Scary picture! They had me hooked up to all sorts of stuff...IV, antibiotics, pitocin, oh my! But in this picture I was feeling great. The epidural kicked in pretty quickly :) The only downside was not being able to eat anything but ice chips...that, and it was really hard to sleep on my side!
My water broke around 4 a.m. that Sunday morning. Poor Tim...bloodshot eyes, a little disoriented, couldn't decide what to do first...but we eventually got our bags and the car seat together and left for the hospital in just a few minutes. I think the only things we forgot were our phone chargers.
About half an hour later, I was being checked by a group of nurses before being taken to my room. They hooked up a couple of monitors to my belly--one for contractions, the other for the baby's heart rate. I was 6 cm dilated and, according to the monitor, having strong contractions...but I wouldn't have known. I didn't feel a thing until about an hour or so later when I had reached 7 cm, but it was like, "I think I felt something... Am I having a contraction? What does the monitor say?" The contractions felt so weak that the nurses and I thought maybe I'd get away with having a natural birth.
HA!
At 8 cm, I was freakin' out. My contractions were in my lower abdomen and lower back. Maybe if they were just in my lower abdomen I would've been able to tolerate them better, but I had been having lower back pains for weeks and I just couldn't take any more. I tried having Tim massage my back but that tactic only worked half the time. The other half of the time, I was too irritable to be touched. When the contractions reached over two minutes long and were two to three minutes apart, I had Tim run out into the hall to tell the nurse I was ready for an epidural. Lucky for me, the anesthesiologist was in the building when the nurse called him so he showed up within a few minutes.
Sure, getting the epidural wasn't too pleasant, especially when I had to curl into a fetal position while having contractions, but Tim held my hand and the nurse talked me through it. At least it wasn't as annoying as a 2+ minute contraction!
Finally, 11 hours later, at 2:57 p.m., came Aislin Tempest Sweet.
Mama and Baby
The proud papa
Our first visitors: the beaming grandparents...
...and Aislin's one-and-only uncle :P
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