Happy Birthday Little Miss C

Wives tales and everyone I talked to told me the second birth is always faster than the first, isn't that the truth! After being nine days OVERDUE and someone wanting to be a groundhog and not come out of hibernation, it was time to evict her out, her stay was up! While I would have loved to have gone into labor on my own and not had medical intervention, I always say things happen for a reason.

We arrived yesterday morning at the hospital around 6am, checked in and then got settled in and hooked up into our L&D room. Was I nervous yes, because I have been all over the message boards for the last week reading about inductions going wrong and people ending up in emergency c-secs, probably not smart on my part! I was paired with a great nurse (the mom type with 35 years of experience) who assured me things were going to be fine and who helped calm my nerves and fears. 

Of course I wanted to try and do things my way and insisted on seeing my doctor before the pitocin drip was started. Around 7:30am she made her way to see me and told me the I was about the same as when she had seen me the week before, 3cms and about 60% effaced. I thought to myself, great, it's going to be a LONG day, clearly this kid doesn't want out. She agreed to breaking my water and seeing if my contractions would naturally start on her terms, if they didn't start within an hour to an hour and a half the drip would start, deal! 

An hour went by and I started to have some contractions, the nurse let me go 30 minutes more to see if they would get more regular and stronger, they did some but not enough to her liking. She said she was going to give me a small "boost" of pitocin to see if that kicked things into gear and at 9:30am that is what she did. She checked back 20 minutes later and I was starting to regulate every 5 minutes and they were intensifying in strength. At 10:15am she kicked it up another notch (and we made bets that we would have a baby by 1:45pm) and by the time she checked back 20 minutes later I was almost to 7cms, her head was low and in position and contractions were coming 3-5 minutes apart and had intensified to where I decided to cave and ask for the epidural. My labor this time was much differently than when I had J, it was all in the front, where last time it was all back labor. It took about 30 minutes to get the epi and for it to start working, by 11:15am I couldn't feel anything and was able to relax some. About 20 minutes later I told her I felt pressure and that I could poop, she checked me again and said, "honey were about to have a baby", but Dr. H is in an emergency c-sec and she isn't going to like it if I delivered this baby by myself. She gave me another round of the epi so I didn't feel the urge to just push her out and buy us some time until the doctor could make it in. Dr. H arrived about 12:10pm and got the show on the road. After 4.5 round of pushes Miss C arrived at 12:32pm, 3 hours and 2 minutes from the start of the pitocin! Take that labor!

We had some skin-to-skin time, she got cleaned up and weighed, not the 8 pound 13 ounce baby they were predicting but a healthy 8 pounds, 1 ounce bundle of joy with quite a bit of hair (looks to be medium brown maybe with a tint of red, but it will be some time until we know it's true color), and excellent apgar scores, both a 9 at the 1 minute and 5 minute check. 

Just since having J two years ago protocol at the hospital has changed and the babies are in room almost the entire time (unless you choose for them not to be). We stayed downstairs until around 2pm where they finished getting her vitals (20.75" long) and did her initial exam. Grandma and Grandpa got to meet Miss C and join us for a short time (need to get the video's from the iPad) as payment for then going to get us cheeseburgers and fries!

By 2:30pm we were settled into our room upstairs, I still was partially numb and was eagerly awaiting the epi to fully wear off so that the itching and tingly feet would go away and I could get up pee and take a shower! Daddy and the baby nurse gave C a bath and finished her upstairs check and then daddy gave her first bottle (he did for J too) around 5pm. 

The next thing we knew it was 6:30pm and daddy was headed downstairs to meet Grandma, Grandpa and Miss J, time for the sisters to meet. Priceless is the word that comes to mind when I reminisce on last night. There is over 10 minutes of video but these two pretty much sum it all up, LOVE! They stayed for about an hour, J was extremely interested in her sister and was much better than I thought she was going to be. She wanted to touch her, kiss her, know everything she was doing and held her a little. Her attention span was all over the place and she was constantly wanting to do something or say something different. She finally let Grandma hold her but poor Grandpa would have to wait!

The night ended with Auntie Rae coming to visit and catching up with Nurse Amy (one of our former RA's at SMU) who was going to be C's night nurse. At 10:30pm mommy and daddy called it a night and sent C for her first sleepover, some sleep was needed since mommy didn't sleep the night before with all of the anticipation.

Here are the pics from Day 1. Enjoy and try not to cry to much, or sorry if you are already crying!