K's birth story

I had been starting to get a bit anxious about when the baby would arrive after my ob appointment on Wednesday, April 6. I hadn't had any contractions or anything and my ob would be going out of town on Friday, April 15, which would be 40 weeks, 6 days. Also my dad was going to be in town for the weekend of April 9-10, but then he'd being going back to Qatar.

Friday, April 8 (which was 39 weeks, 6 days), I woke up at 2 am and went to the bathroom. (TMI warning) I was having my bloody show and when I went back to bed, my back was starting to bother me a lot. I couldn't fall back asleep because of my back and by 3 am, I was pretty sure I was in labor. Sometime around 3 or 4, I told Daniel that I was pretty sure that something was happening. I got up around 5:30 or so and my mom was up so I told her that I was pretty sure I was in labor. From the time that I started having contractions, they were never really more than about 5 minutes apart and were about 3 minutes apart almost my entire labor. I called the people that I nanny for about 6 and let them know that I was in labor and wouldn't be coming that day. Daniel headed into to work, but I ended up calling him after he'd only been there about 20 minutes and asked him to come home. I got in the bathtub for a while and that made me feel a bit better. Around 9, I got out of the tub and Daniel was timing my contractions, which were 3-4 minutes apart. We decided to go ahead and go to the hospital since the contractions were pretty close together, hoping that I was relatively far along.

We got to the hospital about 10 and I was only 4 cm dilated when they checked me. I was still having a lot of back pain (she was posterior), which I had the entire labor. They did the monitoring and then I got on the birth ball. During each contraction, I had either Daniel or the nurse apply pressure on my back. After a few hours, the nurse asked if I'd like to get in the tub, which made me feel a lot better. I told Daniel went I got in that it was glorious,. During every contraction, I would sway back and forth. I had been making slow but steady progress, but I stalled out at 7cm and the doctor broke my water in the hope that I would start progressing again. I wasn't drinking enough fluids so they gave me an IV at that time. I stalled again at 8 cm and my cervix was starting to swell, so I ended up having to get pitocin, which I worried would make the already intense contractions unbearable. I still chose not to get an epidural, although I did waver for a few minutes. They gave me the pitocin at about 6 pm, so I had been in labor for about 16 hours at that point. Before they gave me the pitocin, the baby was starting to have a higher heartrate and they wanted to get her out soon without having to give me a c-section. Also I was bleeding more than they like to see and that was worrying my doctor.

Thankfully, once they gave me the pitocin, it was only about 20 minutes before I was fully dilated to 10 cm and ready to start pushing. I pushed for about 10 minutes and then she was born at 6:42 pm. When she came out and they said it was a girl, I said “Come here, Kiara” and then they put her on my chest. I did end up tearing, but I'm not sure what degree it was. Once I was stitched up, Daniel went to go get my mom from the waiting room. She was on my chest for a while and then they took her to the warming table to do measurements. It was only a couple feet from me, but I wanted them to hurry up and give me back my baby.

We started working on getting her to latch within the first hour, but (TMI warning) it took a while for her to get the mechanics of my nipples down since they were on the small side. I ended up having to use a nipple shield for a while, but my milk came in on Monday night and she's now a champion breastfeeder. She likes to cluster feed in the evening and at night and she tends to sleep a lot during the day. The first few nights were rough, but now we know that most of the time she's hungry and I just feed her again and she goes to sleep. She definitely has a temper and when you aren't doing what she wants quickly enough, she screams like a velociraptor. She's really alert though when she's calm.  She was able to meet all of her grandparents last weekend.  We had her first appointment with the pediatrician on Tuesday, and she looked great and was only down about 4 oz from her birth weight.

Since she was so small when she was born, we ended up using disposable diapers (the newborn size not even the size 1 that they have at the hospital) for the past week. Her cord stump fell off yesterday, so I put her first cloth diaper on her today.