WOW! It has been so long since I posted. Thank you, Oliver, my fat grey cat for making my laptop die right when I needed it most! You are so lucky that you love that little princess!!
Ok....so here's a few pictures of the baby shower from June 10th (wow, two months ago!)
I worked another month after this up until July 13th when one of my doctor's said it was time to stop working because I needed to rest before she got here and I was probably getting ready for an induction which would be a tiring process. So what to do a week before baby gets here and no work? Wash all of her clothes and get her nursery 100% completed. Here are the pics!
Clothes....she needs NO MORE clothes....but we'll get more for her anyway!
The dogs were SUCH a big help....HA!
Finished crib bedding!
I love this chair. Love it, love it, love it!!! And yes, that's me at 40 weeks pregnant.
The week of her due date, I had 3 doctor's appointments. One on Monday, where Dr. L said that i still wasn't progressing and no induction date would be set yet, come back on Wednesday. Bummer. On Wednesday, Dr. C said still no great progress. At this point, I had a choice. Set the induction for the next day, knowing that I wasn't a good candidate for it and that my odds of winding up with a c-section would be higher, or come back on Friday and we could re-evaluate. Ok, fine, I'll wait two more days. Friday came and slight progress was made but since Tuesday would be one week past my due date and they won't let me go further than that, we decided to set the induction for Sunday night so that I would have her Monday. I stood outside her office as she called over to the hospital to set the induction for Sunday night. She told me to get to the L&D floor at 5pm on Sunday and set my 4 week post delivery appt before I left her office. Got it. Ok, Sunday night. 5pm. L&D floor. These details are important. I wouldn't forget this.....really, even with pregnancy brain.
My parents were in town on their vacation (im)patiently waiting for her to get her. Every day I was guaranteed to be asked 5 times, "Do you want to go to the hospital?" after any wince or deep breath. I'm not a patient person to begin with, people!!
Sunday afternoon, the 22nd, came, final dinner before going to the hospital was eaten, bags were packed, and I was ready to go get this whole thing over with!
Stephen and I drove to the hospital and mom and dad stayed home with the fur babies. We knew this was going to be a LONG process. We arrived at the hospital at a quarter to 5 and go to the L&D floor to check in. It was eerily quiet and I knew Sunday's were their slowest day of the week. When I gave my name to the nurse at the desk, she politely told me that my induction was NOT scheduled for Sunday night, but for Monday night. WAIT. WHAT???? No, no, no, no. Dr. C said SUNDAY. I heard her say this 3 times and heard her tell the hospital while I was standing RIGHT THERE to book me for SUNDAY night. Oh dear god, do not do this to a 41 week pregnant lady who is already nervous. Poor nurse Penny. She didn't know who she was dealing with!! She digs deeper and sees my booking sheet from the doctor says Sunday, but whoever scheduled me in the system put me in for Monday. She can't admit me without doctor's permission and verification of the error. It's Sunday night. My doctor isn't the on call doctor for the weekend. Doctors tend to not answer phone calls from the hospital on the weekends if they aren't on call. See where I'm going with this? She calls my doc and leaves a message and tells me to give it 15 minutes to see if she calls back. Nope, no luck. She offers to call the on call doctor (who isn't part of the practice I see) and he won't override the schedule issue since I'm not his patient and he doesn't want to get in the middle of it (and honestly, I don't blame him for that). It is now 5:30pm. Poor nurse Penny calls another doctor in my practice to see if they will override the schedule issue. She instead offers to call my doctor and discuss it with her before overriding the issue. No luck. She doesn't answer her call either. So instead of making me go home, she offers to be my on call doc for the night if anything goes wrong and tells the nurse to admit me and stop stressing me out! At this point, it's 6:15pm. I've been alternately fuming and crying. So I finally get admitted and put into a L&D room. PHEW! Finally, now the fun part begins. Twelve hours of cervidil to get started. Dr. L came in at 7:30am to break my water and start the pitocin. I got no sleep overnight to speak of so I was already tired at this point! I got my epidural at 10:30am and that helped ease the contractions, but I was still only 3-4 cm dilated. The day progressed SLOWLY until about 4:15pm when the contractions got very strong and I could feel them. The nurse checked and I was 8 cm. Not even a half hour later, I felt the need to push through contractions, and they checked again and I was almost to 10. They got everything ready in the room, and poor nurse Penny from the night before was my delivery nurse! She was so sweet and so great. Two hours later at 6:44pm, she finally emerged, just absolutely perfect and tiny at 6 pounds 8 ounces and a crazy amount of hair. We had the doctor and the nurses cracking up after she got here because to distract me from what was going on, we were singing the ESPN Monday night football theme song and laughing.
And she's just perfect!
