Chloe Catherine

Our sweet baby girl is here. 

Chloe Catherine 

Born November 2, 2012 at 5:17AM

8lbs 1oz and 20.5in long 

She is absolutely perfect and has the chubbiest cheeks you'll ever see in your whole life. You think i'm kidding, but i'm not. You'll see! 

So here is how the whole labor & delivery went down:

(Keep in mind, this is about labor.. there may be some somewhat yucky details)

I had "false labor" for weeks before I went into the hospital. Annoying much. I would have pretty consistent contractions but they weren't painful and they were always too far apart to go into the hospital. Eventually my contractions got down to being about 6 minutes apart and were getting a little more intense. They stayed that way for 3-4 days. Honestly I was okay with this because I really didn't want a Halloween baby (Todd definitely did though). Halloween came and went and I woke up on November 1st thinking, "okay, now I can have the baby." I spent the day playing Xbox Kinnect Tennis and bouncing on a birthing ball in front of the TV in between doing laundry and a few other chores. As the day progressed I started to just feel weird. That's really the only way I can explain it. I just had an anxious feeling and started to think maybe I had overdone it. Todd came home at 8:00 that evening and we ate some dinner. After I ate I suddenly started having serious back pain. Now if you know me well you know I'm quite familiar with back pain but this was different. It would start to hurt and grow stronger and a contraction would start and then the pain would slowly go away. Todd asked me, "do we need to go in? maybe you should call the hospital." and I kept saying, "no i'm sure its not time, if it keeps up then i'll call." Well next thing I know I sit down to go pee and I see blood. I yelled, "oh my gosh!" and Todd said "What?!" to which I replied, " we're having a baby! It's starting!" He then said something like, "okay now you're calling the hospital."

So I called the hospital and told them about the blood and cramping. They didn't seem too alarmed but told me to come in and get checked out just to be sure. So we packed up our bags, grabbed all the millions of things we needed and headed to the hospital. When we got there the nurse went to check my cervix and said  it was shifted up to far and that she was going to pull it down. Umm.... ouch! Definitely not a pleasant experience. After she got my cervix into position she said I was dilated to 4cm. They wanted to keep me there for an hour and if I progressed at all they would admit me. Before she left she said that pulling the cervix down like that would definitely amp up the contractions and she really wasn't kidding. They got really intense. I kept saying to Todd, "They can't make me go home like this, I wont do it. It's to painful! They better admit me." An hour later the nurse came in and checked me again and said I had progressed to 5cm and that they were going to go call my doctor and let him know they were admitting me. It was 11:30pm.

As soon as they got me moved into my room I asked when I could have my epidural. By this point each contraction was making me want to scream out in pain and I could hardly breathe. Turned out that right as I was being admitted there was an emergency C-section being brought in and I was going to have to wait for that to finish before I could have my epidural. This was causing me to have serious panic attacks on the inside. I kept thinking "what if I have to have this baby without one?! what if they can't get me the epidural in time?!" So we waited. Not sure exactly how long but I was dilated to 7cm by the time they came in to give me the epidural. The epidural was great except for one thing, it only worked on one side. I couldn't move or feel the right side of my body. The left side was slightly numb and the pain was dulled but I could still feel contractions. It was still such a relief though.. for about an hour. Then the contractions started to get really painful again and I told the nurse the next time she came in that I was feeling more pressure and more pain. She told me they could have the anesthesiologist come back and give me more medicine if I wanted and I told her I definitely did. Sadly, before he could come back in she checked me again and we discovered that I was dilated to 9cm. She stood up and said "I'm going to call your doctor, we're having this baby. He'll be here in 12 minutes" ( I should have timed him to see if she was telling the truth). Next thing I know the nurses are having me push and a few minutes later my doctor came running (literally) down the hall and into my room. He had a huge smile on his face and said "good morning everyone!" He was pretty cheery for just being woken up at 4ish in the morning to delivery a baby. So I pushed and pushed and slowly made progress. Chloe had her head turned to the side and they had to keep turning her. I pushed for about 45 minutes (it felt like 3 hours) and finally it took one last big push to get her shoulder unstuck and she came sliding out at 5:17am.

 Recovery has been much much harder than I ever imagined. When you think about it though, labor is a pretty traumatic event.  My body shook the entire time during labor. All the nurses kept asking me if I was cold and I wasn't. My body was just shaking from the adrenaline and I continued to shake for a couple hours  after delivery. 

We are so so excited to have our precious Chloe here. We are soooo tired and sleep deprived and I feel like I'm going a little crazy with stress but we are hanging in there and enjoying the precious moments with our little one. 

Our dear friend McKenzie Vandermyde came to the hospital and took pictures of the labor. She did such a great job and we are so appreciative! Thanks Kenzie! :)

Our sweet family. I love them both so very much and am looking forward to the future. :)