I'm gonna do this in two parts. This one will be about the birth story itself, the second will just be the birth stats and pics for those that don't want to read all the gory details.
My due date was approaching and my Dr. informed me that he would be on vacation on my due date. He told me that if I might want to schedule an induction in case I didn't have the baby before he left. I REALLY didn't want to be induced and so decided against it. My doc said he didn't want me to go more than a week over the due date so I should set up an appointment with the Dr. filling in for him while he was gone. I scheduled the appointment but didn't go in (sick kids and I myself wasn't feeling well). The due date came and went and nothing was happening as far as contractions. I let it go a couple of days and decided I better call the fill-in Dr. and schedule that induction. My new appt. was for Thursday, September 17th. I went in to the office thinking I would set up the induction for today, Monday, the 21st. That way I would have a little more time (hopefully go in to labor on my own) AND my regular doc would be back from vacation. All was going well, ultrasound looked good, plenty of amniotic fluid, and then the doc said we better do a non-stress test. That's just a fancy term for monitoring the baby's heart for a period of time. The doc came in and looked at the test and was worried about two places where the heart rate went down and didn't recover quickly. The rest of the test looked great, but he didn't want to take any risks. I didn't either. He scheduled me to go in the same day at 3:00 p.m. It was already 1:30 and I had no time to go home and get everything I needed. This is one of those moments where I couldn't believe I didn't listen to myself and gather up those needed items. Oh, well, Brent ran home and gathered them for me.
So, I went to the hospital, and, because of pre-registration, walked right in expecting to be taken right to a room. There were all types of miscommunications going on at this time. The room I was supposed to be in wasn't clean. As a matter of fact, the cleaning lady kept telling the desk that a patient was still in that room and she couldn't clean it. That's was okay for a while because I was hoping Brent would make it to the hospital before all of the action began. So I sat and waited, dh showed up and I started having contractions. We waited for at least and hour and I was escorted to my room. Of course I had to give a urine sample and get in to a large, gown. The nurse had to ask me all kinds of questions and it came up that I had 5 kids at home but that this was my second pregnancy. We started to really talk and she shared that her daughter was an adoptive parent. She then began telling us about her son-in-law and how she had set her dd and son-in-law up. Okay, so the cool part, I knew them. Her son-in-law was our family Dr. for a brief time. My dh talked to him about our adoptions because they didn't have any children and it came up. I knew of his wife from a China adoption list and was excited when they adopted two girls from China. It was so neat. Plus, I just really liked this nurse because she was so dang funny.
Well, it was shift change time and I was handed off to a new nurse (with the knowledge that this NEW nurse was good with handicapped adults). Yes, I was mentally challenged at this point when I could not get the IV tubing unwrapped from my body, LOL! During all of this, contractions were really moving along. I went from a 2 or so in the docs office to a 4 dilation. I was pretty much fully effaced. I asked my new nurse if I could just go on my own without the induction. She said it was the Dr.'s orders but she would just give me a whiff of it. Contractions were getting more intense and the Dr. decided to come in and break my water. I REALLY didn't want that. I was hoping to go without an epidural and that pretty much ruined it for me. The contractions were so hard and close that I could barely breathe through them. I got the epidural (why do they say not to jerk, it only makes it harder not to, LOL). I forgot to tell them not to give me a full dose of the epidural. All meds work on me fast and hard. The nurse said I would only have to go through a few more contractions. Well, how about I was completely numb almost as soon as the meds hit me. I also became quite slap happy. The nurse checked me and I was complete. We just had to wait for the Dr. to come in and deliver her. I told her that I hoped I wouldn't have to do much because I couldn't feel a thing from the waist down. She said, "why don't we do a practice push?" It worked out just fine. The room was set up and another great nurse came in. She told us to watch the doc because he had a pretty funny routine of putting on his gown and flicking it as he sits down, like a dress. As he was getting dressed, they decided to do another practice push. I did and they asked me to stop, the head could be seen and the nurse and Dr. were not quite ready. I only went through about 3 sets of pushing and she came right out. Apparently, the cord was really long and wrapped about her body. The doc said that might be why her heart rate went down for a bit. She was so beautiful, so worth the wait. Very pink and perfect. We love you Karlyn!!!
