Delaney Grace

Well, she is here! We have been enjoying Delaney and our visitors so much that I have not had time to post about our experiences with her in her first 2 days.

We came in on Friday (our anniversary) at 7am. I was pretty nervous about how the day would progress and hoped all would go smoothly. When we arrived, the nurse notified Dr Schwartz who asked that I have my epidural as soon as possible so he could breakdown the scar tissue that was left from my cerclage. I was terrified about the epidural, although knew I wanted one. The anethesiologist was good and the epidural seemed to go in pretty smoothly at around 9;00. And we had pitocin started- which is a medication that induces contractions.

At9:30 Dr Schwartz came in and checked my cervix and found that the scar tissue was almost completely gone and I was 4cm. He also broke my water at that time. We joked that since Delaney decreased the amount that she was moving around, she was thinking "Oh no, someone broke my pool!"

Over the next few hours, we worked with the anethesiologist to get my epidural to work on both sides. It did the same thing as the one I had with McKenna. The epidural began working mostly on the left side and not on the right. The more and more medication that I was given, the more numb my left leg got. It eventually was to the point that I could not move it at all, but could still move my right one. It was a very strange feeling. I said it felt like my leg was a log!

At 1pm Dr Schwartz asked for an update and I was 5cm. I was a little disappointed since it have felt like I had been contracting FOREVER. The goal was to have my contractions ever 2 minutes and mine were varying from ever 2-4 minutes. So the nurse, Trisha, increased the Pitocin dose every 20 minutes. By 2:30 I was 6-7 cm and we were still waiting.

My contractions seemed to be increasingly painful but with one side of my body completely numb, it was difficult to tell. At 3:15 I called Trisha back in and told her what I was feeling. She checked me and I was 10cm. She notified Dr Schwartz who said to just keep him updated. After she got off the phone she had me do a few "practice pushes" to see how fast the baby would move. After those two, she decided it was best if Dr Schwartz came over because she didn't think I'd push too long.

Dr Schwartz arrived at about 3:40 and I started pushing. About 10 minutes into the pushing I became nauseated and had to rest a bit. After 25 minutes we were able to meet our beautiful little girl at 4:05. She was 7lbs 6oz and 21 inches long. She was beautiful!

She was immediately placed on my chest and the nurses were joking how since I was "competent" at suctioning, I could suction her out. Jokingly, they also asked what I thought her Apgars should be. Also, Daddy was able to cut the cord.

Kenna was the first family member besides us to see her. Of course she had a million questions and wanted to hold her all the time!

Here are some pictures to enjoy!