Brooke's Birth

Brooke is now 9 days old! WOW, time is already flying by. After a long morning and early afternoon I was finally able to get her down for a nap so I am going to try and write her "birth story" in that time. It is long so I tried to put it in sections in case you want to skip around.

Preface

The weekend before Brooke's birth, I found myself very energized. I was sleeping 5 hours a night yet thriving through out the day and running tons of errands. My neighbor -- who was due the same weekend as me -- had her baby so I spent time visiting her, running errands with her mom, and Tuesday night I decorated her apartment and baked a cake. By 10PM on Tuesday night I just did not feel right and decided to call out of substitute teaching the next day. I went to bed with a mission to finally get more than 5 hours of sleep.

When it all started...

Around 5am I woke up for the first time and noticed I had "wet" myself, or so I thought, and went to use the bathroom. I felt a gush when I sat down and thought, "I really needed to go to the bathroom!" I got back in bed and after feeling crampy, decided to make another trip to the bathroom at 6am. Once again, I had "wet" myself, and once I sat down another gush came. Just to be safe I put a call in to the doctor and after explained to her what happened, I was told to come to Labor and Delivery at the hospital. She told me not to rush and to take an hour or two to get ready, which made me happy because we had not packed my hospital bag yet! I woke Dustin up and after making sure he was coherant, I told him to take a shower and I would pack the hospital bag. An hour later we were off to the hospital!

Here we go!

After confirming that my water actually broke, I was admitted to my own room and set up on the IV. This is where things started off rough. I am not afraid of needles, so I was completely ready for the IV, but apparently my body was not. As soon as she hooked me up -- in my hand, OUCH -- I started to pass out. Dustin had just happened to step out of the room so the nurse had to call for help since she could not let go of the needle! After a nice cool compress, I was back on my game and ready to start walking the halls. Also, I had not had my Strep B test so I had to automatically start antibiotics for that which hurt SO bad going in! I used an ice pack to numb my hand a bit and lessen the pain. So after all that, the nurse told me that if I did not start labor by noon, they were going to start me on Pitocin.

Let's get this started...

Around noon our wonderful nurse decided to check me. Let me tell you, I never imagined that getting my cervix checked would hurt so much! One enema later (yes, you read that right), I was ready to go. Dustin and I began to walk the halls again... he pulled the IV cart while I munched on ice chips. Around 2 in the afternoon I finally started labor! The contractions were pretty mild at first but in about an hour, I was back in my room and sitting on a birthing ball. I'll be honest and say they got so intense that I broke into tears and could not calm myself down. The doctor on call from my OB practice came in to check me and when he said 2cm, I about cried. He then became my best friend again when he said, "Let's discuss pain meds." I guess if you are on pitocin you can get the epidural as soon as you want! SO... GIVE ME THAT EPIDURAL! A CRNA came and gave me the Epi, which took about 10 minutes to set in. I felt so absolutely wonderful and was able to relax in bed before the pushing phase.

Coming to the end!

2 hours later, I felt an overwhelming need to push! I called the nurse in and we found out that I was 9.5cms dialated. She told me to breath through the need to push and she would be back in 30 minutes. Well, we did not make it that far. At 6:00 I told her I could not longer resist the urge and after a quick check, she confirmed I was at 10cm. The pushing process started and was much more exhausting than I anticipated. About 30 minutes in, I was having trouble breathing so they had to put an oxygen mask on me. Dustin has pictures, it wasn't pretty.

After more than 2 hours of pushing the nurse brought my doctor in, which is always a great sign that it is coming to an end, and he told me he would like to preform an Episiotomy (look it up if you need to). I knew exactly what it was and decided if that would bring the baby out, I would do it! Sure enough, a couple pushes later our little girl was born!

Brooke was born at 36 weeks and 4 days yet weighed 7 lbs 1 oz! Her birth time was clocked at 8:17pm which puts my labor at 6 hours and 17 minutes.

The recovery in the hospital was painful the day after the birth, but got much better with each day. And you know what, I would not change a second of it! We have a beautiful, healthy baby girl who makes my heart swell. She is truely a miracle from God and I am amazed at the fact that Dustin and I made her!