Delivery Day!!! Today is the day we welcomed our first child into this world! Chris and I got up around 5am to start our day. We took showers and made sure everything was loaded into the car...and off we went to our induction. Trinity Hospital is only about 5 minutes away, so it was a quick drive. We arrived to the hospital at 6:45am and walked into the labor and delivery unit and said, "Hi! We're here to have a baby." It felt so weird saying it so nonchalantly. I think we were the only ones at the hospital...it was super calm and quiet. Thankfully, I was having mild contractions already...about every 15 minutes...so it wasn't like we were starting the whole laboring process from no contractions at all. And, when they measured me, I was already at 4 cm! Yay! I asked Chris if we could get one last prego pic...I love that we did this...you can get a true grasp of just how big I was! I gained exactly 30 pounds.
The first thing we did was fill out paperwork and go ahead and get hooked up to the monitor and blood pressure cuff. The monitor confirmed the contractions I thought I was having. Around 7am, we met our fabulous nurse for the day...Ashlyn Ward. I LOVED her! She was so encouraging! Around 7:15am, Ashlyn began administering the pitocin. This kicked those contractions into high gear. Then, at 7:30am, the physician whom we saw on Monday, Dr. Renee Thai, came in. We were so surprised to see her since she had told us she was leaving for vacation, but she said she really liked us and wanted to deliver our baby...so she held off her vacation by a day! Wow! She went ahead and broke my water...and whew!...that along with the pitocin really made the contractions intense and more frequent. I opted to not get the epidural until I just couldn't stand the pain anymore, as I didn't want to be strapped to the bed for hours on end. So, Chris and I just labored in the room by ourselves for about 4 hours...Chris says he thought his skin was going to shed off from me digging my nails into his back...sorry honey. He was the PERFECT coach...reminding me how to breathe when I would forget to breathe at all. Ashlyn came in on occasion to check on us, but for the most part, it was just Chris and me. This is a pic of me at some point during the laboring process....definitely must have been between contractions.
Ashlyn told me not to wait too long if I wanted an epidural because I had to be able to stand the pain of the contraction without moving while I received the epidural, so around 11am, I asked for the epidural. Around 20 minutes later, the anesthesiologist came and administered the epidural during which I had 2 contractions that were off the chart! I just remember thinking "I can't move an inch because I don't want to be paralyzed." Our anesthesiologist was cracking all kind of jokes the whole time he was administering the shot...guess it kept my mind off things. I requested that I didn't get a half epidural so I could still have some feeling. Right after I received my epidural, Ashlyn checked my cervix...and she started laughing. Our conversation went like this...
Ashlyn: (laughing) "You are not going to believe this."
Julie: "Please don't tell me I'm still at 4 cm."
Ashlyn: "You are 9 cm!!! I've got to go call Dr. Thai."
Julie: "What! 9 cm! No wonder it was hurting!"
So, Ashlyn went and called Dr. Thai, but she said should couldn't be there for another 1 1/2 hours, and so she told Ashlyn to take me off the pitocin to slow things down. So then we just hung out for about an hour till Dr. Thai got there. Here are some pictures of Chris and me after I got the epidural.
It all happened so fast...Dr. Thai walked in, Chris and Ashlyn held my legs, Dr. Thai sat ready to catch, and at my next contraction Ashlyn told me to push and started counting to 10. I felt like I didn't even know what was going on...and clearly I didn't because Dr. Thai stood up, took off her gloves, and said, "No, that wasn't it at all...take her off the epidural so she can feel more. I'll be back in an hour." I guess she wanted me to feel a little more of the pain.
About an hour later, I was definitely feeling the pain. With Ashlyn, Chris, and the pediatric nurse in the room, I started the pushing again. I could feel the contractions so much that without even looking at the monitor, I would say, "Oh...I feel a contraction coming on...we're pushing...and would start pushing." Dr. Thai came in after a little while and was in the room with us while I pushed about 30 minutes. She eventually told me that she wouldn't let me push for more than thirty minutes without some sort of intervention like a vacuum. Well, that was all the motivation I needed because I did not want a vacuum, forcepts, c-section, or any of that! So my pushing became all the more focused. Well, about twenty minutes later....it was all worth it because Charlie was crowning! A few more pushes...and....It's a BOY!!! I was concentrating so much on pushing that Chris had to say..."Look...it's a boy!" Chris was so sweet...he was crying with tears of joy! We were so, so, so excited that Charlie was here and healthy!!!! Dr. Thai held Charlie with one hand...
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