Paige's Birth Story

Warning you ahead of time that this is VERY long and a little graphic. :) Well after lots of waiting, walking and cod liver oil (that didn't do anything) I woke up Monday morning 38 weeks and 2 days pregnant having actual strong contractions, although I wasn't sure that's what they were! With Kyra, I only had backlabor until after we'd had the epidural and she finally turned the rest of the way so I'd never felt hard contractions in the front! I called the L&D unit and decided to go in and get checked and we called Amy and Angi. I was pretty sure that either they'd send us home or we'd go fast enough that the dogs would be alright until after she arrived so we just left them home. We got Kyra woken up and dressed for the zoo (where Angi was going to be Monday) and dropped off over there and got to the hospital around nine. Amy got there just after us as we were still getting admittance stuff finished up and getting settled in. When they first checked me, my cervix was at 7 centimeters but still very posterior so things were moving along and we definitely weren't going back home! It took a while to get a good strip on the baby since she kept wiggling around but once that was done she checked my cervix again It was about 8 centimeters still, about the same as the last time it had been checked but anterior now instead of posterior, YAY! I sat in the jacuzzi tub for a while, but not very long as things were moving pretty quickly. On the way there I was thinking I was going to end up getting an epidrual because her little head was sitting right on my bladder and that made the contractions REALLY hurt (worse than back labor) but she finally shifted down some while I was in the tub and that helped a lot, until all of a sudden I was wanting to push and thinking I was going to need the epidural to keep from pushing! I got out so the nurse could check me and was around nine centimeters with an anterior lip left. Since my doctor wasn't available that day we were going to have the on call doctor which was fine since I'd seen her before when I was in having my appendix out this fall. The nurse called down to her and gave her a heads up that we were getting close. The water hadn't broken yet so it was bulging and causing a lot of pressure! After another few contractions she decided to see if she could hold the lip back while I pushed and have it slip back behind the baby's head. It did but it took a couple times to get it to stay there. Then after another couple contractions she called the doctor to come down RIGHT AWAY and said I should blow through the next contraction instead of pushing. Phil says I looked like I was going to hit her but actually I was just wincing and trying to figure out how in the world I was going to do that at that point! The doctor broke my water right away once she was there and then they did let me push again and it was actually not too bad. Since I hadn't had the epidural I had a lot more feeling than I did with Kyra and was able to judge more when I wanted to push and when I needed a breath and my body sort of took over in between pushes too. The first half of getting her head out I wasn't even pushing, she just came on her own. Once her head was out, the doctor had to slip the cord over her head since it was around her neck once. All told, we only pushed for 15 or 20 minutes and she was out and on my tummy at 11:44 a.m. so we had less than 5 hours of labor! She was VERY purple when she first came out between all the facial bruising she had from coming so fast and being purple from having the cord around her neck and having swallowed a little bit of fluid. She did get to lay on my tummy for a little bit though and I got to see her right away. I was so much more alert and with it then I was right after Kyra was born, it was great! I was able to talk to everyone in the room and was really aware. Her first Apgar was only a 4 so they did pull her over to the incubator and suction her out with the bulb syringe to try to get her to wake up a little more but her second and third apgars were 9, which is great! She weighed in at 9lbs, 7oz (6.8 oz to be exact) and 20 inches long with a 14 1/4 inch head so she's about an inch shorter than Kyra was, has a quarter inch smaller head and weighs 12 ounces more!! I didn't stop bleeding the way I should have after delivering the placenta, even with the pitocin. The doctor ended up manually removing some retained fragments of membrane and placenta which is just what it sounds like and not very pleasant. They did give me some pretty intense pain meds for that part after the first two sweeps because it hurt so much and I was ok with ME getting the meds. For a while right after getting the meds I was VERY out of it (I felt like I was in a kaleidescope because I saw four of everything and they spun) but once my head started clearing I was feeling pretty good. It did take over an hour to get me fixed up to where the doctor was happy between the bleeding and a small tear that needed repairing and they said that they'd have taken me to the OR to do that if they'd known it was going to be so drawn out so I'm glad they didn't know! Paige never had to leave the room and she latched on to nurse for the first time while I was still coming out of the med fog (I had to have the nurse help her latch because I was having trouble matching up which baby should go with which nipple since I was still seeing double) and did great nursing. Amy did Paige's newborn pictures within hours of her birth so she's really BRAND new in them. Phil chose Paige's name with a little input and it's super special! She's Paige Daelyn so her initals are the same as Phil's (he didn't care for Philomena Darien ;) ) and her middle name is after my dad whose middle name is Dale. Paige means "young helper" and Daelyn means "day waterfall" which Phil thought was very appropriate considering that she was born in the middle of the day when we were all expecting a middle of the night labor and that she tried to bring her water out with her! She has quite a bit of hair although not as much or as long as Kyra's was. Her eyes are dark grey right now. It'll be interesting to see if they lighten the way that Kyra's did or stay dark. There is a problem with one of her little ears where it just didn't grow right so she'll have to go in to the audiologist pretty soon to see if there's any function on that side to preserve or if it will be just a cosmetic fix only where she wouldn't be able to hear on that side, but no biggie. She had a few visitors her first day, including Kyra! Kyra was a little jealous at first but she adjusted pretty quick to the idea and just wanted to touch Paige a lot (she still wants to touch her every time she sees her and all on her own decided that the right thing to do with a baby sister is wiggle her fingers and say "tickle tickle tickle"). All in all everything went wonderfully. It was a GREAT birth experience and we're just in love with our new little girl. :)