Thursday, July 14, 2011

I had a baby!

EmandAudrey


Audrey Elizabeth was born at 7:04 am on Sunday, July 10th (Sean's birthday, and 16 days after her due date). She weighed 7lbs, 5oz and was 19" long.

After the biophysical profile showed that she was in no hurry to vacate the premises, I went to see my midwives on Saturday. They knew that if I went all the way to Wednesday when the doctor wanted to see me again, I'd pretty much be guaranteed to be induced which isn't what we wanted, so they swept my membranes, gave me some "Start Up" herbal stuff, had me continue to use the breast pump, told me to walk around as much as possible, basically do everything that might possibly get this party started. At the appointment I was only dilated 2 cm and 50% effaced.

Around 4:30ish, my contractions changed from cute little Braxon-Hicks ones to "ummmm, this hurts" ones and were about 5 minutes apart, lasting for a minute, that whole deal. Around 9ish, the midwives came over to check me out. About the same time, a couple of Sean's friends showed up- apparently they were at a party down the street and were totally drunk. This has nothing to do with the story, but was totally random and ridiculous. I yelled at them to go away and got checked and was 4 cm, 90% effaced. The midwives told me to take some Benedryl and try to sleep and they took off. I don't like Benedryl (I would have slept through the whole thing and I don't think that would have been very helpful) so I didn't. My contractions started picking up pretty good right after they left, and we had the midwives come back around 11:30ish (right after they'd gotten home and gone to bed, natch).

Once they got back, I got in the pool (a kiddie pool with happy sharks and seahorses and turtles and things to cheer me on!) and that helped a bit. I was most comfortable just sort of sitting in there, which felt best but probably wasn't the most effective position. Oh well. Eventually they made me change positions, then get out for awhile to labor on the couch. Every time I moved it hurt way more than it did once I was settled. My body wanted to push when I was only at 7 cm, and trying to keep from doing so pretty much totally sucked. When it got really, really bad I was like "I'm going back in the pool now" and they checked and it was time to push. They let me push sitting in the pool for about an hour until they were like "ok dude, time for the birth stool so you can actually make some progress here." (My water still hadn't broken at that point.) So I got on the birth stool and pushed. About 4 minutes and a bruised tailbone later, they handed me my baby. That was a bit surreal. She was slimy and amazing. :)

They got us all wrapped up so we could all snuggle together on the couch for awhile while they cleaned everything up. They made an herbal healing hippie bath for me to get washed up and that felt great. Audrey joined me once they were done measuring her and doing whatever baby checks they do. Then Sean and Audrey and I took a nap while the midwives went to IHOP (jealous!). They came back, stitched me up, finished the laundry (how on earth did they get our towels so clean? I was sure they were totally done for), double checked that everyone was doing well and then left us. alone. with a newborn.


Luckily, she's the best baby ever. So calm and happy and easy to figure out what she wants. They came back and checked on us Monday and Tuesday and everyone was doing great!

So there you go. Awesome homebirth story. And awesome baby. <3 <3 <3


...and now I've got a placenta in my freezer.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

A+

Lil' Miss Stubborn got 10/10 on her biophysical profile, which means since I'm doing well and she's doing well, there's no good reason to induce us, and I'm still cleared for a homebirth. If she's not here by next Wednesday, I get to go back to check again. Overachiever baby.

Friday, July 8, 2011

42 Weeks

Yep. That's about it.  Going to the doctor in a couple hours to figure out what's up with Lil' Miss Stubborn.