Friday, February 26, 2010

Introducing Olivia Jewell!


This is about 10 minutes after birth. Isn't she lovely? Look at those lashes!

Well, I'm still really exhausted, so I'm going to give you the abreviated birth story, okay?

I recognized labor at 8:30ish am on Tuesday, the 23rd. I called Michael to come home at 9:15am, he got home about 10am. Contractions were about 15 minutes apart, and just mildly painful, mostly just annoying. My dear friend L came and got the children about 1pm. By then contractions were about 12 minutes apart, still just annoying.

We walked. We shopped. We went to dinner. We walked some more. Contractions were all over the place, from 3 minutes apart to 15 minutes apart - very random. We went to bed about 9pm. I woke up at 11:30 with an actually painful contraction. I waited until 1 am to wake Michael. Contractions were 5 minutes apart and hurting pretty good.

Got to the hospital, got checked in. I was only dialated to a ONE! Grrr! I had a LEEP procedure in 2008, and the scar tissue was preventing me from dialating. But since I was 6 days overdue, they checked me in and said we could labor away, or we could get some Pitocin to get things going. We chose to labor away.

More walking. Still no progress. The Dr wanted to do a procedure to break the scar tissue, but warned me that it would be very painful and recommended an epidural. We were trying so hard not to get any drugs, so we said we'd just labor some more and wait on that epidural a bit longer. After 24 hours total labor, we were not progressing, so I finally agreed on the epidural so they could break up that scar tissue.

Got my drugs, and the Dr examined me - I had dialated to a 4! Yay! Decided not to do the procedure, and just labor to see if the scar tissue would break on it's own. Labored another 6 hours. The epidural was not working very well on the right side. It was helping, but I could still feel pain. The Dr decided to go ahead and break the scar tissue. Called the anesthesiologst to adjust the epidural first. He adjusted, and just as he finished up, I felt something pop. There was a huge gush of fluid, and the contractions got really intense with no let up in between. After probably 5 contractions, I told the nurse about the pop and said I needed to push.

She checked me and I was fully dialated and baby was moving down as she checked. I didn't push long, only about 5 contractions that I remember. Baby Olivia was born at 1:51pm on Wednesday, February 24th, after 30 hours of labor. She was 8 pounds exactly, and 19.25 inches long. Lots of dark hair! I had a small tear from where I had an episiotomy before and got 5 stitches.

We came home on Thursday afternoon. I'm still exhausted - light headed and shaky from lack of sleep. Olivia's digestive tract is still figuring out what to do with itself, and she's getting lots of bubbles at night. The last 2 nights I got about 4 hours of sleep, but not consecutively, of course.
We're getting there. All is well. Michael has until Wednesday off of work.
There was a funny story about Nathan at the hospital, but I'll post it later.


























1 comment:

erin said...

Congratulations! I'm sorry it took so long but so happy for you that she's here. I can't wait to meet her.