The Full Story

Hey everyone, sorry about the suspense. I didn't keep you waiting out of selfishness... no, more like preoccupation with me beautiful new baby girl! Every spare minute I just love to sit and stare at her, and stroke her face and her abundance of hair (who knew she'd have a head full of wild hair?!!!).

Anyway, so here's how it went down:

Annie threw me a baby shower on Saturday Dec. 1. Poor Annie planned the whole thing and then when it came down to the day she had the flu! She perservered anyway and still hosted a beautiful shower, wich provided me and Leila with lots of wonderful things to start our lives together. This picture is of me at the baby shower, mere hours before I started having contractions! Ahh the bliss! Saturday night after the shower I didn't feel so well... and around 10:30 I found out why... I had the flu too! Coincidentally so did Jesse, so we stayed up all night together barfing and stuff... how romantic :)

We stayed home from everything on Sunday, and just as the nausea was dissapating, my contractions, which had previously been random and painless, started coming slightly harder and more frequent. How wonderful that she waited to come until I was dehydrated and all sick-y lookin' and Jesse was too weak to help coach me through labor (not to mention gimpy and wheelchair ridden). So my labor progressed throughout the day on Sunday and as the night came I knew that this was no false labor, as the contractions were getting harder and closer together. I tried going to bed that night, hoping that maybe I could get a little rest before I had to go to the hospital. No such luck. It seems that laying down made them all the worse.

I made Jesse stay in bed and try to get some rest while I watched some BYU Christmas special reruns on TV and tried to breath through my contractions myself. At my last doctor's appointment a week previous to this I had been dialated to 2 cm, so I was hoping to get quite a ways past that by the time I got to the hospital. I called Annie (who, if you remember, was also recovering from the flu) who came right over at 11:30 at night to help coach me through my contractions so Jesse could sleep (I don't think all sister's are as great as mine!). She rubbed my back in just the right place with just the right pressure, and made it so I could get through another hour at home. I came to a realization that I needed to make a decision. Do I try and go the natural route again? Do I go to the hospital and risk them sending me home because I wasn't progressing enough? (I couldn't bear the thought! That would be too horrific for me to handle, if I was in so much pain and they just sent me home!!)

I made the decision around 1:00 am to go into the hospital and get and epidural as soon as they would let me. None if this natural stuff, I was tired, in lots of pain, and neither me, nor my birthing coach were in any shape to go through this without some serious pain meds.

On the way to the hospital I wavered back and forth between being extremely grateful for my warm car (it was rainy and cold) and the warm hospital that would soon put me out of pain, and agonizing over whether they would just turn me around and send me right back home. Between contractions I cried to Jesse telling him to not let them send me back home.

After an hour of observation at the hospital I had only gone from a 3 to a 4. I was sure they would make me go home, but miracle of miracles... they called my doctor and he said I could stay! I told them I would like my epidural right away please and they rushed to make my room ready. As we were waiting, the bed next to us became occupied by an extremely "excited" pregnant girl who was having a hard time controlling her "excitement" about her contractions. It was just like in the movies! You know how they're all screaming and hyperventilating and stuff... I felt so bad for her! The nurses would poke their heads around the curtain and mouth "I'm sorry!" to me every so often. I didn't mind so much, I was just glad I wasn't her!

By 3:30 I had my epidural, and it took effect by 4:00. My mom arrived with Spencer in tow (I'm not sure why he wanted to come... but he did make all the nurses laugh). He was so excited he was almost bouncing off the walls... even the anesthesiologist offered to chemically sedate him.

I forgot to mention that the epidural only took effect on one side of my body, and I could still feel contractions on one side... it was kind of odd, but way better than feeling all of the contraction. I layed on my side and that seemed to help. The anesthesiologist had to come back every few hours and re-inject the powerful stuff into my epidural line (he told me it was the same stuff they use when people get a c-section... crazy!). There wasn't anything exciting after that until it was time to push a few hours later. The heavy medication the guy put in my epidural had worn off by then and I could feel completely EVERYTHING. The Doctor was on his way so the nurses were telling me not to push.. and as I tried to breath through clenched teeth I yelled "WHY?!!" Even though I knew perfectly well why, I just wanted to be difficult. I think I had earned the right by then. The Doctor raced in at full speed and they finally let me start pushing. (Even though I had kind of cheated and had been pushing anyway, I had been pretending to breath through the contractions) It only took about 5 contractions but it was most definately the hardest thing I have ever done. I could put up some video of me screaming and telling the nurses I can't do it... but I don't want to scare any of you (seriously, even spencer's excitement had died down and he was in the corner with a pillow over his head). But then, all of a sudden, there she was:

There were a few interesting things that happened after that... first of all she weighed exactly the same as Cooper... wierd... and second, the Doctor totally got sudged in the face when my placenta came out... he looked up at me blinking with all sorts of amniotic fluid dripping from his face and said "Well that's never happened to me before."
Also... can you believe all that hair?!!!