Wednesday, August 11th

They set up the appointment to be induced the day before. We had to call at 7:30 am to see if they had any rooms available. Luckily for us no one was even there having a baby. They had 3 or 4 women being induced that day and I was the first one there. (Yes I got up early enough to shower and do my hair and makeup. If I was going to be there in labor for who knows how long I wanted to at least feel clean). I was so excited, nervous and all other emotions that can possibly be there. I was really going to have a baby!!! I get there and go through all the paperwork, blah blah blah... Finally they get me in my room and give me my gown. I change and they hook me up to the monitors. Baby's heartbeat was great and they were registering my strange, irregular contractions. The next step was to start the labor. My doc came in and broke my water at about 8:00 am... I won't go into details but it was interesting to say the least. Then he said he'd be back to check on me around noon. They let me go for about a half hour and contractions weren't doing anything, well they got a little stronger, so the nurse came in and gave me pitocin. That really started me going. Oh it hurt. I was sitting on the bed and couldn't move. If I stood up it made them hurt worse, if I laid down... it hurt worse. So I sat, the entire time. Daniel had the tv on and I remember watching something about ancient torture methods and machines. I kept thinking to myself... "Oh this isn't as bad as that would be" and "oh people did this that long ago with nothing! I can do it". Brynn was there helping me too. Daniel and Brynn would talk to me and keep me breathing and distracted whenever I would have a contraction. They did great helping me. We had fun watching the monitor for my contractions and the baby's heartbeat. She did wonderfully the whole time. She didn't get too stressed out, and her heartbeat stayed pretty much the same. My contractions however were a totally different story. They were irregular the entire time. They double peaked and lasted for at least 2 to 3 minutes. So it was pretty intense trying to make it though 2 to 3 minutes of extreme pain like you couldn't imagine every 3 minutes. It would come on and I'd be concentrating on breathing then it would slowly start to go away and just when the pain was bearable, but not gone, it would come back even worse (double peaking). Then it would go away. I was so exhausted but didn't have any time to close my eyes and try to sleep.
By about noon my doc said he'd be back to check on me and he wasn't back yet, so I asked the nurse to check my progression. I was strongly debating getting an epidural, but I'd heard from many people that they won't give you one once you reach 7 cm. So she checked me and I was at 6cm. I asked if I could get one and she called the anesthesiologist. BUT she had just gone into a surgery! Crap!!! I was so freaked out that I'd have to do the rest of this without it because she wouldn't make it out in time. I had experienced what I wanted to and was ready to be relaxed for the rest of the time (plus I really wanted to sleep!). The nurse said that they do an epidural at 10 cm if we wanted. So I was pretty excited about that. About 12:45 maybe 1 I don't really know, the nurse came in with the anesthesiologist and I rejoyced haha! Labor had moved to the stage where you feel like you need to push and it's a whole lot of pressure but you can't do anything yet. They checked me before they started the epidural and I was at 8 cm. So they rolled me over onto my side and started the process of putting in the epidural. She poked me and couldn't get it in between my vertebrae. Brynn was watching and said she was scratching my spine and moving the needle all over. Then she decided to try again one vertebrae up. She did that one with ease and gave me a huge dose to be able to get on top of the pain. It was the strangest feeling. I really felt it spread through my whole abdomen down to my kneecaps. Then I started to shake. I remember just shaking almost the rest of the time from the drugs. They said it was set up on a slow drip so I'd have continuous pain relief. After about an hour I started feeling pressure again, so I hit the button to give myself an extra dose... it didn't do anything and I just started feeling more and more. Slowly, but surely. So I asked Brynn to check the drip line and she said there was something puddling on the floor... it was my epidural. They didn't hook up the line lol! They had told me it was a brand new system and they were getting used to it, but you would think that hooking up the drugs would be a top priority. Oh well. It wasn't to a point of extreme pain yet, so I wasn't mad, it was just kind of funny. They got it hooked up right away, but since I had already pushed the button, I was locked out for another 18 minutes still. So I was carefully watching the clock and as soon as the time was up I pushed the button. The nurse came in again and checked me and said I was at a 9, that was about 2:00 I think. By 3:02 I was ready to start pushing. The nurse gave me a crash course on the how to and I started. It came pretty easily for me. But I think part of that was because she was already so low. At 3:24 my sweet little girl was born. She started crying right away.



They took her to do the measurements and she was 8 lbs even and 20 1/2 inches long. The doc made them double check the weight because he was so sure she'd be high 6, low 7. He had been saying that for weeks now so we were all shocked when we heard 8 lbs.



Then, of course once I was all cleaned up and decent again, the family came in to see Alice. Daniel's mom was there, his dad was on the way, and my family was all there. They had all come in right after I got the epidural to see how things were going, then waited outside til she was born. They did her first bath and she screamed the whole time until they got the water on her head lol, she loved that part. It was cute. She had a major cone head full of super dark hair and my toes haha. After the anesthesia wore off they moved me into the room we'd stay in for the next couple days.

The last two weeks

Dang! I don't think I got a pic of us when I was 40 weeks. But she grew, if you can believe that. I got a lot bigger in those last two weeks. The first week of August was fun but a little bit boring. I was trying to take it easy to rest up for labor and afterward. Everyone told me not to do anything too. It was kind of nice having the "princess" treatment, but it got old. I did have my regular evening walks which was really nice to do something. But even that wore me out by the last week.
I finished organizing the baby room, hanging up clothes, putting bumpers on the crib and all that stuff. Daniel was a huge help in all of it too. We had fun doing it together.
My first appointment in August was good. Again I was hoping for some awesome news. I had progression, but not quite what I was hoping. I was now at 3 cm and 90% effaced and again the doc was pretty much shocked by how low she was sitting. He said her head was down and at a +2 station. (TMI here but +4 is crowning. So ya, she was low.) My contractions had gotten to be more regular but still not painful or regular enough. They were ranging from 7 to 9 min apart and lasted for 2 min and that was going on most of the day. I asked if that was close enough and he said not yet. Dang.
The second appointment was a dissapointment that I had to go. I was again hoping that she would decide to come earlier. But no, she was stubborn and I had to go to the doc in the second week of August. The appointment was two days after her due date. So I was pretty annoyed about it. Before he checked the progression he talked to me about how far over he would let me go. I said I didn't want to go past that weekend, the 14th. But he was going to be out of town starting Thursday on a scout trip. So we weren't sure what to do and he suggested checking progression to judge what to do. I had progression, thank goodnes! I was now 100% effaced and he said I was at a 3 still, then he corrected and said 4 cm! I should have been in labor already!!! I was so annoyed! So he said "let's just do this tomorrow! What do you think?" I immediately said yes, and Daniel had this tone of "I don't know about that". So I looked at him and said "I'm not waiting any longer, I deffinitely don't want to go past this weekend and if he's going to be gone then tomorrow is our only option." So we agreed to set up to be induced on the 11th.