She's Here! And She's Spectacular!

As I get back to feeling to my normal self...still quite a ways off but each day gets better I can't believe that the little thing sitting next to me used to be inside of me. So here we go with how she got from in there to out here.  Get some coffee as it's not a short post for obvious reasons :)

On Sunday night we went to the hospital to start the induction process. It's a slow process and so they start at night. So went in and got all hooked up and the pitocin started started pumping.

And it pumped.
And pumped.
Then it pumped some more.

Then it was 12 hours later and although I was having contractions I didn't feel *anything* and I wasn't any farther along that I had been 12 hours earlier. Still only 1.5cm dilated and 50% effaced. They decided to take a break and let me eat some lunch and totally disconnected me from most of the machines so I could walk around more freely.

At 12pm on Monday afternoon they started again and at about 1:30pm they broke my water manually. When they were done with what I can only describe as hell on earth I looked over at Jason and the poor guy was literally as white as a ghost. I was worried because I had never seen him look like that. He told me that it was the most horrible thing he had ever seen and I told him that I thought childbirth was going to be even worse.

After they broke the water, things finally started moving. A few hours later I was 3cm dilated and 70% effaced. I started feeling the contractions. And then holy hell did I start feeling them. I had never planned on doing anything naturally as I don't really feel the need to feel the joys of childbirth and so I got an epidural. I'm not kidding it was the best thing in the world. I could have hugged that anesthesiologist and when Jason got back in the room he was like holy shit you are like light and day. I felt so much better, not only with the contractions but also with the bed. I had been so uncomfortable in the hospital bed and so being able to sit on it or lay on my side without there being instant pain in my butt and side was awesome. So I was finally able to get some sleep.

The nurse at this point was awesome and we discussed a mutual love of candy. She was then able to get me a grape popsicle which I swear has never tasted better.

At about 11:30pm I was 6.5cm dilated and 80% effaced. Things had sped up and so we thought that I might be doing some delivering around 2 or 3am. So we went to sleep. The contractions started to get worse and so we upped the epidural amount but we were on our way!

At about 4am they checked again and uh oh....I was only 7cm dilated, although 90% effaced and -1 station. Things were slowing down.

At 6:30am they checked again, and I was at 8cm dilated, 90% effaced and +1 station. So Ok. I was making progress but it had sloooooowed way down as this was 7 hours after being 6.5 cm dilated. So then I totally freaked out. I mean I was hysterical, my blood pressure rocketed and I couldn't catch my breath. The nurse got my doctor and I told her how tired I was and did she think I was ever going to get to 10cm. She said she couldn't tell me for sure but if I was done we could do a c-section and call it stalled labor. She left and Jason and I talked and I called my parents and I was just so exhausted. At this point I had been in labor for 32 hours. The first 12 might have been "easy" but my body was still contracting and I hadn't slept hardly at all.

I told the doctor to check again in an hour. At that point I was exactly the same and I was done. There was no way that even if I made it to the pushing part would I have had enough energy to push for the amount of time it was going to take to get her out. I had gotten close, but in this game close doesn't cut it.

So we told her that were ready for the c-section and to just get it done. From that point they stopped the pitocin to get it out of my system and who knows, maybe my body would have kicked it into gear. They checked back with me at about 8am, I had still made no progress and so we were a go for surgery.

I was so scared. I have never been in a hospital let alone had surgery done.

I was shaking so hard when they took me to the room. The anesthesiologist was great and he kept me pretty calm telling me what was happening for all the things they were doing. When we got the room I was already totally numb and so they were like you move a little to get over to the surgery bed. And I was like sure. Then I didn't move anywhere, so I was like. umm...maybe not.

They got me moved over to the surgery bed, and started doing the prep work. And I was shaking a lot. And it was pretty fucking scary. But then they finished up that and suddenly Jason was in the room and things got started. We kind of felt like we were on a episode of ER because there was a med student in the room and they kept asking questions and going what is that or what would you do here. And I kept wondering what they were doing as I bet it would have been fascinating to see what was going on. Gross but pretty cool.

It didn't take long before they said, ok you are going to feel a lot of pressure here. And I did. And then a baby started crying. And the doctor said, "I'd say Little Lucy is here but she's not very little!" I started crying because I could hear her crying and I could hear everyone talking about her. Another doctor in my practice said, "You look just like your mom!".

Soon they told Jason they could come over to see her and told him to guess the weight. I couldn't hear what he said, and then they said, nope 9-6. And I said, "9-6?" and they said no....10-6! I laughed and said to myself, "Well I win!" Gotta love having the biggest baby among friends who all have big babies. Eventually Jason brought her over to me and I couldn't believe that she was finally here. She was wonderfully wonderful :).

From there we rolled into a recovery room where they tested their blood sugar. I tried to breast feed and while it didn't work it was nice for her to get a chance to know my skin. They said if her blood sugar was under 40 she would have to go straight to the NICU, if it was 40-55 we would want to give her a bottle of formula to pump it up, and if it was over 55 we were good to go. The nurse tested and it was 35. I was thinking, "Oh no!!! She just got here don't take her from me." The nurse said when it's under 40 they do two tests and she just had to get another nurse. This nurse tested it and she measured 42. So we did the formula and after a 3rd test her blood sugar was up in the 80s. Before we went to our room there was one more test and her blood sugar was 56, so right above the cutoff. The NICU said it was fine for her to be with us but we would be testing her blood sugar ever 3 hours for the next 24 hours.

From there they wheeled us upstairs, and she was with us. More stories from the hospital to come. But Miss Lucille Jean is here, she's wonderful and she's made Jason and I so flipping happy.

There will be lots of pictures of her at my smugmug account. This gallery will have all of her hospital pictures in it. Enjoy!