An Early Christmas Present

All during the pregnancy my goal was to have the pregnancy go until after the holidays and have our baby girl some time in the new year. Everything was going to plan and in my head I still had plenty of time to get everything done for Christmas and work before the birth. Imagine my surprise when I showed up for my weekly doctor's appointment on December 9th and she told me that she wanted to schedule the birth for the week of December 20th. I never even considered that because of all the meds I was on for the pregnancy that we would have to plan the birth instead of just waiting for my water to break. So what should have been 4 weeks away was now less than 2 weeks away! To say I was a little shocked was an understatement. I couldn't figure out how I was going to get everything done for Christmas and things settled at work before that date. Thankfully my parents and sister were arriving in Houston on the 11th so we had some extra help around the house and I was able to stay late at work to get things done. We scheduled my inducement for December 21st and I worked until the day before to get things done. All the presents for Christmas were wrapped, shipped, and under the tree. Things at work were as settled as they could be. So the morning of December 21st we were as ready as we were going to be.

That morning we woke up, got Riley settled with breakfast and the grandparents and were at the hospital by 7:30 am. Got settled in the room and met our nurses (who were fantastic!!). It took 5 attempts and finally an anesthesiologist to get an IV in me. Finally, by 10:30 we were ready to start the pitocin. Since my OB had a clinic in a nearby city that morning she had me get a very low dose of pitocin - 1x1 which is very slow since most people who get induced get either 3x3 or 4x4. We were prepared for a very slow and long day. I was already having contractions that morning and according to the nurses they were pretty big contractions but I was so used to these that I really didn't feel any pain. By 1:00 pm my contractions were coming quite regularly but I was still pretty pain free and even fell asleep for a little while. At around 2 pm I was still only 4 cm dilated so the nurses thought I still had plenty of time and that we would deliver some time that evening. Little did they know that that was not how my body works! At 2:50 pm I knew things were changing. I had to use the restroom and when I came out I warned them that the baby was going to be here soon. My pain levels hadn't really increased even though I was having more contractions so the nurses didn't really think that I was fully dilated yet. Thankfully they had everything ready in the room. They checked me again and I was fully dilated. They paged my OB and she said she was on her way but they paged the in house doctor just in case. It's a good thing they did because in less than 15 minutes Madelyn Quinn was here. Apparently I didn't seem to be in enough pain because the doc thought I had had an epidural because I wasn't screaming during the contractions and pushing!! I know I have a really high tolerance for pain but I thought that was hilarous after Ben told me that later. My regular OB didn't quite make it in time for the delivery which is sad since this is the second time that I haven't been able to have my regular doc deliver me (especially since they both did all the work to get me to that point).

Madelyn's stats:
Born at 3:12 pm
Weight: 6 pounds 13 ounces
Length: 19 1/4 inches

Everything went smoothly until that point but once I delivered my blood pressure spiked (even though it has been normal during my whole pregnancy) and I was told I had to be put on magnesium sulfate (I had this with Riley too). If you have had this you know how lovely it feels going down your IV and through your system and how it totally makes you light headed and woozy. I was thrilled to have to be put on this again. What totally sucked about it though was that since the first four IV attempts failed in the normal places the anesthesiologist had to put the IV in the crease of my arm so I couldn't move my right arm anywhere without disturbing the IV and causing a whole lot of beeping and shutting off my IV. That made it really difficult to hold Madelyn and try to breast feed and made for a really uncomfortable night. Other than that my hospital stay was pretty uneventful and we left the hospital on the 23rd. Madelyn did have some jaundice though so we had to take her back to the hospital for blood draws on the 24th, 25th, and 26th which was not too fun. Luckily her levels stabilized and we didn't have to go back to the hospital for any phototherapy.

We had a great Christmas. Riley and Maddie were spoiled as usual. Click on the picture below for some pictures of Madelyn and our Christmas.

Happy New Year everyone!