Its a .....

GIRL!!!
Wow. I can't believe that the wait is over. 42 long weeks, and our little girl has finally arrived. Not that she came willingly, but she came.
The induction on Friday didn't work quite as well as planned, but ultimately brought us our baby early Saturday morning. We checked into the hospital around 9am. I expected things to get going soon after, but like most things, paperwork, processing and a very busy Labor and Delivery ward slowed things down. By11 am, I had an IV access, and one dose of a cervical ripening pill. When they checked me at 3:30pm, I was dilated to 2 cm, and only 30% effaced. My second dose of the cervical pill started soon after, and I had some mild cramping and contractions, but nothing too serious. At 8pm, they checked again, and I had dilated to 3cm, and was 50% effaced. At this point, the midwife came in to tell me that they wanted to let me rest, take a shower, eat a good dinner, sleep through the night, and they would attempt to start again at 4am. I was pretty discouraged. We sent home my sister in law, called everyone to let them know that we were still sans baby, and prepared to go to bed. By the time we ate, got ready for spending the night in the hospital, and I took a shower it was 10pm. At this point I had started having contractions that were not so mild, and not easy to deal with. They gave me morphine and an anti-nausea medicine to help me sleep.
At 1am I called for a nurse, because it was impossible for me to deal with the pain of the contractions. I had already thrown up from the morphine, had the worst case heartburn in my life, and dealt with an iv that burned so badly I had to wrap my hand in ice. Apparently my contractions had not been showing up on the nurse station monitor, so they thought that I was sleeping and enjoying my time in bed. The nurse checked me again, found out I had dilated to 4 and was now 60% effaced. She called for the anesthesiologist and ordered the much anticipated epidural. They pumped a bag of fluid in me, gave me a round of antibiotics, and got the epidural started all in a matter of 15 minutes.
The relief from the epidural was amazing - on the right side of my body. My left was completely unaffected, so we called the doc back in to fix it. He made some minor adjustments in the placement of the epidural, while I barfed some more, and added few extra doses of medicine to help with the pain. When all that was working as it should, relief from the contractions and the nausea were totally effective. I was able to sleep for the first time since Thursday night for a few hours. I woke up to the sound of my water breaking at about 4am. (That was kinda cool, since it had never happened before...)
3 contractions later, I felt an extreme amount of pressure, as if the baby was on its way out. I called for the nurse again, and she checked me to find out that I was completely dilated, effaced and ready to deliver. She wanted me to try out pushing, but I asked to wait, since Elissa wasn't there yet, and I knew that it might be a really fast delivery like Cannon's. We called Elissa, my sister, and mom, and told them to hurry if they wanted to come and see the baby be delivered. Mom declined, said that she would rather wait outside. Sister had to get to work, and thought she wouldn't be able to make it (she ended up coming and being able to help out anyways), and sister in law threw on some wrinkled clothes and sped to the hospital. At 4:45 am I was given the go ahead to "give it a little push" and did. I was then told to "Stop, we have to call the midwife", and a flurry of activity followed. The baby kinda just wiggled out, without much help from me, and the nurse ended up doing the delivery while the midwife threw on some gloves. 2 minutes later, at 4:47 am Maeve Leanne was out and laying on my chest. It was awesome. I actually got to help pull her out, and I was the one who got to see whether she was a girl or a boy. Such an amazing experience. She was not quite the small baby that everyone predicted, but still our smallest. She weighed in at 8 lbs, 4 oz, and 20.5 inches long. Her hair is dark, although I assume, like the others it will be blond later. She looks like Brynn, and I am still blown away to have another little girl in my life. Two daughters. Who would have thought it?
Thanks for the prayer and support. I am so glad that this part is over, and now I get to move on to learning about my new little child.

After a day of induction...No baby yet. 9pm, discouraged, but still managed a smile for the camera.

The 3 girls...Saturday morning


Maeve Leanne