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. :)

Another Update

Well, there's not a whole lot of new things to tell. :) I keep putting off updating here hoping that we'll be able to post an update that we're headed for the hospital in labor, but not yet! Monday we had a morning OB appt. Still 4 cm dilated, VERY soft but still very far back cervix-wise. They did a non-stress test and little sister is looking good. The doctor said she just couldn't believe I haven't delivered yet! Monday afternoon we did a maternity session with Amy. I'd been sort of wishy washy on decided to do one since I just didn't feel very photogenic but I'm glad we did since we have the pictures from when I was pregnant with Kyra and I know that the girls will LOVE seeing them some day, especially when they're all grown up and it's their turn! (Although, if Phil has his way they'll be adopting since they'll already be going through menopause when they get married...) As much as I hate pictures of myself I have yet to have Amy take pictures of us and not end up with ones I actually like, even of ME! It was an interesting photo shoot since Bean was NOT feeling cooperative and mostly just wanted to run around naked and distract Amy and get in front of the camera. At one point she did bring me a remote control car to sit on my tummy, a present for Little Sister maybe? Even though she's normally just fascinated with bellies in general and especially mine, she wasn't about to kiss the tummy or cuddle or anything cute. :)

Besides the two on here, I put a few of the pictures up in a web album that you can go see HERE but be warned, there are some bare belly shots and a few nearly naked baby shots. ;)

"Nine" Months Pictures!!!

First of all, we got the pictures back from Kyra's dedication at church in August so if you go look at my August 3rd post, I put them up there. :)










On Monday, Amy was nice enough to do more pictures of Kyra and they turned out just beautifully! They were supposed to be her 9 months pictures... but Mama is running a month behind. Kyra was her normal, non-cooperative, stubborn self so there's not a single one where she's just sitting and smiling, but that's just our girl! I love that her personality comes through so strong because the reason I treasure her pictures is because she's growing so fast and we'll have them to remember this stage! If she always had the perfect JCPenny style posed portraits, sure, they'd be cute, but it wouldn't look like KYRA!! I think my favorites are the ones where she's beating on the wicker stool like a tom tom drum. :) Some were in her Christmas dress and some were in her tutu and some were just plain naked! (She of course liked the naked ones the best because our little one is sort of a nudist.) Neither modesty nor humility are her strong suits. After we got home when I was looking at all the pictures on the computer she was sitting in my lap and insisted that we look at them over and over!! I'll put the link to her pictures on Amy's site up and also add a few here that aren't up there.

Kyra's Pictures at Full of Grace Photography

Kyra's Birth Story (some TMI details ahead)

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I woke up at 2:45a.m. Saturday with what felt like strong back pains and abdominal cramps 2-6 minutes apart and thinking maybe my water had broken. (Turned out it had, but we didn't know that until after we'd been triaged at the hospital since I've never done this before!) I wasn't sure if I was in Labor or not, which I assumed meant I wasn't since people had been telling me all along that when it was really labor I'd know! Called the advice nurse and then spent a couple hours drinking gatorade, showering and changing positions to see if the pains went away. When they didn't we went in to be checked at 6:45a.m. and they decided my water had broken so they admitted me without doing a cervix check, planning on waiting until we'd progressed further to avoid introducing any more possibility of infection since I'd only been contracting for about 4 and a half hours at that point. Our friend Amy (Kyra's honorary auntie) showed up while we were in triage still and was a really great support all through labor to both me and DH. After we moved to the labor and delivery room, I rested for a couple hours as much as possible and eventually spent some time in the shower with the hot water on my back (WONDERFUL feeling) as most of the pain was still in my back/tailbone. Around eleven or so I was in enough pain and getting tired enough that I was thinking I wanted some i.v. pain relief so that I could possibly rest a little between contractions as I felt like I was close to being able to do that so the midwife came in to check us and saying that if I felt like resting I probably hadn't progressed very much, but PTL we were at 8 cm and in transition!!! I felt a lot better and more able to tolerate the contractions after that knowing that we weren't still in early labor and things weren't about to get a bunch worse. After another hour I was at 9 cm but it seemed like Kyra's head was still at a bad angle and not lined up with my pelvis right. Ended up getting back in the shower on hands/knees with the hot water on my back and eventually just relaxing in the tub full of water when it got too tiring to be trying to stay upright through the contractions. 2 hours later we were still at 9 cm with no progress and she wasn't turning so the midwife suggested getting an epidural as it would possibly help my body to relax enough for her to finish turning. We had a great epidural although having it put in wasn't any fun. I had almost no loss of sensation/pressure and I could still feel/move my legs well but the pain level dropped enough for me to relax. It did slow down contractions however so they started us on pitocin. After another hour or so something suddenly felt different and there was strong pain at my tailbone instead of just pressure so the midwife checked again. All that was left was a lip of cervix that the midwife thought we could push through and it seemed like Kyra had turned her head just enough. We waited until half after 5 or so when I had a stronger urge to push to give her a chance to turn the rest of the way and then started pushing with feet up on a squat bar on the bed which was very helpful. I was on oxygen for much of the pushing and they turned off the pit as Kyra's heartrate kept jumping up. Finally we were crowning (got to watch in the mirror, so neat and definitely nice to be able to see the progress we were making!) but the dr. decided she needed to come a little faster and that her head was still not sitting quite right so we had an episiotomy (made me yelp as I wasn't expecting it to hurt that much and that scared Phil). That was the CREEPIEST sensation ever as it actually FELT like scissors... Apparently the midwife and nurse started to discuss possibly needing to do a c-section then, but I thankfully didn't hear them, just Phil. She was out about 2 or 3 minutes later after a couple more long pushes. Turns out the problem was that instead of presenting the crown/back of her head, she was presenting the top/flat part and then she had both fists tucked up by her face like she was trying to push her way out!!! Her oxygen levels were low as she had fluid in her lungs and so she had to go to the nursery so Auntie Amy went with her. I did get to touch her first while she was on my stomach for about 30 seconds. It took longer than they liked to stop my bleeding and I did end up with low hematocrit at my blood test the next day but didn't end up having to have a transfusion. They put in the stitches for the episiotomy/tear after they numbed the area up. When she said she was going to do the stitches I asked if she could numb it first and she said yes, and that sometimes the epidural isn't enough to take away all the pain during the actual delivery. She looked a little startled when I pointed out that I'd NEVER been numb at all in that area, even during the episiotomy... Phil and Amy were both AMAZING throughout the whole labor and delivery. There's no way I could have done it without them. I think without the support I would have ended up with an epidural a lot sooner and probably a c-section if I hadn't been able to relax enough for her to turn or stay motivated enough to push her out as quickly as she needed to come. Kyra spent about 4 hours in the nursery for observation but was off the oxygen by 8pm. Phil was able to go down and see her there and eventually Grandma & Grandpa B. did too. I was moved upstairs around 9 but got to stop and see her in the nursery for a few minutes first. We were so relieved at 11:30 when she got to come up too! I'm so glad she's "out" now!! Honestly, Labor and Delivery wasn't at all as bad as I expected!! Phil was wonderful and I'm so glad we were able to not have a c-section.