Birth Story

So here is the birth story for those of you that are interested.  It's pretty long but I want to remember the story so I'll have something to refer to for the other kids' labors so just skim it if you get bored. 

So I'd been having Braxston-Hicks contractions for months before Brynn was born.  The result was that I was already at 4 cm by my last appointment a couple of days before my due date.  So I was thinking, "Cool, I'm almost halfway there without any major pain.  This will probably not take very long at all!"  Little did I know.

My due date came. . . and went.  I wasn't really worried though because I had gone two days over with Aubrey and that was fine.  Well I waited and waited and waited and waited.  Finally I was almost a week over due and getting frustrated.  Still more Braxston-Hicks but nothing really helpful.  Then on 1:45 in the morning on May 17, I woke up with a pretty good contraction and some back pain.  The contractions left and I didn't have any more but the back pain stayed.  It was a throbbing sensation that occurred every couple of seconds on my left side.  I couldn't fall back asleep because it hurt and it hurt more every time I moved.  I was pretty miserable.  I wasn't sure if it was back labor or something else so I called my doctors office at 7 when they opened.  They said the only way to find out was to the hospital and get hooked up to a machine so we started to get ready to go to the hospital.  We had decided to have Brynn in the Powell hospital, about 1/2 hour away.  My mom lives in Powell so she could watch Aubrey for all my doctors appointments and we had heard good things about the Powell hospital and the Powell doctors. 

So we dropped Aubrey off at my parents house, went to the hospital and got checked in.  They did an ultrasound to check for a kidney stone but nothing showed up so they figured it was back labor.  Since I was contracting they let me stay.  I laid in bed for a long time dealing with contractions.  My sister had used the Bradley method with her baby and had lent me her book so I was using that for my contractions.  Basically it advocates relaxing your whole body through contractions so your body can get the work done unimpeded by tension.  So I was doing that pretty well but it did nothing for the back labor which was a constant thing that wouldn't go away.  So I eventually got something for the back pain in my IV.  It was pretty strong stuff and made me feel dizzy with only a half dose.  After that stuff wore off I still wasn't very far along in the dialation department.  So after a while they had me walk around and around and around and when that didn't do much they broke my water.  And after that didn't do anything, they started me on pitocin.  I'd always heard pitocin what an intense thing so they gave me another half dose of the pain stuff and again the back labor went away but I still felt the contractions.  So that finally got things going so I felt like I needed to push.  So they got the doctor and stopped the pitocin but then nothing happened.  So they started it up again and I started pushing.

I pushed for like 10 minutes, and they were not fun minutes.  I had an epidural with Aubrey so I hadn't felt anything last time, but I'd heard that pushing was a relief after waiting through contractions so I hadn't really worried about that part of having Brynn without an epidural.  Yeah, pushing was the worst part. That might have had to do with having a 8 lb 12 oz baby though. But those 10 minutes passed, and she finally arrived! She was very unhappy.  She screamed for almost half an hour but we eventually got her calmed down and nursing and then she slept.

Everything went pretty well after that except for a little scare when she started throwing up amniotic fluid and refusing to nurse.  But she got all the fluid out without us having to pump her stomach and got back to eating.  She's a good eater and had regained her birth weight within 5 days and she hasn't looked back.

She's a wonderful little girl and hasn't had too many uncontrollably hysterical crying jags or all nighters.  She has started to sleep 8 hours at night and smiling and talking a ton.  We are still working on getting a laugh out of her but it will come.  Here are some pictures of her around her birth.

Daddy holding his new little girl

Aubrey holding her little sister

Our first family picture!