Baby Abigail is here!

MrsKatie · March 2011

Abigail Pearl arrived on Sunday 2.27.11 at 11:47am! She weighed 6lbs, 6oz and was 19 inches long!

Here is our birth story:

We started having contractions on 2/15 and were sent to L&D, I was contracting at every 5 minutes, but not dilated; well just to 1cm. These continued for a few days and never got more intense or closer together. On Sunday 2/20 I started showing signs of pre-e so we went in for a quick BP check and everything looked fine. I was contracting at about every 7 minutes, but didn't really feel anything. I woke up on 2/21 with contractions every 4 minutes, but still bearable... they went away four hours later! The rest of the week was relatively quiet.
Friday I took my niece and my Mom to do some shopping for my Dad's birthday. We did a lot of walking around the mall and I was exhausted. At about 6:00pm Friday I started to have some pretty intense groin pain. It would come and go about every 1/2 hour. By 9:00pm they were just about 15 mnutes apart. By about 2:30am they were 6 minutes apart and about an "8" on the pain scale. We went into L&D and I was 1-2cm, 80% at -2. We walked around a bit, but she ended up disengaging and my contractions went to 8 minutes apart. I went getting pretty tired since I hadn't slept since Thursday night; so they gave me some morphine to help me sleep. I slept maybe an hour and was still contracting at 8 minutes. I wasn't progressing and the contractions weren't getting closer together. So we were sent home. We got home around 5:00pm and ate. Pretty much immediately after we ate the contractions started to get way more intense. But they were still only at 8 minutes apart. We went to bed and while my H slept I contracted in bed falling alseep between each contraction. At about 12:30am I started laboring on the exercise ball for contractions and at 1:30am I was having to stand and lean on the bed through them. At about this time they were 5 minutes apart. I rated them a "9", but they still weren't unbearable. At 2:30am I started getting sick, so my H called and they had us come in right away,.
When we got there I was 3-4cm, 90% and 0. I ended up getting an epidural since it was now Sunday and Thursday night was the last night I slept. The epidural was heaven! I slept from 7:00am to 9:00am. At 9:00am I was 5cm, 100%, +2. At 10:00am I started to feel like I had to poop, but didn't say anything. We were chatting with everyone that had come for the delivery! At 10:30 I paged the nurse because it felt like my cathather was falling out. The nurse got the doctor and when he checked me at 11:00am I was ready to push!
After getting everything ready I started pushing at 11:20am and Abby was born at 11:47am. It was the single greatest moment of my life. We were able to have chest to chest time for an hour - it was so amazing to have her here! I tore just a tiny bit, but haven't even felt the stiches at all! The only thing recovery-wise that I have had trouble with is my tailbone!
Here she is after birth:

Here she is at two days old: