everything and nothing at all

My description of being a new mommy is about the same as my description of labor... it is both everything you expected, and nothing at all like you thought it would be. It is the hardest thing you've ever done and the most natural and simplest as well. The highs are crazy high and the lows are heartbreakingly low. You have to keep a sense of humor or you'll worry about everything.

As Emily filled you all in on, my doctor and I decided at my appointment Tuesday (was that really only a few days ago???) that it was time to give the baby a bit of a nudge in the right direction. I was still about 60% effaced but not at all dilated and the baby was sitting really low in my pelvis. Dr. Goggin felt that it wouldn't take much to get labor started and after some weighing of pros and cons I decided that I would go ahead into the hospital.

Joe and I arrived at the hospital at about 6:15 on Tuesday night. Since my appointment had been in the morning, I had a lot of time to make sure the house and our lives were in order. I made a million and one phone calls, cleaned the bathroom, checked and double checked our hospital bags, and tried to wrap my mind around what was happening. Once we were settled into our L&D room they started an IV for my antibiotics and put in the Cervadil at about 7:30. I felt fine until about 11pm when the Cervadil actually prompted some contractions. Even after being given an Ambien I was awake throughout the night, finally waking Joe up at about 4:30 to help me get through the pain. And on the note of labor pain... you can all handle it. Yes, it is intense, and yes it is definitely painful, but it really feels a lot like really bad menstrual cramping. Some contractions were worse than others, but I felt like it was definitely manageable. In fact, I was feeling good about going natural up until about 12 the next day. They had started me on Pitocin to regulate my contractions at about 7 in the morning but I still had not made any progress and I was exhausted. When Dr. Goggin checked me at noon, it was one of the most painful parts of the whole experience. My cervix had moved back instead of forward, so he essentially had to reach in and the pull it forward in order to check me. After all of that, he said I was still at only 2 cms and I decided that I would be too tired when it came time to push unless I could get some rest. So really it was the exhaustion that convinced me to get an epidural rather than the pain. Again, if you want to try natural, I encourage you to do it. You all can! After getting the epidural around 1, I napped off and on for a while and felt much better. At 4 they checked me again and I was at about 4cm and my cervix had returned to the correct position. Between 4:00 and 6:00, I went all the way to 9cm, and by 6:30 I was feeling ready to push. Even with the epidural I could feel a LOT of pressure. I started pushing at 7 (change of shift, sadly... we loved our day nurse Amanda!) and pushed with the nurse, my mom, and Joe for about 2 hours before Dr. Goggin came in. He told me that he was pretty sure the baby was "sunny side up", which is why I was so close but getting stuck. He asked me if I wanted an episiotomy, but I was adamant that I would make it through pushing on my own. He coached me through another extremely intense half hour of pushing (very hands on on his end, lots of yelling and encouragement and counting all around). Finally, at 9:22pm, Laine Ann helped her mommy out by corkscrewing herself around as she came out, saving me both from a lot of trauma "down below" and from any more pushing! Dr. Goggin confirmed that it was because she was facing the wrong way that the pushing (and labor in general) had taken such a long time. It also resulted in quite the lovely conehead for our poor little one. While I thought she was beautiful and pink and perfect, I was also very aware that her head was not so cute at first!

So far, Laine has been awesome. We've had some frustration with feeding, but we are both getting the hang of it and trying to get on a schedule. We really enjoyed our first night at home with her last night and are expecting basically a revolving door of visitors this afternoon, as well as the return of our 2 furry children this afternoon!

I can't wait to hear everyone else's labor stories soon and to share more with you all about my beautiful daughter (it's so crazy to be able to say I have a daughter!).