In the early morning hours of Thursday, March 17th I woke up to some pain and the urgent need to go to the bathroom. As I laid in bed, I timed my pains - after I realized they were contractions - for about a half hour before I woke up Ramin. At that point each contraction was about 5 minutes apart from the last - the sign that you need to head into the hospital. But, they still weren't as painful as I'd remembered them to be from Gunnar's birth.
I still woke up Ramin nonetheless and we discussed our options. We decided it was best to head into the hospital and so we made the calls to my mom and Chris to let them know. We didn't leave the house until about 45 minutes after I had woken up - by that time the contractions were more painful and more frequent.
We calmly got Gunnar out of bed and I packed up the remaining I'd need into my hospital bag and we headed out. We dropped Gunnar off to Chris & Tara around 4:30-4:45 - they were waiting outside for us because we were in a hurry at that point. We then headed the additional 15 minutes to the hospital and we arrived around 5am. By this time my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart.
The nurses put us into a triage room to make sure I was actually in labor before moving to the final labor and delivery room. By this point my mom had gotten to the hospital as well and was with us. So, I buckled down for a few hours...I believe I was dilated to 5cm at that point and I was trying to bare the pain as much as I could.
I don't remember the exact time but I finally asked for my epidural and the anesthesiologist arrived a short time later. This epidural was a bit more painful for me than the one I had with Gunnar, probably because the baby was so much bigger this time. But, I got through it OK and was very happy when it started to take effect.
All this time I was hoping for my Dr. to arrive - I knew there was a chance he wouldn't be able to attend the birth and I was prepared for it...but around 10am he came into my room and I was so relieved! He had delivered Gunnar and I wanted him so badly to deliver Leila as well :)
Dr. Esplin did have me start pushing but quickly realized that Leila's heart rate dropped too dramatically for too long. Her normal heart rate was about 145-150 bpm...but during the times I was pushing she would drop to 60 bpm and sustained it that low for a few minutes. Dr. Esplin did not like that so he had me stop pushing AND they put an oxygen mask on me for the rest of the delivery.
At some point during one of his checks he realized that the baby was facing with her face pointed toward the floor - not what we want. We want the head up to be facing the ceiling when she comes out. So he had the nurse move me to a weird position with my leg sticking in the air resting on a prop. Apparently that trick worked and the next time he checked me she was facing the right way! I started really pushing around 11:00 am with the help of my main nurse, Claudia, Ramin and my mom.
At noon, Dr. Esplin came back into the room and told me he could only stay for another half hour - that kicked things into high gear for me (plus the fact that I'd already been pushing for 45 minutes). It only took me another 20 minutes of pushing (and encouragement from Dr. Esplin) before baby Leila arrived. It is the WEIRDEST feeling to finally feel her head break through and her entire body just slither out. The epidurals are so good these days (at least for me), that I could literally feel everything happened without the pain - something I've heard didn't used to happen - everything would just go completely numb.
They immediately placed Leila on my chest as I had asked and started cleaning her up. But, they realized that she was a bit purple for too long - even though she was crying. So, they took her from me (I was sad), and kept her in the room while the NICU specialists worked to suction her out. She had apparently swallowed some meconium AND had a ton of mucus in her (from me being sick so often while pregnant).To be on the safe side they decided to whisk her off to the actual NICU for monitoring. Ramin went with her while my mom stayed with me.
There's a LOT of after birth stuff that goes on once the baby is out. I did have a 2nd degree tear so Dr. Esplin spent his remaining 10 minutes sewing me up. I also had to push one more time to deliver the placenta and Claudia had to compress my stomach in order to get all of the remaining blood out - it's not pleasant.
About 45 minutes later Ramin came back with the baby and said that she was doing just fine breathing on her own and they weren't worried :) I finally got to really hold Leila.
From there we headed up to our maternity room and got to know our new baby. Chris and Tara brought Gunnar to the hospital to visit - he was more interested in the room with all of the gadgets than his actual baby sister :P
We ended up only needing to stay in the hospital for one night - I was doing so well and so was Leila. Since we've been home everything has been running as smoothly as it can with a newborn and a toddler - but it gets better every day :)
Here are the pictures of Leila's birth :)
