See pictures from the hospital room!
Born: February 19, 2005 at 11:04pm
Weight: 6lbs 9oz
Length: 18 1/2 inches
Full head of brown hair, and dark blue eyes.
I technically (I guess) went into labor at around 2:30 in the afternoon, but honestly, it just felt like normal, totally unpainful, braxton-hicks contractions until about 7:30. But anyway, I call my doctor at 2:45 because I suddenly started having contractions at 5 minutes apart. None before, or any further apart, just one right after the other, but Goat has to go to work if I'm not having the baby, so we go ahead and ask. My doctor tells me to go ahead and go to the hospital and get checked and MAYBE I'll end up staying. I figure I'll probably get sent home, but I WOULD really like to have this baby... so we get everything together and... my car refuses to start. No idea WHY, but it won't. Of course its in the driveway BLOCKING all the other cars... so I call my sister (who happens to be on her way to the city my hospital is in) and she comes to get us. We all get to the hospital around...eh, I'D SAY 4-4:30ish and they examine me. I'm only up to 4cm dialated (where I was at my last apointment) but they don't want to send me home yet, and they tell me to walk around for 30 minutes to see if I dialate more. Oh, also, I was appearantly having contractions about every 2-3 minutes I was just only NOTICING the ones every five. Anyway... we(Goat, my sister, and I) wander around the tiny little birthing center, and half an hour later I'm about 5cm. They call my doctor and she tells them to go ahead and keep me. :) I sit on the monitor for a bit and talk to Goat and call some people. It was realy very unexciting. Nothing at all like I expected... but my doctor got there and they decided to break my water. That usually speeds things along... but MAN, it was GROSS! Not only was it totally disgusting, and REALLY uncomfortable, what most people fail to tell you is even after your water breaks, YOU CONTINUE TO LEAK. Constantly. Its disgusting. Anyway, after having my water broken contractions DID start to become uncomfortable. Not much at first, but without all that amniotic fluid coushioning the baby against all that contracting, it hurt a little. My parents show up right then and I send them out to eat because nothing was really happening yet. She (Juliete) shows up too. :) I wasn't expecting her, but it was nice. After my parents and sister leave, I send Goat and Her to get food as well cuz they're hungry. Of course, right after everyone is gone my contractions actually start to be painful. At first its just like really uncomfortable cramps, but after a little while I really wanted Goat to come back... He does not too long after and notices the faces I'm making with each contraction. So does the nurse and they offer me painkillers. I say NO WAY to an epidural, but I might CONSIDER something light to take the edge off. For just then, I dealt by holding Goat's hand... and crushing it eventually. I went ahead and agreed to something added to my IV. I still don't know what exactly they gave me but it took less than a minute to hit me and I suddenly felt like I had after drinking almost a whole bottle of rum. Wheee.... It was only a SMALL dose and I was still quite a ways from having the baby (I would have said no otherwise, I didn't want the baby to be groggy when she was born), and it took the egde off of the contractions. I'm not too clear about chronological order after that... I know my parents and sister came back, and they kept checking me to see how much I was dialated. I also know I ended up holding Her hand for a good chunk of time. :) I was a little irritated because they put me on pitocin when I was about 6-7cm, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I thought I was progressing fine, they were impatient. At some point they made me roll onto my side (by then contractions had started to make me breathe funny and moving SUCKED). When they tried checking me again it hurt so bad I wanted to hit the nurse... the shift had changed and the new nurse had.. erm.. Heavy hands. Anyway, them checking me hurt worse than the labor and it made my contractions worse too. I know I started crying... and around then I started to want to push. I was only 8cm I think so they said no... I remeber the contractions changing so it was like I was pushing, only I had no control over it and I started crying more cuz I wasn't supposed to push... it was SO frustrating. They told me they had to check me again to see if I could start pushing, but that meant I had to roll over, something I couldn't do because everytime I tried I'd have a freaking contraction! I finally managed it and they checked me, I don't know what they said cuz the exam HURT SO MUCH, but Goat was telling me I could push a little. Once I actually was allowed to push, though, I got even more frustrated! I would have a contraction, and they'd tell me to "hold my breath and push". Now, if you've ever been in labor, you know what they always tell you is "breathe". You also know that by the time they let you push, you're exhausted. You don't want to hold your freaking breath! And if you do, you IMMEDIATELY have no energy to push! On top of that, everytime I started pushing my contraction would stop. It would just freaking GO AWAY. NO more help from uterus! ARGH! I was going to die from FRUSTRATION! It didn't even hurt NEARLY as much as I thought it would! Though... my doctor was doing this thing where she was pushing down to help let the baby out.... HOLY SHIT IT HURT. So I asked her to stop. I felt bad because I knew I probably snapped at her to quit freaking touching me... but it hurt WAY more than labor... But anyway... I ignored them telling me to hold my breath and kinda started yelling instead... *blush* A lot. LOUDLY. But I was pushing successfully. Without the contractions helping me, though, (remember, when I started pushing the contraction would stop) pushing wasn't as easy as I'd thought it would be. If I relaxed at all the baby would just.. slide back in. More frustration. To sum things up, I yelled more (and louder... and then screamed. And I mean, I'm-being-attacked-by-an-axe-murderer scream) and FINALLY had the baby. Only about 4 hours of what I would consider "real labor". No epidural. Only one very light dose of painkillers, and that was around 7:30 and I had the baby at 11:04. And no episiotomy. Thank god. I DID tear a little, but I've had worse. (Don't ask) Oh yeah... everyone was still in the room. My mom. My Dad. My Sister. Goat. "Juliete". And two (or three?) nurses and my doctor. Talk about embarassing. But they were all great... My other sister and her fiancee also showed up just as I was pushing the baby out. They came IN the room right after. So it was VERY crowded. Blah. Yeah... the baby was gorgeous. Everyone agreed. I've seen newborns and they aren't the cute little things in movies. They're blotchy and slimy and funny colored and misshapen and look like wrinkly old men. But for some reason not my baby. Well, she WAS a little slimy... but she wasn't lizardy... she wasn't blotchy, just kinda purple (and she turned a normal baby pink after about 3 minutes), and her head was perfectly round. Baby's born vaginaly are supposed to be cone headed, but she was... well, perfect. :) We've had so many visiors... and she's so well mannered... SO yeah... I have a daughter. :) Winter Reilley Diane. She has all of our last names (Yes, its sounds silly but she DOES have 6 names. Deal with it!) We're both doing perfectly fine. I'm almost back to normal... A little sore, a little pudge, and I think my hips are a bit bigger(gee...just what I need), but I'm doing great. She's perfect. :) A little small, but completely perfect. (Well, she is a little jaundiced, but they have her on a light that takes care of that, and it only showed up today and its mild) So, I'm being discharged at 9pm tonight and she'll be coming home tomorrow morning. :) I'm a mommy...
I love you
Juliet