes. The best thing about this was I couldn't feel a lick of pain just pressure. I remember during the marathon around mile 23, saying I only have 3 miles left...YOU CAN DO IT! As cheesy as that sounds that is what I kept telling myself. The end was in sight and I knew that if I worked hard now that soon I would have a beautiful daughter. And by golly did I ever get blessed with a beautiful baby girl! Once she was out, Lane cut the cord, I'm very surprised he did. And Bailey cried like a champion!

Words can't describe the feeling I had to see her for the first time. I will never ever forget it! It's an absolute miracle!