Jane Arabella is here!

hoopsterlevittown · August 2013

I haven't posted much at all on this board, but I'm on the spreadsheet and thought I should check in and say my baby was born! Jane was born on August 13 at 9:19 PM, one week past her due date.

I had premature rupture of membranes (my water broke followed by no other real signs of labor) and I waited a really long time to go to the hospital because it seemed like the risk of infection due to PROM would be worse there; once we finally went in we went with my OB's recommendation of cytotec (!) followed by pitocin to speed things up. I ended up getting an epidural; I had been interested in going med-free but found it hard to do many of my pain-management techniques with a pitocin drip, continuous fetal monitoring, and back labor. The baby turned out to be face-first, which my OB found to be very exciting (she was basically geeking out at the prospect of delivering a face-first baby); there was a chance they would have to do a c-section, but in the end it wasn't necessary, and she was born after about 20 minutes of pushing. She had some bad bruising and swelling, but it went down by the next day.

My doctors had been warning me for months that she would be a "big baby," but she was only 8 pounds 2 ounces (about a pound and a half less than the ultrasound estimates.) So, as everyone says, try not to worry too much about the "big baby" warnings--the ultrasound could be off, and/or your body can probably handle the baby you're having, and decisions about induction/c-section can be made based on how your labor is progressing, not based on ultrasounds beforehand.