Baby Lanie was due Thursday (Thanksgiving Day). Though I had been feeling good I had started to have some contractions on Wednesday which got my hopes up. Unfortunately they seemed to completely stop by Thursday and I was worried I was going to have a very late baby as is common in my family. I had been to the midwife earlier this week and it was just not looking like Baby wanted to come. So needless to say I was rather disappointed as the days came and went with no sign of a baby.
I had been going on many walks trying to get something going but they didn't seem to do the trick either until Thursday night when we were watching football on TV and I decided James and I needed to walk up by the Provo Temple where there are some really good and steep hills. After a 45 min hike up those hills we finally decided to go home to bed.
I went to bed around midnight with very few contractions but then woke up about 2:20 am to moderate contractions which quickly progressed to stronger, more frequent, and longer lasting contractions. After a few hours of pacing, trying to distract myself, etc. I woke James and we got ready to head to the hospital and arrived at 7:00 am. There they put me in a triage room and a nurse came to check on me and found I was dilated to a 5 and they were going to keep me! (three days ago I was only a 1.5 and had been that way for about 2 weeks).
The hospital was wonderful and got anesthesia to me right away and I was so grateful for an epidural. It made everything so wonderful. Then my midwives Jana and Sarah came in and checked me to find that I was to 6+and so they also broke my water. All I had to do now was wait to get to a 10. James and I tried to rest at this point.
By 11:00 I was a 9.5 and we decided to start pushing at 12:00pm. The midwives were awesome and coached me through pushing. Unfortunately Baby Lanora had been swimming in tons of amniotic fluid and so she never quite properly engaged herself. When the water broke she kind of engaged her head a little to the side which made for a harder time of pushing her out. We had tried to rotate her but after an hour and a half we decided to stop and have me lay on my side for a while hoping that she would then rotate herself. I was feeling less comfortable at this point and was therefore so grateful for the epidural.
Baby did not rotate like we had hoped and so the midwives decided to call the doctor in for fear that a vaccuum was going to have to be used. Fortunately by the time he got here he decided to have me push a little more and it was finally at that point that Lanie decided to start cooperating and turned herself. The doctor and midwives were both wonderful in getting Lanie here.
Lanie was born at 2:58 pm and weighed 8 lbs 8 oz and was 21.5 inches long (which was surprising to me). In the pics she is a little bruised, especially on the side that she was trying to come out on.
This is a dark picture, but I'm glad I took it. This is what I looked like right before I went to bed on Thursday night. I never really posted any baby bump pictures so I thought I would include this one and the next one.
This is another baby bump picture of me about two days before Lanie was born. I like it because the lighting makes it almost hard to see how big I actually was. (Which of course was huge!)
Now for the good stuff. Here is our sweet little girl. This was soon after her first bath. She cleaned up very well. I just can't get over how little her mouth is and how chubby her cheeks are.
Here's another of her after her bath. Poor baby with a black eye. She really wedged herself.
Here she is getting her bath. As I was going through all the pics I realized that we hardly gave her any privacy so I won't show you her bath pics, but I figured this one at least wouldn't offend anyone. ;)
