Adelyn's birth story

One of my friends was induced yesterday morning and delivered a baby girl early this morning (congrats to the new happy family!). As I was following her progress, it got me thinking back to Adelyn's delivery, so I've decided to finish writing up Addy's birth story. FINALLY!

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At my 40th week doctor's appointment on May 19th, I was 90% effaced and still only a fingertip width dilated. My doc and I had discussed inductions, but she said the earliest we would induce would be at the very end of May or even the beginning of June (for first time moms, they wait as long as possible before inducing in hopes that the baby comes on its own). I did NOT want to wait that long, but what can you do? Baby was coming out when Baby was ready.

I began having irregular contractions in the days following my dr.'s appointment and I was starting to feel pretty uncomfortable (sore abdomen, stomach, etc). My parents and sisters came to town that Friday, May 22, for Memorial Day weekend, and we were hoping that I would go into labor over the next few days since my family was already here. Saturday, May 23rd, was a relaxing day with no real excitement. We went to the pool (twice!), grilled shish kabobs for dinner and generally just took it easy.

Sunday (May 24th) was my birthday and original due date, so we all had our fingers crossed that things would get moving! We had a leisurely morning and decided to go to the mall so we could buy a baby book and do a little shopping. Before we left, I noticed that I had some light spotting and mild cramps so I alerted everyone to what was happening. Could this be it?? I remember feeling scared and excited and anxious to finally meet our little one.

We went to the mall and ended up buying a baby book for Derek and I to fill out for Baby Z, and while we were there, I started to get mild contractions. On our way home, we stopped by Dairy Queen to pick up an ice cream cake for my birthday (yummmmm!). The rest of the day was spent hanging around the apartment, timing my contractions. By about 4pm, they were starting to get more uncomfortable and were coming between 10-15 mins apart. They stayed like that for the rest of the day, until we called it a night at around 10pm.

Derek and I slept for a little while, but by 11pm my contractions were getting more intense and started waking me up. Luckily I was able to drift off to sleep again between contractions. This went on until about 2am when they started to get really painful and I could no longer sleep. Derek was awake with me, and by 3am we decided that we should probably get ready to head to the hospital. I got in the shower in hopes that the hot water would relax my muscles, but it didn't do much good. I took my time packing up the rest of my hospital bag, trying to relax between the contractions (now coming about 5-10 mins apart). Around 4:30am, we woke up my parents and sisters to tell them that we were heading to the hospital!

The nice thing about going to the hospital in the middle of the night is that there is very little traffic :) We got up to Methodist Willowbrook Hospital in about 15 mins. As we were walking into the hospital, I had to stop in the middle of the parking lot to breathe through a contraction. We got up to Labor and Delivery, and they sent my right over to the triage area to be monitored. After changing into a gown, the nurse came in to check me out. She asked how far dilated I was at my last appointment, etc. After telling her "only a fingertip" she said I would be very excited to know that I was now 100% effaced and 3cm dilated!!! They decided to admit me rather than send me home since I was technically overdue and had made some nice progress since my last doctor's appointment. I couldn't believe it was actually happening, we were going to have a baby! A Memorial Day baby, at that!

They sent me and Derek to my labor and delivery room, where they hooked me up with the two belts around my stomach (to monitor fetal heart rate and my contractions), and they also started my saline IV and drew some blood for tests. By about 6am, I was all set up in our room, just laboring away (and writing a post for the blog at the same time). The nurses went through a shift change at 7am, and my nurse Kalen came to introduce herself and check on my progress. They decided to start me on pitocin to speed up my contractions at 8am. Man, once that pitocin kicked in, the contractions became REALLY painful. I felt like such a wuss, but they were killer. Poor Derek, he was trying to be a good husband and rub my arm or leg during the contractions, but I think I bit his head off with the common pregnant-lady-in-labor phrase "Don't touch me!" a few times. I seem to recall saying "Man, I want to say a lot of bad words right now"... but I refrained :)

Kalen gave me a shot of demerol to "take the edge off" the contractions, but let me tell you, it did squat. All it did was make me fall asleep between contractions, and then I'd wake up in as much pain as before. I think I scared Derek once because in my loopy, half-drugged state, I tried to get out of bed because I was in so much pain. I just wanted the epidural! Finally at 10am they gave me the epidural and it was heaven. The process of administering the epidural was a bit difficult (holding still during a contraction was not easy), but it was so worth it. I couldn't feel anything below my waist. I did have trouble moving my right leg though -it was like a dead weight, very weird.

