Our little bundle of joy

We had our little bundle of joy on Thursday, July 19th at 10:06 pm. She is so absolutely gorgeous! She weighed 7 lbs 15 oz and was 21 inches long. Her name is Penelope Joy Stade.

I guess it all started the day before. Like I had blogged about earlier we had to trade in one of my most loved cars for the safety of our little girl. That night I was having generalized back pain, which I thought was nothing. Just the general ache and pain you get from carrying around all the extra weight. On top of the car situation I was up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. Thursday really started uneventful. I woke up went to a bible study and went out to lunch with some of Russell's family to celebrate his grandmother's birthday. I really wasn't hungry at lunch and was still having the back pain all day, but none of this was anything I haven't felt before in the life of this pregnancy. I wanted to run some errands after lunch, but decided instead to just go home and take a nap.

As soon as I got home and put both of my feet on the ground out of our really brand new Prius my water broke. I rushed into the house and up the stairs to the bathroom where I continued to leak. But the problem was it wasn't clear liquid it was yellow with brown specks. For those who don't know amniotic fluid is suppose to be clear and sometimes straw colored. When it is yellow, brown, or green it means that there is meconium in the amniotic fluid. Meconium is the first bowel movement of the baby. When the have it in utero it can be a sign of fetal distress, plus if they breath it in they can get pneumonia. I was home alone, it was about 1:50 pm and Russell was still at work. All of Russell's family was out and about after lunch and my family was at work too. Anyways I started making phone calls, Russell, Nicky (my sister-in-law), my mother, my sister, Russell's mother and when I got a hold of them I told them all that I was alone in my house and that my water had broke and I had a bad sign. Needless to say everyone came rushing over to get there at the same time and I had a house full of people.



We went to the hospital which verified that in fact it was meconium and they were going to start Pitocin to get the labor under way so that we can get the baby out soon. (I was still in early labor, with irregular contractions when I arrived at the hospital). The baby wasn't in any distress but if she did show signs they might have to do a c-section. I was already 5 cm dilated and 90% effaced when they checked me. So I started the pitocin ( a synthetic hormone that your body normally creates for labor). The problem with it is that your body doesn't regulate it and you end up having harder contractions then if your body was doing it on its own. I labored for a while. (I honestly lost all track of time. I know when my water broke and the time I had my baby. Thinking back to it I think we got to the hospital sometime around 3:30 but that is a pure guess.)

I got to 7 cm dilated and honestly felt like my body was being torn apart from the inside out. I couldn't handle it. They had also put in internal fetal monitoring because they weren't picking up accurate information on the external monitors, and they weren't seeing my contractions. I asked them to turn down the pitocin slightly. Sometimes once your body gets kick started with it, your body will do it on its own. I was going to try to labor without any pain medication but if at some point I felt like I needed it I was going to go through 3 contractions or 15 minutes to see if I could work through it. Even the nurse came in and tried to get me to do Lamaze breathing, which honestly made me feel like I was hyperventilating. But I did it to try to see if it would help. I finally said I wanted to get an epidural. They said my cervix was hard too, so I wasn't relaxing enough to be able to go through this stage of labor quick (or at least quick enough for me to deal with).

Once I got the epidural I was feeling GREAT! I honestly didn't feel druged. But like my mom put it I felt better then I had in the last 9 months. When we looked at the monitor for my contractions it looked like a letter M. They were coming so quickly and one on top of the other with no break the whole time. I dilated to a 9 1/2 within about 30 minutes. At that point they told me that they were going to wait until I felt the urge to push before they start. We waited about a hour and a half and I still didn't feel the urge to push but I was also pretty numb from the epidural. We started pushing before the doctor got there for, and then they called the doctor and waited 15 minutes and then continued pushing. All in all, with wait included, the pushing was for about 1 hour.

The doctor used mineral oil to help stretch my perineum. But they ended up needing to give me an episiotomy (a small cut in your perinemium) because her heart rate was dropping with the pushes. At one point they dropped to the 70's (they are normally 120-160, but a drop in heart rate can be normal in the pushing to an extent). They told me they would have me push for two more contractions and if she didn't come out they were going to do an episiotomy. After those contractions, and them cutting me she was out with the next contraction. She was born at 10:06 pm. Russell was able to cut the cord. Her apgar scores (scores the hospital checks at 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth to see how they are breathing and their circulation) were 9,9 (the top score is 9). Needless to say she did well. She did swallow some meconium and needed to spend some time in the nursery to get some of the meconium out of her lungs. I did get her back in my room at 1:30 in the morning and we were able to breastfeed. I think we did pretty well, but we are still trying to work out some of the bumps with the whole system.



Now we have a blessed little girl. I came home from the hospital on Saturday, and I think we have adapted to the transition pretty well. Keep us in your prayers for all the little things that come with the new member of our family.