Kate's Birth

Short version: Kate was born on July 15, 2007 at 1:20pm. She weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces and was 19-3/4 inches long. Start to finish was about 9 hours.

Long version: I woke up around 4am on Sunday with just a miserable, uncomfortable feeling - not different than how I'd felt most of the day before, so I got up, went to the bathroom, got something to eat, surfed the web for a few minutes and I started feeling better, so I went back to bed. I was almost asleep when the pain hit me again, and then started fading away within a minute or so. Finally, in my sleep-deprived state, it hit me that these might actually be contractions! Sure enough, 8 minutes later, the same thing happened. After an hour or so of contractions, I decided to wake up Todd, who was sound asleep upstairs. After my false excitement at 4am the night before, Todd wasn't so sure he was ready to believe that this was actually the real deal. Finally, when he realized that I was actually having to breathe through contractions he knew that this was it. By 5:30, the contractions were about 6 minutes apart, and by 6am, they were about 5 minutes apart. I took a shower (had to shave my legs, duh!), called my parents to get Brett, and called the doctor to let her know what was going on. By 7am, we left for the hospital. By 7:30, we were getting all settled into our L&D room. The nurse checked me and I was 6cm - alright! That's exactly what I was with Brett, so I was excited that we'd have this baby in the next few hours - RIGHT! Two hours later, I was a "solid 6 1/2" cm. At this point it was about 10am, and I'd just gotten my epidural, so at least I wasn't feeling these contractions that weren't doing anything to my cervix. The nurse assured us that my water breaking would speed things along, so she was going to go find Dr. Wind for us. Backing up - there are 2 new doctors in our practice - Dr. Wind is the one doctor who I hadn't met yet, but she was the on call doc that day, so she was delivering the baby. Anyway, after about an hour, the nurse came back and said that there were 2 emergency c-sections that Dr. Wind had to do, so they didn't want to break my water until she was out of surgery. Great - get comfy! At one point during the morning, I actually said that I was bored. Not too many people say that they're bored in L&D! Luckily, I'd packed magazines and stuff just in case, and Todd had Sports Center to keep him entertained. Finally, at 12:30pm Dr. Wind came in and checked me - I was now 8cm and the baby's head was at +1 station. She broke my water and she and the nurse left. At that point, I started being able to feel the contractions and they were definitely getting much stronger and closer together - about 2 minutes apart. When the nurse came back in at 12:50, I told her that I could feel some of the pain of the contractions - not excruciating or anything, but still some pain. She said that she'd check me again and if I still wasn't fully dilated, she'd bump up my epidural, but otherwise it was go time and it didn't really matter. I wasn't looking for more pain meds - I was looking to have the baby, so I was all for it! She checked me and I was fully dilated, FINALLY! Things got moving really quick at that point. She was racing around the room to get it all set up for delivery and trying to page Dr. Wind to come deliver me. Once she got me all set up, she had me push without a contraction just to see where the baby was, how she was moving, etc. Apparently she moved down a little bit TOO well because the nurse asked me to please not do that again unless the doctor was there! Haha! By 1:15 the doctor was there and they had me push. I pushed through 2 contractions and there she was - a healthy and squirmy 7 pounds, 10 ounces, 19-3/4 inches. There was only a 1st degree tear where the old scar was. We couldn't have asked for a better, smoother labor and delivery experience, even with all of the waiting that we had to do that day. It turns out that Dr. Wind delivered more babies than any other doctor on call yesterday. I was very impressed with how well she handled everything, despite the chaos! Kate is doing very well - she scored an 8 and 9 on her apgars. All of the nurses comment on how she looks like a c-section baby because she has a perfect little round head! We, of course, think that she's absolutely perfect!