Leah Marie

I had my baby girl on Saturday December 12 at 1:32am. She was born on her due date, which wasn't exactly by her own choice so it's really not that exciting.

All last week I was not dilated and I had a high cervix, so my doctor sent me in to get my amniotic fluid and her growth checked to make sure she was continuing to thrive, which she was but my amniotic fluid was incredibly low, and she was full term (39 weeks 5 days) so why leave her in there? The doctors decided it was best to induce me, which actually I was upset about because I wanted to feel contractions at home, go through the "time to go to the hospital!" phase with my husband, and all of that. Instead, after my appointment on Thursday I went home, cleaned, packed, showered, and went to the hospital at 9.

Being induced was awful. Beyond awful. They did 3 different methods of induction, and maybe 20 hours or so after it all started, I was progressing on my own, which was really funny...not. They did all kinds of painful procedures to make me progress, and I was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and just miserable by Friday night. I think I got my epidural at 4cm because the contractions were pretty strong. What's really cool is my epidural worked on the left half of my body and they had a very hard time getting it to take. So, I still felt everything on the right, which was of course, hell. Once I hit 9cm, they saw that she had flipped face up (it's much harder to squeeze out a face up baby) and her heartrate dropped with every contraction and by this point they were frequent, and I began vomiting pretty badly. So, my doctor decided to do a c section, and after being in labor for 27, yes 27 hours, I don't think I could've pushed anything out, so c section it was.

Oh the c section. They had to do a full spinal epidural, which had its own fair share of problems. I had random dots of skin that I could feel, thankfully none of which were being cut. The tugging and pressure and feeling of your muscles being spread, however, made me almost puke again but the trusty anesthesiologist put something fantastic in my epidural to help with that and I didn't puke. Then, I heard a little whimper, and baby was out! What's heartbreaking for me is that when she came out, I began to convulse and shake very violently, and did so for a couple hours after her birth. My mouth was hurting from my teeth chattering so I was holding my jaw with my hands, which didn't help. They finally took me to the delivery room where Leah was and I barely looked at her. I put my arm over my face, and just shook miserably. My family was in there admiring the baby, trying to talk to me, and I was just not responsive. I could hear her and I remember thinking that I needed to get her on the boobs soon so she could latch on, but I was too shaky. So, long story short, I missed the first 2 hours of her life because of this and I still feel so sad about it, but we went to post partum, and I finally got to hold, cuddle, kiss, and love her. Now, she is almost 4 days old and just a great baby. I can't get enough of her.

I more or less wrote this for me, but if you read this, I thank you :). I'm sure I forgot some details which I will add later.