The Birth Story

Sorry I haven't written too much...been busy with the new little peanut at home. Trying to get on some sort of routine here...

Anyways, thought I would update everyone on how Emily arrived in this world. My water broke at10:30pm on Christmas night. Of all nights, Kory was actually home, which as most people know had to be a sign because he's never home at night. So we headed to the hospital and got there around 11:45pm. They took me to triage and we had to do some tests to see if my water actually broke. While we were waiting, I was hooked up to the monitor and started having mini-contractions, so we were pretty sure this was the 'real thing'. At about 12:30am they said the test showed amniotic fluid, so sure enough..we were admitted to St. Mary's. We got set in our room shortly after that. They decided to give me 2 hours to see if I could make any changes on my own. I was 3 cm dialated when I arrived in triage and 2 hours later I was still at 3 cm, so they decided to kick start my labor with Pitosin. WOW! That stuff is AWFUL!! Okay...so it does what it's supposed to do but geesh! Those contractions got fast and hard really quick.

To take a step back...my mom really wanted to be there for labor and delivery. My parents came up from IL to Madison on Christmas Eve to celebrate the holidays at my sister's so I didn't have to travel home so close to my due date. So they slept over to Christmas Morning and then headed to their house on the lake up in Hayward, WI. That's about a 5 hour drive. When they got there, mom called me from her cell phone in town to say that their phones weren't working. So if something happened, I was supposed to call the lady down the street and she'd come get my mom...too funny, right? Well OF COURSE my water breaks. I knew I needed to call them, but wanted to be 100% sure that I was going to be admitted before they started the 5 hour drive home. SO....at about 1am I called the neighbor and she had to get out of bed and drive down to my parents and wake them up. They ended up having really bad weather up there and it took them 7 hours to get to the hospital! I felt soooo bad!!!

Okay, so back to my contractions getting worse. This was probably around 5am when they started to get super intense. Kory and I did some walking and I sat on the birthing ball for a long time. That was wonderful! Kory's mom arrived around 5am or so. She and Kory helped me through the next 2 hours of labor which were super intense. At about 7am I was 4cm dialated and decided I wanted an epidural. So my epidural arrived around 7:30am. I was then pretty close to 5cm. The epidural HURT! Nobody told me that!!! But after it worked, I was feeling darn good. Kacey and Casey both arrived at the same time around 7ish. Just after the epidural, so it was nice they didn't have to see me in so much pain. I'd like to have more nieces and nephews! HA HA

After I got my epidural, we were all just hanging out. I think mom and dad got there around 8am or something like that. Then we all just hung out waiting for the baby to come. We had lots of good times, just chatting and laughing. It was one of the most special times of my life. I had a room full of people I love!!!! We were all so anxious to find out if the baby was a boy or a girl!!!

So at about 9am I was a good 7cm, then by 11:30am I was 10cm. So they called my Dr who was in Sun Prairie at the Dean Clinic. I was SOOO ready to push, but they said just hang in there. So I was busy breathing through my pressure to push. Dr. Zenner arrived around 12pm and did an exam...he barely put his fingers in and said...OKAY! Time to push!! Everyone get ready! HA HA I guess the baby was about ready to come out on her own. So everyone got ready. I pushed for 20 minutes and baby Emily arrived in this world!! It was so amazing!!!!

She is already a little angel. She sleeps pretty good and is starting to nurse better and better. It's taking both of us some time to get the hang of it. I had heard nursing was hard, but I didn't realize it was by FAR the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Giving birth was easy compared to this nursing thing. We are hanging in there though and gettting better each day.

Speaking of nursing...she's just waking up, so I'm off to nurse again.

Thanks for all the prayers and special thoughts. We are so blessed.