Our beautiful baby girl, Elizabeth Rose Finegan, was born Sunday March 10th at 4:07pm with the weight of 7lbs and 11 oz, length of 20.5 in, head measuring 14 cm (ouch), chest measuring 13 cm wide, and surprisingly with a lot of red hair. Since the last time I posted, the whole "plan to be surprised" thing came into practice once again when John was told he will be flying out to Afghanistan between March 22 and March 25 so in order to have his 10 days guaranteed paternity leave, we realized we needed to have this baby born by Tuesday March 12. We were told this past Friday morning so I instantly called my drs. office to tell them of the situation and ask what my options were regarding the inducing process and they told me to come in right away to get checked. I got checked and I was 50% effaced and 2 cm dilated and since I was already 39 weeks, these provided the perfect conditions for an inducement; however her head had not engaged yet which isn't ideal so we were hoping an inducement with forced labor contractions would be just enough to force her into engagement. Lucky enough the dr that ended up squeezing us in on Friday to check me just so happened to be on call the whole weekend, only had one inducement already scheduled and is one of the only drs. that even does inducements on the weekends (so to have there be only one scheduled knowing she was on call this weekend was pretty rare). So we really felt blessed and things were really starting to seem like they were meant to be.
We scheduled my inducement for 7:30 am Saturday March 9th. We called all family members the night before and they were either already there or were already on their way. They started me on pitocin at 9am. I was on the highest dosage by 1:30 and they checked my cervix at 5:30 and no progress had been made at all. So they disconnected the pitocin and the dr. gave us the option of going home and coming back in a few days to try again or trying another method of induction with a drug called sidatec (spelling?) We decided to give the sidatec a try since we were already there--might as well exhaust all options right? This procedure involved a half of a pill inserted vaginally and then a 6 hour waiting process. This method definitely worked better than the pitocin in that it got my uterus irritable and moving but after 6 hours (which was 2am) they checked me again and I had only dilated to 3cm and my effacement was the same. After my body basically telling everyone it wasn't ready, they unhooked me from the drugs and allowed me to stay the night and were going to discharge me in the morning. You can imagine how incredibly defeated we felt but we knew a healthy baby is worth the wait. If my body wasn't ready, it was for a reason.
Then came another surprise. After the sidatek wore off, I continued to have contractions and they started to get worse. I paged the nurse at 4:15 because I had to pee (and you have to bring your whole bedside with you of course) and as I got up my water broke. (Insert a huge amount of relief/praising the Lord here). Now we knew we were not leaving the hospital without our child in our hands one way or another. Real contractions came on fast! And they were always at 1 to 2 minutes apart. The nurse checked me at 6:30 and I was still 3 cm but my effacement had changed to 80% which at least showed progress. My contractions were already at a pain level of 9 out of 10 at 3 cm dilated and since I never really had a big break in between each one, as soon as they asked if I wanted the epidural I said yes. I really wanted to join the club of natural birthing moms but it did not go as planned. If there was no epidural option in the picture, I don't believe I would be having any more kids and I really do consider myself having a high tolerance for pain. I just really believe the inducement drugs had an effect on the power of the contractions and I had already technically been laboring for 24 hours.
The epidural was placed at 7:00am, internal contraction monitors and a catheter were placed at 7:30am, and the dr. did another check and I was already 4cm, her head was engaged more but had swelled from all the induing so we knew to expect a cone headed baby for a few days. The epidural provided a huge relief and I was finally able to sleep for about an hour or so for the first time since we had gotten to the hospital.
Then the pressure contractions came which an epidural does not help relieve. It felt I had not gotten an epidural at all! But I know it was still doing its job with the lower abdomen contraction pain but gosh the pressure pain was close to being unbearable and still coming at 1 to 2 minutes apart. Definitely didn't expect that with the epidural.
At 9:30 am, they hooked me back on Pitocin because the contractions weren't consistent in strength. I'd have a strong one and then a weak one. At 10:00am, they checked me again and I was 6 cm and 90% effaced. At 12:40 I was 9.5 cm and 100% effaced and by 2 pm we were ready to push!! Oh and by the way, I was the only patient in labor and delivery all day Sunday. Talk about meant to be! It was so nice and it felt like the entire staff was cheering us on!
After having maybe 1.5 hrs of sleep in 31 hours, by the time we were to the pushing part I was exhausted. I was literally pushing and then I closed my eyes and fell into REM right away and then woke back up in 2 minutes to push again. My energy level was at 0. At one point I did stop to take a break because I thought I was going to faint/throw up but the pushing sensation was too hard to refuse. After 2 hours and 7 minutes of pushing her 14 cm head out, 3 seconds later she was born!! She is happy and healthy and beautiful. We feel so blessed to have her here early and love that she will now get to have her time with Daddy before he leaves. It still feels so surreal to have a daughter but I somehow already can't imagine our lives without her.
After being so positive March 9th was going to be her "D" day (delivery day), we realized a Sunday's child is probably best, after my mom pointed out a rather well known poem.
Monday's Child is fair of face.
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving.
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
(note: bonny means healthy, sweet and lively and blithe means joyous, merry, and carefree--all adjectives that surprisingly already describe her pretty well.)
Here she is!!!
We will be going home from the hospital tomorrow morning (Tuesday, March 12). More pics to come!!!
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