Nit's News: We Are Parents!

It's official-Gabe and I are parents! I'm apologizing in advance that this post will be lengthly, but I wanted to give the story of the birth as best as I can! I'm also back posting these since it's taking me forever to get caught up!

From the previous post, you saw that my water had broken at work and I was being admitted Thursday evening to the hospital.
These are my last belly pics before leaving the house for the hospital:

We went in around 6:30 in the evening. Both of my parents made the trip out that night to be there with us. When I got there, they admitted me and started my cervadil around 9pm. That was the excitement for that night-we tried to get some sleep, which didn't really happen since we were interrupted a lot.

Friday morning they started me on pitocin at 7am. Shortly after, I was having contractions about every 2min. When you're on pitocin, they like to keep them spaced out every 3min or so. Since mine were so close, they didn't "up" the dosage much throughout the day like they were supposed to. So, my contractions really weren't getting strong enough to cause me to dilate. I was just having them very frequently. Around 2pm I got the epidural and at that point was only 1.5cm dilated. Once I got it, life was good for a short time. I couldn't feel anything and my contractions kept going. They did increase the pitocin at that point so I slowly started dilating more.
Here's Dad joking around with me listening to the baby:

Here's a shot of Mom and I:

Like I said, having the epidural made life good-unfortunately for me it was short lived. Once I hit 4.5cm dilated, I started having very bad pressure with each contraction. The epidural takes away the pain, but not the pressure so there was nothing they could do to make it go away. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like you had to make a bowel movement rightnow. Imagine that every 2min and lasting a minute or so. Not fun! About this time, the doctor checked me (it wasn't my doctor but another one at the practice that was on call). She told me my pelvic bone structure was a funny shape and that I may not be able to have a vaginal delivery.

Around 930 they had me start pushing. I was finally dilated enough! They had me push until around 10:15 with very little progress. They decided to give me a break to see if the baby would drop some more on its own. At that point, the labor got really bad. I started having the shakes really bad and I also started dry heaving with each contraction. So you can imagine the fun this was-and do I dare say that it went on for several hours?! They started me pushing again around 10:45pm. I pushed for roughly 2 hours (yep, that's almost 3 hours total!) again with not much happening. They could see the head but that was about it. The doctor looked at me and said "At this point, all we can do is say you did the best you could but I think we have to go to the OR." Believe it or not, I was relieved! After all the pressure, shaking and dry heaving, it was probably the worst 6 or so hours of my life. There were many times I thought to myself "there is no way in hell I'm having another kid." I felt bad for Gabe having to see me go through all of that-it definitely was not pretty and I'm sure he felt helpless. It was a very rough and long day.

So around 12:45am they started preparing us for the OR. I was still having contractions, dry heaving, etc all the way to the OR, death gripping the bed rails as I went. At that point, I didn't care about having surgery-I just wanted the pain to go away and I was beyond exhausted.

I got into the OR and they started getting me prepped. Gabe wasn't in there initially-they brought him in at the last minute. They put a drape up right in front of my face so I couldn't see anything. They gave me more medicine in my epidural line so I only felt pressure, no pain at all. The thing I remember most was that I was so tired. I wanted to sleep on the table and had to fight to keep my eyes open through most of the surgery. Gabe sat right at my head and we were talking most of the time wondering what was happening.

Then we heard it-the baby's cry! Sweet sound to my ears I can tell you that!
Here's a pic of the clock when baby was born:

They held the baby up so Gabe could see (I was too low down to see anything) and we kept hearing "hey little guy" and baby being referred to as "him". Gabe looked at me and said "I think it's a boy!" When they held the baby up, this is what he saw:

He couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl because the cord was in the way! So I'm lying there wondering what it is-I swear several minutes passed without them saying (I think they were playing games with us since they knew it was a surprise to us). Finally I said "So what is it?" and one doc said "do you want us to tell you?" and I said yes!! He said "It's a GIRL!!" We were shocked! I remember I was crying but no tears came out-I was so exhausted that nothing would come out!! And I still hadn't seen her yet!

After a few minutes, they let Gabe get up and take some photos of her while I was getting "put back together":

Inking her feet for footprints:

On the scale:

While taking pics, Gabe was relaying info to me "she has a lot of hair!", "she looks just like you!" and I just kept waiting to see her!

Finally they brought her over for Gabe to hold her and I got to see her! She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen! I can't begin to explain the feeling of knowing my baby was finally here!
Here's proud Daddy with her: