Birth Story

Our little girl is now 5 days old, and cute as a button! The time at home has just been absolutely wonderful so far, despite some predicted sleep deprevation. She is such a good babe!

It's so hard to believe that she's here finally. Being that my brain is a bit mushy and slow right now, I'll be brief with her birth story.

1. Monday night we went for a walk and I was feeling really tired of being pregnant.
2. Got home, got ready for bed after a movie and had just taken off my glasses when I was jolted physically in bed. Turns out my water broke and I had my first contraction--this was at 11pm.
3. We timed the contractions for a little while and called the OB. they were only 10 minutes apart but he wanted us to come in anyway since my water had broke. I was a bit bummed because I'd wanted to labor at home for awhile and I was nervous about getting on the hospital clock.
4. Contractions really started getting more frequent as soon as I got off the phone with the doctor. Todd finished packing up the car in between helping me get through the contractions and we left the house around 12:10.
5. We got to the hospital around 12:40 or so and slowly made it up to triage...I had to stop every few minutes though b/c of contractions, including one time in the parking garage where I had to drop to my hands and knees--there were a few people walking around and I'm sure they enjoyed seeing me labor in the parking garage!
6. We finally got up to triage where they checked me and found that I was 4cm and 100% effaced. I was a bit disappointed to only be at 4, and was anxious to get into the tub. They were short on nurses and weren't sure if I, or the other laboring woman in triage, would get the room on the L&D unit...but pretty quickly they decided to let me. We left triage for our birthing suite at 1:30am.
7. I got into the tub which felt so good. We were really trying for an un-medicated birth, but the contractions were so hard. I tried to get into the zone and just let my body do it's work, but it was so hard. Finally after about 30 minutes in the tub, I said, ok, let's get an epidural. They got me out of the tub around 2am and up onto the bed so that the nurse could get an IV in.
8. At this point I was really having a hard time...I remember rocking around on the bed, up on my hands and knees and just really having a hard time sitting still. All of a sudden, I felt like I needed to push and told my nurse that. She checked me and I was at 10! I heard her call over the intercom for some help, that I was ready to push and that she needed the doctor.
9. The anesthesiologist finally comes in to do the epidural..My nurse asked me if I still wanted it, since I was ready to push, and I said, "no! I just want to push!" I had to labor down for 10 minutes or so, b/c the OB was finishing up a c-section, and it was SO hard not to push when that's all that my body wanted to do.
10. I finally got to start pushing around 2:15, and it felt so good. I remember the OB saying, most women push for 1-2 hours, but I can tell you're not going to do that! 30 minutes later our daughter was born!

So yes, my friends, that is a 3 hr, 45 minute labor and delivery. Totally crazy! I can't believe how fast it went. I feel pretty lucky that we were able to have a natural un-medicated birth, and I'm so glad that I was alert with a clear mind during her birth. It was so amazing.

My husband is laughing now b/c I said I'd keep this brief, and now i've written a novel, but once I started going it just all flowed out!

She is a beautiful girl, breastfeeding well, and making her mom and dad smile all the time. I'm overwhelmed with the joy that we are experiencing with our daughter.

Thanks for all your love, support and encouragement along the way. This has been a wonderful way to share our journey with all of you, and I'm so grateful for the positive words of encouragement that you've given us along the way.

I think I'll be ending this blog for now, but before I do, here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks again.
Much love,
Julie, Todd & Kate

Welcome Kate Scarlett!

Today Julie gave birth to their beautiful baby girl, Kate. She was born on September16th at 2:45 AM. She weighs 6 pounds, 9.1 ounces and measures 17 3/4 inches long. Julie and Kate (and Todd too) are healthy and doing great. The new family is trying to get some rest and will be heading home tomorrow. They plan on updating us tomorrow, if they feel up to it, and maybe even post some pictures too.

Congratulations to the new parents!!

Any day now...

Although I've felt like it could be any day now, for the past 2 weeks-- it REALLY feels like it will be soon now! I had my OB appt today, and am now 3 cm dilated! Hurray! Progress has been made this week. :) That is 3 cm that I won't have to do in labor, and I'm quite happy about that. I've also been having contractions off and on since Tuesday night, and have been going for my long walks every day. At my appt today, my OB also stripped my membranes, so hopefully that will help to get things rolling. The other great thing is that my OB is on call tomorrow. It would be so fantastic if it worked out and she was the one there when I'm in labor. I've really liked all the other OB's in her practice, so I'm not too worried, but it would be fun if she was the OB on call.

I'm getting so excited to meet our little girl!

Will keep you posted...Hopefully we'll have good news to share next time I post! :)

Thanks for checking in,
Love
Julie

39 weeks!

I'm happy to report that my blood pressure was just fine at my appointment today and all my labs from last Thursday were normal. I had checked my bp at home a few times over the weekend and it had been normal, so my anxiety level had decreased quite a bit, but it was still nice to get the official ok report from the OB's.

Still maintaining the same dilation and effacement...which I suppose is better than going backwards! I am so ready for this babe to come though! The evenings have been getting harder for me--bad heartburn and general restlessness. I've started dreaded the evening hours. Fortunatley I know it's not much longer until I'll have a whole new set of reasons for keeping me up in the evening! :)

I went to my last baby shower yesterday. My dear friend Sarah had all of our neighbors over for a mocktail party which was super fun. Tasty beverages and great stories about breastfeeding, labor, and childrearing. I'm so lucky to have such fun neighbors! They also set up a neighborhood meals-on-wheels of sorts...People sign up to bring dinner to new parents and we end up with 2-3 weeks of dinners brought to us! It's such nice community. We've participated in bringing meals to lots of families in the neighborhood already and it's fun to be on the receiving end of things now.

Not much else to report. We'll certainly keep you all posted as things progress!

Love,
Julie

Appointment Update

Well we made it to our OB apointment this week. Our OB came into the room, looked at us like, we'll you're here after all, and Todd said, "you wagered wrong!" She laughed and shrugged her shoulders.."What can I say? Don't follow me to Vegas!" :) haha :)
Baby girl continues to look good and is still super active. I can tell she's getting more cramped in there, but I'm still feeling her move a lot. I'm still dilated & effaced about the same--no real change there. The only bummer part of the appointment was that my blood pressure is up. The MA checked it when we first got there, and it was 136/84...Normally I run 110-120/60-70. They rechecked it before I left, and it was still high: 138/88. My OB said it wasn't high enough that they had to do anything right now, but she did want to draw labs and have me come back on Monday to see what it was doing. She reviewed the things to be watching for related to high blood pressure and said that she'd plan on talking to me about lab results on Monday unless they came back concerning tomorrow. Hopefully everything is ok and it comes down over the weekend. My swelling is much better this week--my weight was actually down 2 lbs since last week and I know that's all fluid! I can actually see the bones in my feet today!
I'm trying to stay calm about all of this, although I certainly am a bit worried now. Maybe baby girl will just decide to arrive this weekend and it will all be a moot point!

We'll keep you posted,
Love
Julie