Sunday Night Contractions bring…

Monday morning baby.

Announcing …

Rachael Elizabeth

She has big feet and a full head of brown hair that is very easily styled into a Mohawk.

I think she has her daddy’s nose. Daddy says she has my beauty. And we’re just happy as anything that she appears to have our easy-going-ness.

As of this post time she is officially over 24 hours old and going on 48 hours old. According to doctor’s reports we all should be going home tomorrow “after breakfast.”

As for the laboring, we went to hospital Sunday night at 6:30p after an hour of consistent 3-5 minute contractions, but very minimal pain. (I just wanted to see if we had advanced anywhere from the Monday 1 cm reading. The measure me at 1cm at the hospital and 80% effaced. After an hour of observation I measure at 1 cm and 80% effaced. But thanks to my high blood pressure spike they had to do some blood work on me before they could discharge me to go home. When the blood work came back 2 hours later they decided to check me before making the final decision of whether or not to admit me. I measured at 80% effaced, but a whoppin‘ 5 cm of dilation. That’s right folks, I went from 1 cm to 5 cms (in what should have taken some 5-10 hours) in 2 hours. And yes, you all, I was definitely feeling the contractions at that point. I decided with little effort that I would like some kind of pain medication. They gave me Nubian (or however you spell it) to “take the edge off the contractions). After dilating to 7cms in another 2 hours I happily received an epidural and advanced to 9cm in about an hour to an hour and a half. After that I sat at 9cm for about an hour and then hit 10, was pushing, and had Rachael out in 43 minutes. So total hospital birthing time was 9hours and 3 minutes (and if my math break-down doesn’t add up then take into consideration that we really were in hospital active labor for 9 hours and 3 minutes via admittance records and I just felt a bit fuzzy after the Nubian).

There were some bleeding complications with me after Rachael was pronounced as doing great, cleaned up, and introduced to me while they did an hour and a half of stitching attempts. Then I was moved to the OR where I received another hour of stitching and a thoroughly big does of epidural medicine to coax me through it. I spent 6 hours in recover – wanting to see my daughter- while Matt witnessed Rachael’s bath and caught a few hours of much-needed sleep. I caught a few hours of sleep, finally was cleared to go to my family, and then Matt and I had some baby time and sleep time.

I really can’t describe to you the incredible joy I felt being rolled down the hallway to go see my daughter for the second time. I was bed-ridden for the rest of the day – primarily sleeping and attempting to recover. And then today at 11:30am I was cleared to pee on my own, remove the IV and shower to feel like a person again. Today has been such a wonderful day in comparison to the amount of pain and emotional stress of yesterday. But you know what? Rachael was totally worth it. TOTALLY!

Today we spent the whole day just hanging out with Rachael. And it felt like we were actually going to take her home tomorrow – and that she was ours. But there was still the newness of remembering her name during sparatic questions and all the newness of the beginning realization that we are now officially parents in a nine hour sweep of quick labor.

So thus ends the pregnancy story of Rachael.
And thus begins the greatest adventure of our lives – named Rachael Elizabeth.

“hello world.”