The beginning of a beautiful relationship!

What an experience it has been, the birth of our beautiful child Autumn! I've imagined this for so long and still can't believe she's finally here!!! I apologize if some of my story doesn't make sense. I'm still kind of drugged up (lol). But please enjoy because I had a blast sharing with you on facebook during the process :-)

Friday morning. We knew going into the doctor's appointment that I might be induced that weekend. My fluid levels were low on my previous appointment (Tuesday) and with me being 40 weeks pregnant, the doctor's didn't want to take any chances. Did a non-stress test first thing Friday, followed by an ultra sound. Non-stress test was good, Autumn wasn't having any problems inside my womb. However, we got to the ultra sound and knew right away that it wasn't looking good. The tech had a hard time finding any fluid and if you know about levels, it was at 4.8 (my doctor didn't want it to go below 5). So they threw me into a doctor's appointment to see how dilated I was a talk about what the next steps were. After anxiously and nervously waiting, Dr. Dowlut (best doctor ever) checked me, I was still only dilated to 2cm, 75% effaced. And with that she decided to induce me because I was already 40 weeks and why wait? So she called the hospital to see when she could schedule me in, came back to the room and said "You must have angels watching over you because we can get you in right now!" :-D So she looked at Jordan and asked, "Would you have time to go home and get bags packed?" And I looked at her and said "Already done!!!" I had this weird feeling that we could possibly be admitted into the hospital over the weekend, so I had my bags packed and in the car waiting for us.

Headed straight over to the hospital and got in our room about 1pm on Friday. Yes, my nerves were through the roof because I didn't want to be induced. I planned on trying to go through the labor process all natural, but I've heard wonderful stories about pitocin and wasn't too thrilled about it. However, since my cervix wasn't 100% ready, they had to use a couple of ripening agents to get things going. The first one was a pill that they inserted and that got some contractions going, but things didn't really start progressing until they inserted a 12 hour "tampon" looking thing (sorry I can't remember the names of the drugs) that they can take out once contractions are strong enough. So around 7:30pm, contractions were a regular 2-3 minutes apart without pitocin. That was from the first pill they inserted into me. But after a few hours, my contractions started getting weaker and further apart. So they inserted the second cervix ripener (the tampon thing) somewhere around 11pm. Which slowly got things going, but the doctor's ended up deciding to give me pitocin in the morning to really get labor going. Which meant a long night for me. So the lovely nurse gave me some sleeping pills (which don't affect the baby) and I actually got a few hours of sleep.

Saturday morning, while watching t.v. I randomly felt wet. I was bummed and kind of frustrated that I didn't feel the urge to pee, but when I got out of bed... WHOOSH!!! Definitely was not urine. So I called the nurse in and told her that I thought my water broke. So she checked, sure enough it did, pulled out the tampon looking cervix softener and started getting pitocin ready. Shortly after that I was dilated to 3 cm and 80% effaced. Contractions started getting a lot stronger and here came the breathing techniques. I never realized how much concentration it took to really not tense up during a contraction. Completely drained me though. I eventually got to the point where I couldn't even open my eyes in between contractions because I was so exhausted. Jordan did really well though at reminding me not to tense up, but it wasn't enough. I finally just gave in at 4cm and got the epidural and boy it was worth it!!! I honestly cannot imagine pushing after the long labor I went through without an epidural! That was around 1:30pm on Saturday. I was able to get some rest and took a little nap after that. Still felt some of the contractions, but it was only an annoyance and not gut wrenching pain! An hour and a half later I was dialted to 5 cm and 90% effaced. So it was encouraging to me that things were finally moving at a faster pace than snail mail. But what was about to happen next was a total shocker...

My parents asked us to tell them when I was dilated to 8cm so that they could sit in the waiting room for us. So around 4pm, my doctor came in to check me and Jordan said, "Come on 8 cm!" The doctor giggled and said "Eh, I doubt it, don't get your hopes up." But during the exam she gave me a really weird and overly concentrated look. Finally, after a long pause, looked up at me and said "You're completely dilated!!!" WHAT?!?!?! I was in shock. Absolutely could not believe it! She checked again and confirmed that I was dilated to 10 cm. However, Autumn was only positioned at 0, so they wanted to let her labor down a little bit so I wouldn't have to push as long. So they gave me about an hour at that time and that's when we started calling family. However, when they checked in the next hour, she barely moved down and so they made me wait another hour or until I felt the urge to push.

6pm rolls around and I start to feel the urge to push. Such a weird feeling but definitely understand why its there. So my doctor comes in and first shows me where to push (by giving me an exam while pushing), which was much needed and then Jordan and my nurse took over. I pushed pretty good for the first couple of hours. LOL. Eventually got the mirror into the room which was helpful. I didn't really like it at first, seeing myself in all my glory, but once I saw a bit of her head, it was so worth it. Made me want to push that much harder. However, things were progressing slowly and it made my doctor concerned that she couldn't figure out which way Autumn's head was positioned. About half way through they figured it out, she was sunny side up (face up). UGH! Didn't want to hear that, so I tried a few different positions, but nothing made her flip. So I just went for it. Jordan was a HUGE help here. Again, reminding me to relax my legs and to breathe. We even played tug-of-war throughout most of the pushing. I would put my legs on a birthing bar, Jordan would hold one end of the towel over the bar and I held on the other again. It was awesome and worked great, but man, I feel it in my arms today!!! Towards the last half hour I about had it. I would push really well the first (of three) pushes in the contraction, but the other two pushes I was too tired. I felt the doctor give me a shot down there, so I knew an episiotomy was coming. My doctor even had to get the vacuum suction out because I was getting too tired. I saw her do the first cut (ewww) but apparently Jordan watched her cut even more after a few other contractions. So it ended up being a 3rd degree episiotomy. Which is yes, very painful, but much better than tearing! I think it was about towards the last 2 contractions I heard my doctor say that if I didn't get her out, they would have to rush me to get a C-section done. I DON'T THINK SO!!!! That did it for me and I pushed with ALL MY MIGHT and got her OUT!!!

8:58pm... Autumn Rae finally arrives! I cannot even begin to describe the emotions I felt when she came out, but you mothers out there can definitely relate! At first, I'll admit, it took me a second to realize that this was MY BABY on my chest being cleaned off. But once that set in... WOW! Instant connection and love that I've never felt in my life. Jordan was completely moved and just melted. We both just sat there and cried together while she was being checked out by the doctor's and nurses. She had such a little cry, it's so stinkin' cute :-) Was completely shocked by her weight (7 lbs 10 oz), but not by her height (21 inches). I thought for sure she would be bigger. Once I had a good look at her, I immediately saw Jordan!

So now we're finally home and I can't even begin to describe how much our lives have changed (for the better)! We love our little girl so much and enjoy spending every moment with her. Thank you all so much for your prayers, comments, love and support throughout the whole pregnancy and labor/delivery. I will post pictures of her after this post (sometime today). Thank you :-D