It's a girl!

Stowa arrived on November 16th 2009 at 7:58 pm EST. She weighed in at a surprising 8 lbs 2 oz and was 22 inches long. She has lots of long dark hair and dark brown eyes. She's also very cute. And totally worth all the crappy pregnancy stuff (but man oh man will I use it against her!).



Cute huh?

You can go ahead and skip this part if reading about labor and delivery doesn't interest you or if it's going to gross you out.

Labor started early Monday morning. Well, late Sunday night I guess. Itchy was studying and I was playing Nintendo. I went to bed at about midnight. I couldn't sleep (the rash and the heartburn were keeping me up). Right around 1 am I noticed that the "Braxton Hicks" contractions were making my back hurt. I kept an eye on the clock just in case. They weren't very regular so I tried to ignore them. When Itchy came to bed at 2 am I gave him a heads up. I wasn't sure that they were going amount to anything but he should be ready just in case. Well, after I told him that he was ready to go! He insisted that we start packing a bag and that we time the contractions. Turns out that the contractions were consistently coming every 5 minutes or so. They seemed to be getting stronger too. Pretty soon, the contractions got really painful. Only problem was that all the pain was in my back (a little something they like to call back labor). Walking around was the only thing that helped with the pain. I told Itchy to go lay down for a little while and I tried taking a bath. Sitting made the back pain worse so I got up and walked some more. The cats were up with me and were nervous. Can't blame them.

Sometime around 6 am Itchy got up and we timed a few more contractions. At that point they were coming every 3 minutes and were strong enough that I couldn't talk through them. Itchy went to take a shower and get ready to leave. I called the clinic and told them what was going on. They told me to head over to the hospital to be checked. The ride to the hospital was downright terrible. Sitting in one position was not helping.

Anyway, we get to the hospital and get checked in at about 7am. A nurse does an exam and declares that I am 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced. Baby was at -1. I have to lay in bed for an hour on monitors and the back pain was killing me. I just wanted to get up and move around. Itchy was great and was doing everything he could to help but there isn't much that helps with back labor.

At around 10 am I decided that I wanted pain meds. The original plan was to go all natural, but I was open to the possibility of using meds. I had never done this before and wasn't sure how bad it was going to be. Turns out it was pretty bad. So they give me the maximum dose of an injectable drug (I forgot the name). It does nothing. No relief at all. It seemed like it made the contractions stronger and closer together. And I had to stay in bed. I gave it some time (as suggested by the nurse) and then asked for the epidural. There was no way that I could take that level of pain all day long. If someone had said, this is all be over in x amount of time, I would have been ok. I think. So around 11 am I got the epidural. I still felt the contractions and the back pain. It was enough to let me sleep though. I napped on and off until about 4 pm. My doctor did an exam and I was almost fully dilated. She thought I'd start pushing in about an hour. And she was right. But she was leaving for the day so a different doctor would be delivering the baby.

Just before 5 pm I started pushing. Stowa was still up pretty high, higher than they thought she should be. One of the nurses also noticed that there was meconium present in the amniotic fluid. They started getting things ready in the room and called the NICU pediatrician to give her a heads up that the baby would need to be looked at. I just kept pushing with every contraction.

At about 6:30 pm the on call doctor came in to check progress. She said that the baby was still up really high. Turns out that Stowa was facing the wrong way. Instead of facing my back she was facing my stomach. This was making it nearly impossible for her to fit under the pubic bone. The doctor tried to manually turn her. Ouch. Holy hell did that hurt. The doctor suggested a few other positions for pushing and said she'd be back in 45 minutes.

The next 45 minutes were awful. I was even more determined to push the baby out but despite my efforts it wasn't happening. The doctor came back in and the baby was still up high. She really hadn't moved at all. She was still tolerating the pushing but the meconuim was a sign of stress so we knew she wouldn't for much longer. It was obvious that she couldn't or just wouldn't turn either. The doctor recommended a c-section. I reluctantly agreed.

I was terrified. Itchy was terrified, though he didn't tell me that. I could tell that he was just trying to be strong. Once the decision was made though, time flew by. Staff was running around trying to get things ready. It was emotionally overwhelming. My brain is still trying to wrap itself around everything that happened. Before I knew it though, Itchy was in scrubs and I was on the OR table. I cried throughout the whole thing. It sucked. Even thinking about it now makes me cry (which I'm sure has a lot to do with hormones). Stowa was out in no time. Her first cry was probably the best sound ever. I couldn't see her but I could hear the doctors and nurses doing stuff. Itchy went over to meet her. He got to watch them clean her up, suction out the meconium, weigh and measure her. Before they took her to the nursery Itchy brought her over to me. I couldn't really even see her. We took a couple of pictures and then Itchy went with her to the nursery. I was sewn up and sent to recovery. After about an hour Itchy joined me in there. He showed me pics of the baby. I couldn't believe how big she was. Or how much hair she had. I had to stay in recovery for another half hour and than I was transferred to the postpartum room. Half an hour after that I finally got to meet Stowa.

So anyway that's what happened. It took me dang near a week to find time to write this all down. I'll proofread it later (maybe). I'll also add pictures later (no maybes there, I will add pics).

Itchy's parents are in town right now to meet the baby so we're hanging out with them at a hotel. That's another story in itself.