On location from the hospital...

She's here!

Delaney Grace was born at 8:58 p.m. on Thursday, August 9 (exactly 1 week early).


She was 21.5 inches long and weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces.


Her brother Garrett has met her, just briefly, and pronounced her "cute". While we are not really sure who she looks like, Laura has cleared up that whole argument by telling us "she looks like DELANEY".


She is gorgeous and we love her so much.


You know I love to share, so I'll give you the briefest version of the birth that I can. I am taking a lot of Percocet right now and do not claim to be totally with it at the moment.


Contractions / loss of my mucous plug wake me up at 8:00 a.m. Thursday. We are at the hospital by 9:00, where I am found to be in active labor and dilated to 5 cm.


I labor naturally for ten hours, until around 6:00 in the evening (getting very disappointed - my second child was delivered in under 6 hours). Get to 9.5 cm, but with a "rim" or "lip" of cervix remaining.


Start pushing while laboring on hands and knees. I lose all control from the pain, as in biting-scratching-hair-pulling-spitting-screaming-kicking-pounding-hitting-swearing-pinching. Not pretty. Beg for epidural RIGHT F-ING NOW. Am informed 9.5 cm is way too late for epidural.


Somewhere in here, they attempt to catheterize me with no pain meds or anesthesia. I'm pretty sure my head was spinning as I growled and cursed at the nurse. Catheter was removed quickly.


I also vaguely remember screaming at anyone who would listen that, "if I can't have some f-ing pain meds, then somebody had better KNOCK ME OUT AND CUT THE BABY OUT I MEAN IT I WANT A DAMN C-SECTION".


During break in contractions / pushing, I calmly inform the roomful of people that "I did the nature-girl thing with my last baby. I changed my mind - I do not want to do it again. Somebody better get that epidural guy up here. NOWWWWWWWW".


Epidural man comes. Epidural placed. Epidural fails.


Epidural man comes again. I am given a spinal block. I am warned that it will only last one hour, meaning I have less than one hour to push baby out, or the pain will be back.


I push as hard as humanly possible, in several different positions. I'm told they can see baby's head coming down. Within twenty minutes, I have feeling back on my right side and start to panic. I demand that the EPIDURAL MAN GET BACK IN THE ROOM RIGHT NOW.


Epidural man returns, and I pledge to sit perfectly still and curl up like a cat and be quiet and patient and perfect. Epidural takes! I tell the amazing anesthesiologist, while looking deep into his eyes, that I love him, that I will love him always.



I take about a half hour break, where I visit with waiting family and see my other two precious babies. After the break, I push for about an hour.



Baby is still not making progress moving down, and I still have a "lip" of cervix that I can't seem to push past. Her heart rate is also dropping every time I push.



Labor has been going on for about 12 hours now - including 2 hours of pushing, and the general consensus seems to be that either it's a very large baby, or the cord is being compressed when I push. The OB is getting concerned, and everyone (including me) decides a C-section is the way to go.

Once Delaney is delivered, we see why she wouldn't come down any further - she couldn't. While it's common for most babies to have their cord wrapped around something, even their neck, hers was wrapped around so many places that she couldn't get out of it, and it was being compressed when I pushed. Seth said it looked like she was caught in a spiderweb. The cord was wrapped around one leg, her body, arms, and neck.



The section was my first ever surgery, and I'm pretty sure it scared the hell out of my husband to watch me go under the knife. However, it went perfectly well and baby and I are both doing great. I must say that the pain of a C-section recovery seems to be worse than the recovery with a vaginal delivery.



So, apparently I do things backwards - I've had two normal, vaginal deliveries, and I end up with a C-section on my THIRD baby. Weird. But I now consider myself an expert in childbirth...I've had a super-long labor with vacuum extraction and an epidural, I've had a super short labor with a non-medicated vaginal delivery, and now I've had a baby delivered surgically.



I feel fairly at peace with the way things happened, but there are a few things that I'm sad I missed out on. I hope to write a post about the emotional side of this delivery, but not until I have my emotions and hormones a little more under control.



Thank you guys for all your support and encouraging words during this pregancy. I'm going to take a few days off, and then hopefully I'll have time for a quick update here and there.



Now. I know you are soooooo done reading. You are saying, bring on the pictures already, woman!