The Princess has Arrived!! (birth story)

She was born at 11:16am on Friday, Nov. 19, 2004, weighing in at 9lbs. 11oz., our smallest!

Had about one contraction per hour, but hard, all night long on Thursday, in fact even woke D at midnight to say "this is it" but when it didn't pick up after an hour, went back to bed. So I would just go back to sleep after each one. Got up at 6am, still felt very tired, went back to bed and water broke with one really hard contraction aided by a kick at 6:30am.

Got to hospital at 7am, and nothing was really happening! Contrax had more or less stopped altogether. By the time they did a monitor strip, checked baby's position with ultrasound, rechecked it because inept resident couldn't tell if that was a head or not (more on her later), checked my cervix (4-5 centimeters, stretchy but baby was way high) and got the IV antibiotics in, and moved me to my own room, it was about 9:15am and contrax had just gotten going with a bang, about 5 minutes apart and much more intense. Around 10am the resident checked again, now I was 6-7 and baby had come down to +3 station.

I began debating an epidural at this point, and spent a while discussing that with the anesthesia nurse, D and the resident. I wanted it but was afraid I couldn't keep still and that it would adversely affect the labor, delivery, baby, etc. D was trying hard to talk me out of it, even insisted they call my dr., who was already driving there.

By the time the anesthesiologist arrived, I was getting close to pushing, so we sent him away.

Then the resident attempts to check me again, concluding she "thinks" I'm complete, but can't really tell, so she has to go get a more senior resident to come and check. This resident, who would also be delivering if the dr. didn't get there in time, said I was 8-9.

After a few more minutes, I began to REALLY feel like pushing, and my dr. arrived, saying "Just give me a minute to get my scrubs on." Then she called the inept resident, who I thought she was going to allow to try to check me again and I said "She is NOT checking me again!" but dr. said she would check herself, but resident would assist with delivery. She wanted to have her hands free to put counterpressure against perineum and ease shoulders out if necessary, thinking this might be my biggest baby yet.

While they were dressing and getting stuff ready, I sat myself down on the bed, spread my legs and began pushing. Resident said, "We better hurry up, I see a head." Doctor ordered me to push more slowly so I wouldn't tear, saying, "I know you can shoot this baby across the room, but don't. Let her head be partway out to stretch you." The next push the head came the rest of the way out, and then they told me "OK now, give it all you got", and out came the rest of her body. I reached down and grabbed her, and they helped me get her on my chest. I thought I saw a penis, but then I asked (by now they'd thrown a blanket over her) and they told me to look for myself (D had already seen but wasn't saying!) and I saw she was a girl. I didn't have any tear or stitches, have a minor hemorrhoid, but feel great in general.

She has dark hair and looks like me, or like I did as a baby. The birth went exactly as I'd hoped, and I'm SO happy. I AM glad that I didn't have an epicural, even though I sure wanted it at the time! The only thing that didn't work out was that 3 of my kids wanted to be there, and they went to school, (I thought they should just stay at home but D didn't) and when my dad went to pick them up, he wasn't on the emergency list, so it took a long time to convince 3 different schools to release them, and they missed the delivery.