A Star Is Born

On Thursday night at 9:22pm, Don and I welcomed the love of our lives, Anabelle Elise, into this world. After 39 long weeks and 4 days, we were scheduled for an induction at Baylor.

Our day began at 7am when we left our house for the hospital. Once we got there and checked into our room, I was started on Pitocin. The first couple of hours were quite enjoyable and uneventful. Around lunchtime, my doctor came to examine me and I was still holding at 2cm dialated and was totally comfortable so she broke my water. After that it didn't take long to start feeling some serious contractions and about an hour later, I was asking for an epidural (which, I now know is the best invention EVER).

It took my body a little while to respond to the epidural so I started to sweat it a little thinking that I was going to have to live with the pain. By the time it did kick in though, they had given me so much that I could not move my body at all. That was a little scary so I had them back off a little. The nurse checked me again after this and I was only at 3cm. By this time, it was like 2pm so I was thinking that it was going to take forever. But, alas, my body kicked in. When my OB came to check me approximately 10 minutes later I had gone from 3cm dialated to 8 centimeters dialated. Apparently I was having some seriously strong contractions, which Anabelle didn't like so much. They actually had to give me a shot to stop my contractions! From there, we were allowed to relax and let my body get ready to push.

At 6pm, I was ready to start pushing but my epidural was wearing off so we had to wait for the Anesthesiologist to come back and give me a new drip. So I didn't actually start pushing until around 7:15. The first hour, I was doing great but after about an hour and a half, I was starting to get totally exhausted. So, when we hit the 2 hour mark, my OB decided to help me out with the vacuum. I honestly don't think that I could have gone much longer so this, I thought was a great idea. After she came out, we realized that the cord was wrapped around her in a way that wasn't putting her in distress but was inhibiting her from descending well. Regardless, she was born and we were all very happy/exhausted. We finally got to our hospital room around 12:15am so it was a LONG night and I had nurses and other hospital people in my room pretty much every hour.

We got to come home yesterday and have been adjusting to live with Anabelle here. We really could not be more thrilled. Here are pictures from her birthday