Today is the day Baby Genevieve was supposed to be born. Due October 11th. A fitting day to post about the day she was actually born, no?
By 36 weeks I was dilated to a 3 and thinned, just like my pregnancy with William. And just like last time the doctor said, “We’ll see if you can make it to the next appointment.”
But this time, see, I was one child wiser.
Last time I soaked up all that talk and let it make the next three weeks drag onnnnn anddddd onnnnnnnnnn andddddddd onnnnnnnnnn. This time I wasn’t going to let that happen. I smiled and shrugged and thought to myself, “I’m not due for 3 weeks.”
Guess the joke’s on me.
Less than a week later I woke up at 1:45 a.m. to my water breaking. I hadn’t finished packing my hospital bag. I had no plans set for what Kyle and I would do with our two-year-old when I went into labor. So I wasted an hour pacing around our house trying to get a hold of my parents, picking up crap I knew we’d need, and trying to think in between contractions about what to do with my son. Unfortunately, my contractions were so close together there wasn’t much time for thinking. Finally, we just packed William and everything else up in the car and took it all with us to the hospital. Lucky for us, William is a golden two-year-old and also happened to wake up in a really good mood.
We arrived at the hospital a little before three. The nurses at the front desk must have been able to tell that I was really, super in labor because they skipped pretty much all of the check in stuff except my name and birthday. Boy was I glad.
They got me into a hospital room, gown, and bed, and by that point I was at a 5+. The nurse suggested I get an epidural right away if I wanted one, since my contractions were already so close together that I’d already have to hold perfectly still through one while the epidural was placed. I concurred. At this point I was having pretty awesome contractions, but they were still small enough I knew I could hold still. At this point the nurses started trying to contact my doctor.
As soon as the epidural was placed I could feel it starting to work in one of my feet and they had me lay down on the other side to encourage it to go numb as well. Literally as soon as I laid down I was broadsided by the absolute worst contraction I had ever felt. Holy cow it hurt. Apparently I had basically jumped from a 5 to a 10. Up till this point the nurses were still rather frantically trying to get a hold of my doctor. To my relief, once the nurse in my room declared me complete the nurse at the desk said the doctor was on his way. He made it to my delivery room a few minutes later, about 4 a.m., and 15 minutes after that the baby had arrived. My epidural kicked in full force right before he arrived (thank heaven). I was med-free long enough to feel the legendary “urge to push” before going wonderfully numb, but I didn’t have to go through the bone-crunching pain of delivery itself.
Throughout this whole episode William sat happily on the couch in the delivery room, eating goldfish, coloring in his coloring book, and generally being his happy, content, little self. As they wheeled me out of labor and delivery he tried to hijack my hospital bed and take me for a spin down the hall. All the nurses were charmed to death and commented that he had done remarkably well. I guess that is the upside of delivering a baby in an hour… nobody has time to get into much trouble.
Genevieve was born healthy. She cried and cried afterward and I got to hold her right away. That was something I didn’t get after William’s delivery. I’m not sure what exactly made the doctors worry about William once he was born, but I don’t remember him crying for more than a minute, and they had to whisk him off to the NICU pretty quickly. I was happy to hear the cries. William wasn’t so sure that it was a good thing. For days afterward anytime someone would ask him about his new sister he would say, “She’s soooo sad!”
On top of that, I also had an amazingly fast recovery. I spent the next day in the hospital watching “Say Yes to the Dress” with my brand new baby girl. I went home half a day early. I didn’t want to spend another night away from Kyle. I was sore for a couple days, but after a week I was pretty much back to normal.
Baby Genna has been a gem. She gets fussy from about 11-1 at night, but otherwise she is happy, a good sleeper, and a good eater. She was born with a ton of grayish-blonde hair that the nurses all swooned over. My sister got to meet her first niece before reporting to the MTC. And, most importantly, Genevieve was healthy enough to come home with me. I got all my wishes.
Note for next time: Don’t dawdle on the way to the hospital. Looks like this is going to be more of a sprint and less of a marathon in the future.