Kate's arrival into the world

On Saturday, Sept. 20 Mike left me to go downtown to tailgate for the UT game. He called me around noon to tell me that he was in the finals of a washers tournament and should be home in an hour. I told him that I am feeling fine, no reason to hurry home. Not 5 minutes later, the oven alarms that my brownies are done. I get up to check on the brownies and as I open the oven, fluid starts to run down my legs! I realize that “my water just broke!” So I call Mike and of course he doesn’t answer his phone!! Finally, I got in touch with Mike and told him that my water had broken and he needed to come home. I took a shower and got dressed and put the rest of the stuff in the car. Mike got home and we left for the hospital. At 1:30 we arrived but had to wait for a room for an hour. Once in delivery room # 11 I got hooked up to a monitor that showed I was having weak contractions about 7 minutes apart that I did not feel. The nurse examined me and I was still only 1 cm dilated. She tested the fluid and confirmed that my water had broken. The doctor on call wanted to wait until 6:00am to start pitocin.
Well, it was a long night Saturday night with nothing happening. They started the Pitocin at 6:00AM and nothing continued to happen. At around 10:00 am the on-call doctor examined me and I was still only at 1 cm dilated, but she didn’t think that my water was broken. So she decided to break my water and it was pretty awful! There was a lot of blood and Mike almost passed out!
Once my water was broken, things really began to pick up! I started to feel the contractions and Mike was a great coach. He helped me breath thru all the contractions! At 1:00pm I was really beginning to be in pain so we called for anesthesia to put in the epidermal. By a little after 2 pm I was feeling no pain and was now 3 cm dilated. Mike’s parents, my parents and my sister and her finance were all waiting!! By 4:00pm I was ready for a nap and was 7 ½ cm dilated. After the nap, at 6:00pm I was 10 cm dilated!! Now came the time for pushing!
I now know why Labor is called Labor—because it is work! Pushing is hard work! After an hour of pushing, I was getting crabby! Of course, our nurse had to leave because it was the end of her shift, so I didn’t want the new nurse to think I was a crabby person! Mike and the nurse were coaching me to push and they kept telling me that they could see the head. I told them I thought they were lying to me! Finally the doctor was called and at 7:39pm Kate was here!
She has tons of hair and long shinny toes!! She weighed 7 lbs, 5.6 oz and is 19 inches long. She sleeps a lot, but is breastfeeding pretty well. I haven’t had much sleep, but my body seems to be healing from labor. Mike and I are still trying to get a handle on everything, but I think we are doing pretty well so far!