Sweetcheeks is Here!

After a thirteen hour labor {ugh!} Sweetcheeks has made her debut {yay!}! Contractions actually started Sunday afternoon. By the evening they were closer together and not stopping but very easy/manageable. Around 8pm, Nanaw and I went on a 3 mile walk to see if we could get them stronger. Oh we did! They were about 2-3 minutes apart when we decided to stop walking and maybe get some rest before the big event...if it was real labor.

Around 9pm I came home, enjoyed a bath, caught up on some laundry...all while still having contractions 4 minutes apart. Around 9:30 they were still 4 mins apart but I started vomiting when they would peak. B and I were honestly afraid that I was in transistion and didn't know it. Afterall she is my 4th kiddo...maybe labor happened and I never thought it was that intense? Better being safe than sorry, we called Nanaw and Papa. Papa stayed at the house with the {now sleeping} little dudes, while Nanaw, B and I went off to the hosptial.

Imagine my surprise when I was checked and found to be almost 3 cm dilated and 75% effaced?! WTH! They wanted me to hang around for an hour and see if things changed...they agreed that I was in labor but wanted to monitor me since I do have my babies early. Well long story short, I was admitted. Turns out the outer part of my cervix was so stretchy she could stretch it as far as she wanted {well, within reason} but the inner part was stuck at 4cm and I had reached 80% effacement. Because I wasn't technically ''full term'' they couldn't break my water til Dr.P gave the go ahead and he wasn't on call so I had to wait til 8am. With the boys, my water never did break...each time they had to rupture my membranes so I was basically waiting for 8am to roll around.

Fun times. Not. Remember, I am not one to get an epidural. In fact, I never even got an IV or hep lock put in place. I really really wanted this birth, my last one, to be free of any interventions and as natural as I could have it. 

So we walked and walked and walked. We would walk several loops around the Labor and Delivery floor, coming back to the room to sip on Gatorade. Around 5:30am my contractions were pretty tame...I actually just laid in the bed and slept thru as many as I could.  Around 6:30am I got into the whirlpool tub, using the jets for nipple stimulation and stayed there for a good hour. By 8am Dr P was here and he checked me. I was almost 5cm and he broke my water. Hooray! So it was back to walking, using the birth ball and eventually back to the tub. By 10:30am I was almost 8cm dilated and things were starting to hurt. Nanaw and I had both been up for 24 hours straight! I was in the tub and could physically feel Sweetcheeks turning and moving down. They made me quickly get out of the tub...birthing in the pool here is a no-no, which really slowed things down.

After the tub I spent most of my time laboring on hands and knees, facing the back of the bed or standing next to the bed, bending over and swaying through contractions. Pretty sure anyone and everyone saw my butt but I didn't (and still don't) care. B and Nanaw were very good about rubbing my back and reminding me to take deep breaths. Between each contraction I just wanted ice chips and quiet.

Around 11:50am I was checked and found to be completely dilated and effaced with an anterior cervical lip. I was feeling very pushy and very frustrated that things were taking this long. I labored for a bit longer and I believe it was around noon when the nurse had me push through a contraction while she attempted to move the lip over babies head. Highly painful but it was working. They started to break down the bed and I started to really want to push. I was making myself pant, making horse-lip/raspberry noises with my lips...anything to stop me from pushing too soon.

I'm not really sure what time I started actually pushing...I know it was after 12:05pm and after 12:14 because those were B's and Nanaw's guesses for time or birth. I believe it was just shy of 12:30pm when I started pushing ''for real''. While little Miss was RIGHT THERE, her big ole head took a lot of work. Finally at 12:40pm, she was here.

 6lbs 13oz, 19.5 inches long born at 12:40 on October 4th

I got everything that I really wanted out of my ''birth plan''. I delivered here without any paid meds, without pitocin and without even having an IV started ''just in case''. She was laid directly on my belly until the cord quit pulsating, and her first APGAR test was preformed there. B cut the cord and she was taken over to the warmer to be measured, weighed and wiped off. They put her in a diaper (at this point she had peed twice all over!) and hat, etc. I birthed the placenta easily and without assistance and she was given right back to me. We were breastfeeding withing probably 10 minutes of her birth. Afterward they gave her all of her eye drops, vaccines, etc.

Not to sound like a hippie but I am very glad that she was brought into this world just the way we wanted her to be. She is nursing like a champion, wetting and dirtying diapers left and right :) She's alert and happy and it was the perfect birth for our last baby :)

Here she is all cleaned up: