Okay, so here's the short version of the story...
Last Monday afternoon, Josh and I headed to the doctor, hoping for some good news;o) We got it! Dr. Browning did an ultrasound and said the baby looked to be about 9 lbs (1.5 lbs more than Abby was) and that he saw no reason to wait any longer, because she would just get bigger, so he scheduled me to be induced the next morning at 5:30. I was already 1 day overdue. We immediately called Josh's parents, who were ready to come at a moment's notice from 3 hours away, and they set out, arriving just in time for us to get home from a yummy steak dinner at my parent's house, where I had contractions 5 minutes apart for the entire time we were there! At that point I was like, "I will NOT go to the hospital and miss my 'last meal', to have them say I'm not ready and have to either come back home or stay there and not have the baby til the next day anyway!" (I was getting pretty tired of the "teasing" contractions I had been having over the past two weeks...) So after a last minute trip to Target with Josh's mom to get snacks and such (thanks mom!), we played some cards and I went to bed.
Just got to the hospital...my camera date was 12 hours off...
I guess i said this was the short version, but now I'm on a roll...We got there around 5:15 and headed straight our room. The nurse was someone to talk about! She was a large woman, with large squatty fingers which were not fun when she checked me to see how much I was dilated-OWWW is all I have to say! (TMI?;) I was at a 3 at that point. I wasn't sure after that how great an experience this would be, but it did get better! So, by 6:00 they had me on fluids, 6:15 on pitocin and by 8:00, I was a 4 and the doctor came in and broke my water. After that it went pretty fast for awhile-contractions got hard, but due to the fact that I was already a 5 and the anesthesiologist had to be in the OR for 2 c-sections in a row by 9:00, I got my epidural at 8:45! And it's a good thing too, because by the time she could have come back to give me one, it would have been way too late! We were joined by my mom at that point and I rested for awhile, and then the nurse came to check me-an 8 within a 2-hour period! By the way, my nurse during the entire labor and delivery was FABULOUS-Shannon Anderson! Both she and my doctor were of the mindset that I shouldn't start pushing too early for fear I'd get tired out, and the baby was still pretty high, so they sat me up and said, let's let Mother Nature do her thing for awhile, even after I was fully dilated. It was pretty quickly then that I started feeling the pressure to push and unfortunately, even with the epidural, it was starting to get painful. VERY painful! I eventually convinced them to get me more epidural meds and once that took effect, the baby finally dropped enough that it was time to push! It was about 1:00 when the pushing began! Hooray!
Our last moments alone as the parents of one child...
My popsicle;o)...
Pushing wasn't the most fun experience for me this time. Not that it was when I had Abby, but the epidural had worked differently and I had felt NO pain when I had her! They had to give me oxygen because I wasn't breathing deep enough and it took just over an hour-and-a-half, but Phoebe finally arrived at 2:39 pm! I guess I took the nurses by surprise at my progress near the end there, because her head was half way out before they paged the doctor to come in and deliver...it took him AT LEAST 5-8 minutes to get in the room, and that entire time, the nurses were saying, "DON'T PUSH!" as half told me to pant through the pain and the other half told me to breathe deeply-Make up your mind, women! So, I've never been very vocal about things during this whole process, but if that doctor had taken ONE MORE SECOND than he did to get in place, he would have gotten the worst tongue-lashing of his life-Seriously, I may have even hit him! But he had the benefit of being far enough away in a situation where I was VERY distracted with my baby's head being where it was, as well as my desire to get the baby out ASAP that I could only murmur with no energy "Where is he?"-and then things got really crazy once she was out and I was crying from relief and pain and everything else!
So she's here! And she's beautiful! They informed me pretty quickly of a few things that were of a little concern with her. She was born with a club foot on her right side and her right hand and fingers seemed to be a little underdeveloped and she held them up against her body in an angled position. We've seen the pediatric orthopedist since then and she already has a cast on her foot to help correct that and he thinks her hand and arm will fix themselves pretty quickly with a little bit of TLC! So, all is well so far!
Phoebe's sweet right arm...
And her sweet little feet!
We had many visitors in the hospital, which we loved, and we were able to go home just over 24 hours later! Things have been crazy since then, of course, but we are loving having two sweet girls! I know there is more to tell, but I will split it up into some other posts in the near future!
Love to you all!
I guess it's time to post some more pics of the girl! She's officially one week old now and as I thought this morning about where we were last week at this time, I was overwhelmed with gratitude that it's THIS week!)
