Finally... the birth story

Ok... almost a month late... but better than never, here is Lily’s birth story.

Our induction date was set for Monday December 1st, so the day before I went to the hospital to have the cervidil inserted to soften my cervix. I started getting irregular contraction just over an hour after it was inserted... they weren’t strong, and weren’t regular so they sent us away- but told us we couldn’t go home as we live an hour from the hospital and a big snow storm was due to come that night. We ended up staying at my sisters house. All day Sunday i was getting contractions, but we had things to do... I went to church and to a Christmas party. After the Christmas party my contractions started to get more regular and more intense. I was ready to go to the hospital when all of the sudden they seemed to go away! They ended up coming back but irregular and not very intense. I went to bed and tried to sleep, I didn’t get too much, but a bit.

The next morning I called the hospital to see if they were ready for me to come in and start the Oxytocin, but they weren’t. They said for me to take the cervidil out and to come in at noon so they could check on the baby. We went in at noon and all was good with the baby, so they sent me home and told me hopefully they would call me back soon. We headed back to my sisters and waited for a call. Finally around 10 pm they said we could come in!

When we checked into the hospital just after 10 they set us right up in a beautiful birthing suit, it was huge- had a bed, a large bench for DH to sleep, a big bathroom with Jacuzzi tub and an area for the baby. They checked me right away and I was just 1cm. The doctor came in and decided to break my water to get things going. At this time DH and my best friend were there- they left the room while he broke my water. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt horribly when he broke my water, was just very uncomfortable. Right after he broke it they set me up on the oxytocin drip- this was at midnight. I started to get contractions right away- way more intense than before. My best friend stayed until just after 2 and we all did crosswords and chatted. The nurse I had was amazing- she never left the room and just chatted with us the whole time. I started to get really uncomfortable around 2 and there was no chance of me getting any sleep- so the nurse gave me some morphine. This helped for less than an hour. At 3am I was checked again and was only at 3cm. They really wanted me to get some sleep because we still had a ways to go, so I got an epidural... again, didn’t hurt as bad as I was expecting and providing some GREAT relief!! I finally slept for a few hours. When I woke up at 5:30 I could feel my contractions big time and they hurt- it felt like the epi was hardly working... the nurse checked me and I was still 3cm... she said they would adjust the epi a bit and I should try to get some more sleep because I still had another 8-10hrs to go. I felt the contractions pretty bad from then on out. At 7am they were really bad and the day nurse who had just started decided to check me and then order a top up for my epidural...we were all shocked when she said I was 10cm... I had gone from 3-10 in 1.5hrs. She said I would start pushing in just over an hour, she started to get everything ready.

We called my parents and messaged our close friends on our BlackBerry’s and got ready to push. At 8:20 I started pushing and it HURT! It hurt so bad I threw up all over (TMI, lol)... I pushed for just over 40 minutes and at 9:02am Lily Grace was born!! It was the happiest moment of my life!!!