The nurse came back to check on my about 10:45am and stated I was 6-7cm dilated. Things were really starting to move along now that I was relaxed. My family made it up to the hospital shortly after that and spent some time visiting with us in the room. I don't really remember much after seeing the family arrive. I do know a doctor and nurse came back in around noon to check on my progress and they said I was fully dilated, so the doc broke my water. (Side note: my usual doc was not on call, so we had a different doc deliver the baby.) I was told to relax for about 30 mins and then the nurse would come back and we would practice pushing! The nurse kept saying how lucky I was that Baby was sitting so low in my pelvis because that would mean I wouldn't have to spend hours and hours trying to push her down into the birth canal.

At 12:30, Kalen came back and got me all set up in the stirrups. My right leg really was dead to the world, so Derek had to lift it up and place it in the holder. It really is a weird feeling, not having control of all your appendages. On my first push, Kalen said she could see that the Baby had a full head of long dark hair :) Baby was turned and facing a funny direction though, so as I was pushing, Kalen helped turn Baby. I practiced pushing for about 30 mins before the doc was called to our room to deliver our Baby. I pushed some more when the doc arrived, and after ~20 hrs of labor and with the help of the vacuum, Adelyn made her appearance at 1:12pm.

Adelyn weighed 6 lbs 5.8 ozs and measured 19.5 inches long. Everyone was surprised by her dark hair (and how much she had!). Because she had been stuck at a funny angle and we needed to use the vacuum, Addy had a large hematoma on her head. It's still there now, 6 weeks later, although it is much smaller and is barely noticeable. Just a little bit longer and it will disappear completely!


The recovery has been a bit difficult. Because of the epidural, my right leg was completely numb so I had to rely completely on Derek and Kalen to move me to the recovery room (getting me out of bed, into the wheelchair, back into the new bed). Luckily I regained sensation within a few hours. There were other problems with the epidural though. It turns out the anesthesiologist went a little too far with the spinal needle and punctured the membrane surrounding my spinal cord, letting a little bit of spinal fluid leak out. This resulted in me getting a spinal headache (happens to about 1 in 200 women). Lying flat was the only way I felt decent- as soon as I sat up or moved around, the pain in my head and neck was intense. This sucked because all I wanted to do was bond with Addy. Lying flat made nursing more challenging, changing diapers almost impossible, etc. The anesthesiologist said that the little hole would heal by "scabbing" over, but if I moved around too much or exerted myself, the scab would open again and the pain would come back. Reasonable for a new mother? I think not. Basically he had me on bed rest, made me drink tons of fluids, caffeine, taking vicodin, but still the headache didn't go away.

By Wednesday, the day we were supposed to be discharged (I delivered on Monday), I was feeling pretty bad, so they decided to keep me one more day. On Thursday the anesthesiologist performed a blood patch, where they remove some blood from my arm and inject it back into the spot where the epidural was in hopes of forming a clot. The blood patch worked wonders and I finally started to feel better. We were discharged later Thursday evening and finally got to come home! The first night home was great, so nice to be in our own bed again (poor Derek had been sleeping on an uncomfortable fold down couch the entire time we were at the hospital). We set our alarm to wake us up every 3 hrs to feed Adelyn but found that that wasn't necessary, she woke us up when she was hungry (every 2.5 hrs or so) :)

On Friday, Derek's parents arrived from Florida to visit their first grandbaby, and they spent the next 4 days taking care of Derek, Adelyn and me. Unfortunately, we think I ended up opening the scab on the blood patch when we got home Thursday night, because my headache came back. I spent the next week on semi-bed rest again, so it really was wonderful having Derek's parents in town to help get us back on our feet. After they left on Monday, Derek had to go back to work (boo) and my Mom came to take over for the Zivney's. She stayed with me, cooked and cleaned and helped with Addy until Thursday when I was finally feeling better.

Since then, things have been great. Adelyn still gets up roughly twice a night (sometimes more) and has naps during the day. She's growing quickly - she's practicing holding her head up, she's great at focusing and tracking items, she's interested in colors, she's cooing and trying to communicate... It's amazing to watch her develop! We are so blessed to have a happy, healthy baby girl :)