Little Zoey is here.

allurea · September 2013

Quick info:
Zoey Ariane, born Tuesday September 17th at 12:56pm.
8lbs 6oz, 20inches long.

The birth story:

I was admitted into L&D on Monday afternoon after my water broke and has meconium in it. After 13 hours of labour, half of which was spent walking around, I was given an epidural so that I could rest for a while. It didn't fully take the first time, leaving my left side to feel the contractions (a very strange feeling), so after changing positions to get LO to move then having the epidural fixed I was able to rest. It was about 5am by the time I could rest. They started oxy at 6am when I was still at 4cm and by 7am I was 9cm.

The epidural was reduced so I could feel my contractions a little and around 12pm the midwives had me start pushing. I had an episiotomy to help get LO out faster due to some distress. She was wisked off to the special care unit right away to get looked after while my excessive bleeding was being taken care of and I was stitched up.

She spent 9 hours in the special care unit and was then brought to my room. She had more blood work done in the morning, as did I, and at about 1pm we were discharged (the benefit to being in the care of midwives, I didn't have to stay in the hospital longer because they do home visits to check on both of us).

Needless to say I wasn't happy about having to abandon my home water birth, but I went into this knowing that I would just roll with the punches as they came. It took about 24 hours of labour to get her here, but it was totally worth it. I'm at home recovering, in a lot of pain, but doing ok.

Here's little Zoey out on the front porch with us while we had our coffee this morning. She's a little jaundice but otherwise nice and healthy.