Woke up Tuesday (Dec 14) morning to find I lost my mucous plug. Contractions started not too long after that. I started writing them down just so I could see how consistant they were. 5 or 6 minutes apart for a long while but the intensity increased over time. I had an already-scheduled doctors appointment that afternoon so I went. At the end of the appointment the doc told me I should go to the hospital. Contractions where now 3-4 minutes apart…none of them ever were a minute in duration tho.

So I called Hubby on the way home and said “are you busy? I have to go to the hospital now”. So Hubby came home and we packed up the car and away we went.

Got to the hospital around 4…by 4:30 I was 3-4 cm dilated and they stretched me to 4. Then the told us to go for a walk for an hour. Well the contractions started getting really intense that when they came squatting while squeezing Hubby’s had was all I could do to get thru them.

Back to triage at 5:30pm and had to do a bunch of paper work. I had requested to use the jacuzzi and at 7 the put me in there. Tried to relax as much as possible but nothing was working. I was in tears and breathing wasn’t working. When we got to my room in Labour & Delivery, I told Hubby to call the nurse cuz I wanted something. Now everyone knew that I wanted to do this epidural-free. The nurse suggested a shot of morphine to take the edge off. Next time I won’t look at the needle first. But I had to roll over onto my side for the needle and that’s when I realized that that was comfortable…but I needed a pillow for between my knees so Hubby had to run out to the car to get mine. While he was gone (around 7:30) my water broke. That was kinda freaky. But the new nurse came in a cleaned me and the bed up.

From there it gets blurry about when things happened. I know at some point they had me switch sides for the contractions and they also had me stand and rock side-to-side so that the baby’s head could help to complete the dilation of my cervix. I wasn’t completely dilated on the right side. Now while standing I felt like Jello and Hubby had to help stabilize me. They had this metal stool that when a contraction came I gripped on to it for dear life (my arms still are sore from that now). Eventually they let me lie back down and let me start pushing.

What a relief that was. It felt so much better to push. But eventually I started getting tired. They said I pushed for 2 hours and 41 minutes. But I’m pretty sure that included the end when they were using the vacuum extractor. The epistomy was the worst part. First were the shots of local anesthetic and then the cutting. Hubby said that as he watch them cut me he felt the pain and when he realized that he was feeling that he looked back at me and he said that I had the worst look on my face. (Just yesterday he said that he didn’t want to complain about his migraine cuz it couldn’t be as bad as what I went thru…he’s too cute).
So I pushed with the vacuum and, viola! a baby girl. Now the doctor and nurses knew that Hubby was to be the one to tell me the sex of the baby. So when she was born, Hubby turned to me and said “It’s a girl” I had to stop and think and I think I looked at him in shock. With everyone telling me that they thought it was a boy, I couldn’t believe it was a girl.

We got moved to our room around 5am and they did some measurements. By the time everything was done, I finally got to sleep around 6 am. 8:30am they get me up for breakfast and to try to feed our new Munchkin.

Feeding her was difficult to begin with because all she wanted to do was sleep. Several times throughout the day, they had to take her to finger-feed her some formula because they wanted her to get some food.
Around 2pm, Mum and Dad (in-laws) showed up for visiting hours. Not too long afterwards, SIL, Mom and Dad (mine) and friends arrived to meet our newest bundle of joy.

While everyone was there, Dr. M arrived to see us so we headed back to the room. We both checked out okay and he said that we should be able to go home at 9am the next morning.

R still wasn’t feeding well last night. Around 3am, the nurse informs me that if Munchkin isn’t feeding well that we won’t be able to go home. She tried to reassure me that during the first 24 hours, new babies like to sleep. Well, she was right. This, after I had breakfast, she was feeding pretty well.

Hubby arrived around 8am, thinking we’d get to go home at 9. Well, the nurse hadn’t come to examine us yet and I had to see the lactation consultant before we could go. Time went by and I wandered down to the nurses station to see about leaving. The lactation consultant said that she’d come see me around 11am. Great, still not going home.

Started getting ready to go so that after the LC came to see us, we could just go. The nurse started getting all the paper work in order and I signed all the forms. Hubby had picked up Munchkin’s OHIP card (slip of paper) so we were ready to go.

11 am rolls around and R is eating like a machine! We get to go home.

We get everything packed up, R’s in her cars eat and away we go! On the way home we stopped by McDonald’s so I could have some food. The hospital stuff is pretty disgusting.

When we arrived at home, I carried in my bags and greeted Dakota. Then Hubby came in with R. Dakota didn’t quite know what to do. She tried sniffing her car seat and when it rocked, Dakota jumped back. Too funny. After we got R settled in her crib, Hubby and I watched a movie.

What an amazing few days!

Welcome to our family baby girl!