Lily was born on December 28th at 6:17 AM. She was 7 pounds 11 ounces and 20.5 inches long.
Her due date was January 2nd, so she was born at 39 weeks and 1 day.
The morning of December 27th I had my weekly doctor visit to see how pregnancy was coming along. I had not changed since the week before, and was 2 cm dilated and 75% effaced. Not too exciting.
Afterwards I went to the grocery store and got home about 1:30. I brought groceries inside, and before putting anything away had to pee like most pregnant women before I could finish anything else. Annnnd that is when my water broke. I felt a tiny pop and gush, but wasn't sure if I was just still peeing, as peeing gets pretty weird near the end of pregnancy. After some attempts at moving and realizing that the water was still coming out in little gushes, I determined my water had indeed broke. I called Kyle who was at work and he came straight home.
We headed to the hospital and arrived at about 3:00. I wasn't sure if I was having contractions because my cramps were so mild. Triage determined my water had broke and I was 3 cm dilated, and we got set up in our labor/delivery room soon after. About 30 minutes into Beauty and the Beast and around my contractions really picked up. I was checked and was at 4 cm. By 6 PM my contractions were already 2 min. apart and, to me, excruciating. My plan had been to do it without an epidural, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Each contraction made me feel like I was going to vomit, which did happen with one of the contractions, and I was having difficulty breathing through contractions and was unwilling to move, let alone try different laboring positions. Kyle and I discussed it and decided I might be having a very fast labor. Maybe it was already getting close? We asked to check dilation at 6:30 and I was 4 and 1/2 dilated. Only 1/2 dilated after 2 hours of hard labor and close contractions. I looked at Kyle and said that I did not want to go through this for possibly 10+ hours more.
Give me that epidural! After about another hour the epidural was in and oh the relief! We decided to get some rest. After about 2 hours of sleep, and around 10 I started to feel the contractions again and they got worse and worse, almost to the point they were without the epidural. The nurse said that maybe i was almost ready to push and that is why the pain was more intense. They checked me and I was an 8 and 1/2. The anesthesiologist put something into my IV to help, but it did nothing. They asked if I wanted the epidural redone, as it might slow down labor at this point, or if I wanted to stick it out and push soon. I said that at this point I was so exhausted and in pain that I wouldn't have the energy to push. Give me the epidural...again. Turns out the epidural was 4 cm out of place. After being redone, pain went away again and we were able to sleep from about 11:30 to 3AM.
I was checked again and was 9 and 1/2, but was starting a low fever that was slowly climbing. I was put on Tylenol and antibiotics and my fever went down. Soon after they decided that because of the fever that it was time to start pushing. At first i was not able to feel much of anything, and was not effective at pushing, but over time the medicine faded and i began to feel what i was doing. Pushing took 2 hours. At this point I could mostly feel what was happening. I would describe pushing as hard work for sure, but it wasn't painful until the last 10 or so minutes, the actual delivery part. Wow, that hurts! But finally Lily was born. The cord was wrapped around her neck once, which the doctor handled so quickly before she was fully out that Kyle hardly realized what happened. What a great doctor :)
All in all labor and delivery went great and we feel really good about our experience. The hard part that we didn't anticipate was right after lily was born, NICU time, and our stay in the hospital. I will post all of this soon in Lily's birth story, part 2.
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