Sunday, February 8, 2009
41 weeks 2 days
I stayed home from church and decided to get everything ready to go for my scheduled induction the next day. The bags had been packed for over 3 weeks already, except for the last minute things like toiletries, camera, and cell phone. I had a pretty lazy day - considering I was the veritable size of a whale, I excuse myself. That night I went to bed around 10 pm.
Monday, February 9, 2009
41 weeks 3 days
I was woken up at midnight by Ella - for some reason she deemed it appropriate to wake up ready to start her day 8 hours early. She did not want to go back to sleep! When I went in to her room to see what she needed, I didn’t find her drowsy and searching for her soother, as was usually the reason for a night time rousing. She was wide awake, and started calmly at me - like she knew I was going to be induced that day and thought she’d make me extra tired by keeping me up all night! I tucked her in, told her to go back to sleep and returned to bed. At 12:20 am, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep again and listening to Ella whining away across the hall, my contractions started.
By 2:20 am, Ella was in bed with Chris and I watching TV. The three of us were watching PVR’d episodes of In The Night Garden and Chris was timing my contractions. They were 6 minutes apart, and becoming more painful. The pain was radiating around my left side from the back to the front. We decided to call my mother in law to let her know that she may have to come over to watch Ella before the night was over.
At 2:45 am, Chris put Ella back in her bed and she finally drifted off to sleep. I came downstairs to time my contractions on the computer and let Chris get a bit of sleep in. By 3:15 am, my mother in law arrived (we didn’t tell her to come yet, we had just warned her she may have to make the 30 minute drive soon, but it’s a good thing she did come then!) and my contractions were 4 minutes apart. I started to gather my hospital bags and at 3:40, I woke Chris up. We left for the hospital at 3:52 am and were up in Labor and Delivery by 4:00 am.
I was brought in to the examination room so I could be checked to see if I should be admitted. The Dr. who tried to examine me had really short fingers and couldn’t get an accurate assessment, so she had to call for a nurse (with longer fingers...haha). I was 3 cm dilated, 50-75% effaced and my water was still intact (At my appointment 4 days previously I had been 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced). They decided to admit me as they could tell my contractions were very strong and getting quite close together. Before I went to my room, I soaked in the tub for about 40 minutes.
By 5:15 am I was out of the bath and in my room. My contractions were 2 minutes apart and becoming unbearable for me. They were much stronger than I remember them being with Ella. My legs and feet were tensing up and my toes were curling from the pain. At 5:45 I had the nurse call for the anesthesiologist. The 30 minutes that I waited for him to arrive felt like they lasted hours and the contraction pain got even worse. Finally he arrived at 6:15 am and by 6:30, the epidural was in place. At 7:00 am it was finally effective and I dozed off for about an hour.
At 8:00 am the nurse offered me some grape Jell-o which I greatly enjoyed! She came back with the Dr. when I was finished and did another internal check. At 8:20 am I was 6-7 cm dilated, and my bag of waters was still intact. She broke my water and immediately my contractions became much stronger! The nurse check me again just a few minutes after my water was broken and noted that I felt even more dilated than just minutes before. She turned up my epi a bit for the more intense contractions (not that it helped) and said it shouldn’t be long at all. She told me to let her know when I felt pressure like I wanted to push.
By 9:30 am I was feeling the pressure and urge to push, so the nurse checked me, and I was fully dilated. She had me do a practice push while she was still examining me, and said she could feel the baby move down effectively. They got the room ready for delivery and called the Dr. in. By 9:50 I started pushing - I couldn’t believe that he was already on his way! Labor was going much quicker than with Ella.
With each contraction I pushed 3 times, for about 10 seconds each. From watching my contraction pattern on the monitor, she could see that I was having a good strong contraction followed by a lighter, shorter one. She had me ignore the light contractions and wait for the big ones to do my pushing as I would have more effect during those. After 40 minutes of pushing, the head was finally out! He had lots of dark hair, just like his sister. During the next contraction, I didn’t even have to push his body out, it just slid right out with the contraction in to the Dr.’s hands. She lay him on my chest, all warm and gooey - which is the nicest feeling, strange as it sounds! Baby Boy was born at 10:27 am, weighed 9 lbs 7 oz, and was 22 inches long! Chris cut the cord, and they took baby boy to the warming table to clean and wrap up. When they told me his weight both Chris and I nearly fainted from shock! How on earth I got that huge boy out of me was beyond me!
We remembered how when Ella was born, Chris had said “Wow! She looks like my Dad!”. This time, as we looked at our new baby boy, he said “Wow! He looks like your Dad!”. He looked much different than Ella at birth - he was definitely an Allingham and not a Goetz! It took us a few days to name him, just like with Ella. Finally we decided on Eli Jeremy - I really thought he looked like an Eli, and he took Chris’ middle name.
1 comment:
Happy Birthday Eli boy... wow what changes in one year. I love the cake... very impressive!
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