Katy is HERE!! ………Birth Story

 

This post has been a while coming.  I’ve tried to write it several times, but for some reason….. holding my baby girl has taken precedence over making sure this post got written….  Imagine that!

 

I’m going to write her birth story a bit like a timeline, before I forget the details that I remember right now.  I may or may not have already forgotten some.

 

May 25th 2013

 

The day started off awesome, I got to sleep in – Tim got up with Cooper and they went downstairs and hung out.  When I did wake up, Tim made me a nice breakfast.  He made eggs, his famous potatoes, turkey bacon and toast.  It was delicious.  Then he went outside to work on the pool while Coop and I played inside a bit, and Cooper went out with him some too.  I had a pretty relaxing morning.  Then Coop and I took a nap.  We had a party to attend at 4pm – so we laid down about 1 so that we’d be ready to get up and get ready before the party.  That was exactly what we did.  The weather that day was great, sunny and high 60s.  A great day for an outdoor spring party. 

 

We got to the party a few minutes after 4, and Tim was unloading our corn hole set and I had just gotten out of the van when poof!  I thought my pants were soaked.  I KNEW I hadn’t peed.  I told Tim.  My BFF, Erica, came over and I asked her to look at my pants to see how bad they were.  I thought, ok, if I peed, can I stay at the party or would I have to go home, at least to change my clothes.  She said they were pretty wet.  So – more and more water started flowing, so we headed home.  I went to the bathroom and more came.  I texted my mom, Tim called the doctor’s office, then I talked to the doctor on the phone.  He told me it sounded as if my water broke (duh!) and that I should head into the hospital. 

 

We got our neighbors to watch Cooper (Thanks Diane & Keith!!!) and we headed to the hospital.  We got there, I got into the wheelchair and they wheeled me up to triage and we got all checked in.  They did some tests on me to see if the fluid was in fact amniotic fluid.  I knew it was, so I wasn’t worried.  Up until this point, I wasn’t really feeling many contractions.  At least I didn’t think they were contractions.  I just felt pressure.  I didn’t know that is what a contraction really felt like I guess.  I had been induced with Cooper and had an epidural pretty early so I don’t think I ever felt much when I had him.  Anyway, my contractions were 3-4 minutes apart and I wasn’t feeling them.  Not bad!  I was 4.5 cm dilated at that point.  The doctor who checked me was a resident and when she checked me, I’d never felt so much pain in MY ENTIRE LIFE.  She was not gentle AT ALL.  I seriously thought I might kill her.  It was awful.  I was so thankful she would not be checking me again.

 

Once they determined it was amniotic fluid, I got a labor and delivery room.  It was probably around 6:30-7pm by this time.  I found out around 7pm that my doctor was going to come into the hospital to deliver this baby, even though she wasn’t on call that weekend.  I owe that lady a TON.  I’m so eternally grateful that she was the doctor to deliver both of my babies.  She didn’t have to come in and deliver Katy, but she did.  So thankful am I!

 

I progressed little by little all night long, just not very fast.  They had me hooked up to Pitocin, I had gotten my epidural and I was dilating, just not as quickly as I was hoping for my second child.  They always say second children come faster, not the case for me…. 

 

May 26th 2013

 

Around 3:30am, a different resident had come in to check me, hoping that I had made some major progress by that point and NOPE.  I was still at 6cm.  The doctor just happened to be checking me when I had a contraction.  Thank goodness she was checking me then because she found another bag of water that hadn’t broken.  She called it a forebag.  She could only feel it while I was having a contraction, so she had to burst it in the middle of a contraction.  That REALLY helped things along.  By 5 something I was ready to push.  My doctor had just gotten to the hospital and it was perfect timing. 

 

I pushed that girl for 2.5 hours and she finally came out!  It was 7:51am.  She weighed exactly 8 lbs, she was 20.5 inches long and she was bruised.  Really, really bruised.  She came out like Superman with one arm by her face and she was pretty banged up.

 

I got to hold her almost immediately, which was awesome because I didn’t get to do that with Cooper.  Since his heart rate had fallen during delivery, they had to get the NICU staff in the room to look at him immediately after he came out, while Katy had done just fine, and so I got to hold her.  I was in love.  She was bruised and beautiful. 

 

Here are a few pictures of her pretty quickly after she was born.  You can see how bruised she was.  The third picture is of her Daddy and big brother Cooper holding her on her birthday.