She's here!!!

Faith Adelia was born on May 14th, 2009 at 8:37pm.  7 lbs 13 oz, 20.6 inches long.  

here is what I can remember... aka the birth story aka too much information.

on the 14th my friend Katie text me (we've been BFFs since kindergarten) and says she had a dream that I had the baby today, which I thought was really funny and I told her I would try real hard to have her.  I had been doing some nipple stimulation for about an hour that morning to try to get things started.  Around 9, I felt some leaking, it wasn't much and it stopped after like 5 seconds, so I was kind of confused since it didn't continue throughout the rest of the morning.  My midwife happened to call about 30 min later to change our appointment time to an hour later since she was at the hospital with another patient, so I told her & she said it may have been my water breaking but there was no rush or concern since I wasn't even having contractions.  About 10 I decided to start timing the braxton hicks contractions since they seemed to be coming more often, they were between 7 & 10 min apart and a little bit later they started feeling more like light menstrual cramps & more pressure on my back.  Michael came home earlier than usual for his lunch because of some training thing he had to go to, so he went back to work at 11:45 (instead of 1), and I still had no idea I was having contractions since they were SO mild.  About 12:30 they were steadily 5-6 min apart, so I decided to call the midwife's office since I had an appointment for a biophysical profile and didn't think that would be necessary since I may already be in labor, but I thought I would still come in to see my midwife and have her tell me if I was really in labor or not.  So, the office person transfers me to her nurse and the nurse flips out and is like go to the hospital now.  I'm like WHY?  I'm hardly having contractions if thats what you call these!?  lol (we had wanted to stay home and labor as long as possible, so going to the hospital at such an early stage seemed ridiculous!)  She was really persistent, but since my midwife was already at the hospital it would basically be the same as going to the office, so we decided to go.  I was absolutely convinced we wouldn't be staying at the hospital and that she would just tell us to go back home,  I even told Michael we shouldn't even bring our stuff, but he thought we should just in case (he's so smart!).  So we get to the hospital and my water had broken earlier, but since her head was so low it was blocking the rest of the water & had formed a water pocket at my cervix, so she broke that too around 2:30 I think (I was still only dilated 4 cm at this point), then nurses asking me tons of questions while Michael went to go get some food.  Contractions started getting stronger around 3-3:30 about 4 min apart.  I decided I was tired of feeling water leaking out of me every contraction, so I got in the tub, thinking it was a bad idea to get in the tub so early since it can slow down labor.  It was SOOOO nice, it had jets... mmmm.  I was probably in the tub about an hour, contractions were getting a lot stronger & a lot more painful on my back.  They needed to listen to the babies heartbeat, but couldn't hear it with the waterproof doppler, so I had to get out, and decided to have her check me since I was already out of the tub and I was 7-8 cm.   I was so shocked!  I got back in the tub, this was apparently transition, but I had no idea, I just kept waiting for it to get worse & closer together, because the contractions were still 1.5-2 min apart, not right on top of each other like I expected.  I started having 'pushy' contractions soon after.  I really really loved in between the contractions-  I don't think I've ever felt so relaxed in my life!  The midwife and nurse kept laughing about the happy sighing sounds I was making between contractions.  And all I kept saying was "i just want to sleep" lol.  They checked me around 5 & I was 9 cm and having really pushy contractions so she moved the remaining cervix with a few contractions and I started really pushing at 5:30 in about every position in the book, but nothing felt very good and was a lot of pressure on my back.  2 hours later I asked how long I had been pushing... I couldn't believe how long it had been (thats how I'm estimating some of these times... I wasn't constantly checking the clock so I could write this accurately! haha).  Pushing felt a lot better than not pushing though.  Her head was out (OUCH) an hour later (after pushing for 3 hours now!), but her shoulders were stuck, which was really scary and the nurse calling for backup, but she came out.  I kept repeating "I can't believe its over" and other strange things (including 'it feels like i have cotton vag... ya know, like cotton mouth'  and 'wow my stomach is so small!' hahaha  which I find hilarious now).  I was bleeding A LOT apparently, so they ended up cutting her cord sooner than we would have liked & giving me an injection of pitocin (which I didn't realize until I saw the band aid on my hip the next day & having no idea where it came from!)  to stop the bleeding and get the placenta out.  And I had a 2nd degree tear, which isn't too bad.   So basically she was born after 5ish hours of labor.  I was expecting 12+ hours!  And, I was never begging for an epidural, and I never said "I can't do this"  (well, except when her shoulders were stuck and they were telling me to push)... which I really expected I would!  lol  Afterwards the nurse and midwife kept saying I had acted like I had an epidural!

We had to switch rooms 4 hours after she was born (at like midnight) since they were so busy on the L&D floor, so that wasn't very pleasant, but the postpartum rooms had more comfortable beds.  She stayed awake-ish until 3 am!  Sleeping that first night was awful, I hardly slept (I feel like I'm still not sleeping, but I'm not tired yet... lol).  Then I woke up about 2:30 and the clock in our room was spinning backwards- like the minute hand was spinning backwards super fast, and I woke Michael up, saying that I was hallucinating, and made him look at it but by that time it stopped on 10:00 and kept on ticking like normal the rest of our stay (which ended 24 hours after she was born).  All the nurses that came into the room were like... "Oh, your clock is wrong".  I'm like yeah... it sure was scary watching it happen!

She is so precious!!!  And has so much hair!  I still can't believe that she was inside me, she is just so big!  She makes the cutest noises too!   And, I just got peed on, she was wearing a cloth diaper, but no cover, so it leaked out the side!  awesome.  lol

 My stomach is the smallest its been since before Christmas and my boobs are 10x their normal size & feel like they are filled with rocks!  lol

Romans 10:17, 1 Corinthians 2:5, Hebrew 11:1, Isaiah 32:8 (Adelia means noble)