One week ago today....

One week ago today Clare made her entrance into this world so I thought I would take a look back on the events that occurred that day. The day before I was working vigorously to finish a project at work and had stayed up until 10:30 Monday night to finish it. Mitch and I went to be around 11:00 but I was having trouble sleeping due too severe discomfort.

I think I got up four times in a matter of 11:30-12:30 thinking that I had to use the restroom. On the fourth time as I was getting out of bed I thought that I was wetting myself but it turned out that my water had broken. I tried to waddle over to the light switch to turn on the light and to wake Mitch up. This was about 12:30. I have never seen Mitch jump out of bed so quickly and he was trying to put on his clothes. He was a little panicked and was thinking that we needed to immediately leave for the hospital. I told him to calm down and that he needed to get some towels so that I could find my way to the restroom.

I called Labor and Delivery and they told me to take my time but that I definitely needed to come in. I wasn't too panicked because I wasn't really experiencing any contractions. Mitch and I were both able to take a shower and pick up the house before we left.

We arrived at the hospital around 1:30. They examined me and told me I was a good 3 centimeters and about 80% effaced, which was definitely an improvement from the prior week. Plus this was great news since I could get a epideral at any time. We were finally taken to our birthing room. I still wasn't having any regular contractions so they called my doctor around 3:00 to discuss administering pitosin but she wanted them to hold off until 7:00 a.m. when she would be on call. My contractions started to progress a little on their own.

At 7:00 they finally started me on my Pitosin. Let me tell you things really started to pick up. It wasn't too bad at first because they weren't that close together. Then by 10:30 they were getting to the point where the contractions were so close that I wasn't getting much rest however I was still only dialated to 4 centimeters. I finally asked for my epideral and by 11:30 I wasn't feeling much pain. I couldn't have asked for the epidural any sooner because by 12:30 in less than 45 minutes I had dialated from 4 to 8 centimeters.

Mitch and I were able to sleep for about an hour and a half. At 2:00 I noticed that I was beginning to feel pretty uncomfortable and couldn't find any comfortable position to lay in. Clare was making her way down. At around 3:00 I started to feel the sensation of needing to push so by 3:30 the nurses checked me and determined that I was ready to start pushing. We pushed for about 45 minutes with the nurses and then the doctor was called in. I have never worked so hard in my life and it took all my inner strength to get through the next 45 minutes, which were the longest of my life. It was getting frustrating because Clare was right there ready to be born but for whatever reason I couldn't seem to give the final push to get her out.

At this point the Doctor recommended that she use a vacuum to help get her out. It only took about three pushes after that for Clare to make her entrance. When they placed her on my stomach I realized why I was having such difficulty getting her out she was like a little butter ball turkey. The Doctor and nurses were shocked how big she was. Due to her large size it created some complications for me but at this point Mitch and I were just so excited to have our little Clare. She was very healthy and looked absolutely perfect. I'm thankful for the experience of delivery the baby however, the Doctor and I agree that next time a C-section will be the way to go especially if I continue to have large babies.