I'm A Mommy!

Well, I'm sure you thought something was up when I didn't start freaking out the night before my induction! Luckily, at 4:30a on Thursday I woke up with a stomachache. I thought, "this is it!" but to my surprise I had a successful bathroom experience (tmi) and figured that's what was going on. I went back to bed and had that pain again. I decided to go lay on the couch and get out my Itzbeen timer (thank you Christina!). After timing, these pains were regular and I figured this must be the start of labor. Luckily, Mr. Later Than Most had just noticed I was no longer in bed and he came to look for me. We timed the pains for about two hours and they were contsistently 4-5 minutes apart with a couple of random times in there. The pain started getting worse so we decided we should head to the hospital. It was so hard to even get dressed. Those contractions were about a minute and a half long and when they come every four minutes, you don't have much time to do anything!

Poor Mr. Later Than Most, he tried backrubs and talking to me and I wanted nothing to do with anyone. I didn't want him to see me in pain and I kinda pushed him away. Luckily, he was prepared! Every time I had a contraction he went off to do something else! LOL Finally, we got into the car and the ride sucked. Every one drove slow and these streets really need the potholes fixed. I think I dropped a couple of F bombs about needing better streets!

At the hospital (9am) they checked me into triage and decided to give me a check before being admitted. To my surprise I was 5cm dilated. They told me I was staying and mentioned the epidural when they saw how much pain I was in. I told them I would wait a while and I'm not even sure why. Anyway- They took me to my labor and delivery room and I got all registered. My nurse was about my age and very nice. She reminded me that if I didn't care for a natural birth, there was no reason to endure any more pain. True as it was, I ordered my drugs and 30 minutes later I got my epidural. Not much longer after I was laughing it up with the nurses about natural childbirth. I CANNOT imagine how women do that.

Ugh! Now, I'll start to sum things up! My epidural started to wear off about 4 hours later. The anesthesiologist came in and added a little something for me (non narcotic). The helped A LOT. I was back to feeling great. About 4 hours later the pain was setting in. The new anesthesiologist was tied up in a C-section, and I was in pain. I started crying to control the pain, but it didn't really help. My nurse couldn't do much, but there was an extra dose ready in the epidural. She tried that and it didn't work for me. I cried for about 50 minutes. I was having back pain, abdomen pain and for some reason pain in my ribs. The rib thing was the huge problem because I couldn't control my breathing. It's hard to use breathing methods when you can't get air in! I'd love to say there is a great solution here, but after I got another shot, this exact thing happened again. An hour later my new drug wore off and the anesthesiologists were both tied up in surgery. MLTM was very upset as they promised me this would not happen again. I cried for about 30 minutes and the nurse called my doctor to see if a narcotic was okay. Let me tell you that MLTM and I were very against this. I didn't want to keep taking all of these drugs. . . only the epi was in my immediate plan. However, I was very desperate and just wanting to breathe. After receiving it, I felt very loopy and realized the baby would be loopy too. Then I bawled my eyes out because I felt so guilty. MLTM knew whey I was upset and though the nurse reassured us that it was low dose and very safe, we still felt horrible.

Well, I got another shot of the original stuff one more time (non narcotic). No one could understand why it wasn't working like it did earlier in the day. By new it was midnight. The baby was still doing great, which was awesome. I forgot to add that they ended up giving me Pitocin at about 2pm because I was dilating, but my contractions were 7 to 8 minutes apart. They finally caught up around 10pm, but the doctor was waiting for the baby to drop as low as possible. Okay, so after that last shot, baby's heart rate was steady, but they wanted it to rise and drop a little more. They put me on oxygen and I slept with that for about 2 hours. Now it was 2am and I was calling for another shot as the rib pain was horrible and I had no urge to push. When the nurse came, she suggested checking me. I was 10 cm, the baby was low, and  this nurse didn't want me on any more drugs! Well, long story short, she taught me to push and I was a pro. after 8 sets of pushing she told me to hold off and she was calling the doctor. She called got a thing or two. The next thing I knew, MLTM was saying, "Melissa! She said not to push!" I was thinking, "Dude, WTF? I'm not pushing!" The nurse calming said to my husband, "Would you please push that red button?" About 1 minute later the room was FULL of nurses. Three of them rushed to me and I was wonder what was going on. Apparently, my little baby was not waiting another second! The baby literally slid right out and my nurse caught the baby and everything. This I didn't know as I was laying there. I asked, "Is the baby out?" They smiled and asked if I wanted to know what it was. Apparently MLTM looked himself and couldn't figure it out, hehehehehehe. My baby girl was born at 2:38 am on April 8th. She weighed 7lb 5oz and was 20 inches long. About a minute after she was born, my poor doctor arrived. He was literally walking down the hall as Brooklyn Renee made her way into the world!

Brooklyn scored 9s on both of her APGARs. She's perfect in every way. I cannot believe she is ours. She looks like MLTM to me, which I'm grateful for. :) It's been a very, very long journey and it's so surreal to think that I'm finally a mommy! The other night I went back through my earliest blogs and read the sadness, despair, and hope that I had with that first IVF cycle. I'm blessed to have had a perfect pregnancy, a rather easy birth, and now the most perfect little daughter in the world.

I will for sure post a picture as soon as I can. Nursing duty awaits (AGAIN). Thank you so much for sticking through my journey :)

Melissa