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!
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