Our Birth Story

Our birth story began Tuesday November 4th, 2014. My mom had come up a few days earlier from Phoenix, AZ to help us out with the baby while my husband and I are going to school and my husband and mom and I were walking around the mall for the fun of it. It was about 8:30 pm and we were in Sears and I started to feel my first contractions - they were really, really mild and didn't hurt at all. I hadn't had any Braxton Hicks contractions up to that point, so I wasn't sure if these contractions were real or not. I just remember turning to my husband and mom and saying, "I think I'm having contractions." They were pretty excited to say the least, and my husband could hardly sleep that night.

The early morning hours of Wednesday, November 5th, I woke up at around 4 am with stronger contractions. They continued to progress that day, and my husband and I stayed home from school anticipating each hour that we would go to the hospital at any moment. However, it wasn't until around 1 pm that my contractions started to get very strong, although they hadn't been close enough together to rush to the hospital just yet. Around 4 pm, the contractions started to come about every 3-5 minutes, and we knew that it was time to go to the hospital. Of course, we went to Wendy's first for a quick pre-hospital dinner, and then got to the hospital around 5 pm.

We got to the hospital, and I was only dilated to about 2 cm, but 80% effaced, so they kept me in a private waiting room while they waited to check my contractions to see if they were progressing. If they weren't, they would have sent me home, but at this point, the contractions were so painful that I would not have allowed them to send me back. Unfortunately, the contraction monitor was not picking my contractions up, so they kept me in the waiting room for 2 and a half hours to monitor my progression by how much I was dilating. The contractions at this point were VERY painful, and I was struggling to keep my calm - I was especially frustrated that the hospital just wouldn't admit me right away with how incredibly strong the contractions were. Luckily, I was dilating pretty quickly, and by 7:30 pm, I was dilated to 4.5 cm. They FINALLY admitted me at that point and took me to the labor and delivery room.

Although I had done a lot of research and decided for myself that I did not want an epidural, feeling how strong and painful my contractions were, I opted for one when asked by the hospital staff. It really wasn't painful at all to receive the shot, and it made the difference for me in being able to relax and enjoy the birth experience rather than suffering through the contractions and crying and being in so much pain that I couldn't think of anything else. I had read a few books on hypnobirthing and techniques for having an unmedicated birth, but these techniques did not help me at all in the hours before I was admitted when I had no pain relief. It was so worth it to get the epidural. I don't regret it at all.

During the hours that we were waiting for little Ella to arrive, my husband, mom, and I relaxed in my room and enjoyed watching movies on the TV. There was another woman who had been admitted to the hospital at the same time as I and at the same dilation, but I was progressing WAY quicker than her. By 10:50 pm, I was dilated to 7 cm, by 11:50 pm, I was dilated to 8.5 cm, and by 12:17 am, I was dilated to 10 cm and my water finally broke.

However, although baby was well on her way, I was told not to push because my midwife was not yet there. She wanted me to wait a bit because of some technique called 'rest and relax' (I think?) where she wanted to let the baby come down some on her own to save me time and energy from pushing her down myself. She wanted me to wait a couple hours for this, but baby had other plans and the nurses called my midwife back to tell her the baby would be ready for me to push in more like 30 minutes.

I don't remember exactly when my midwife got there and I started pushing, but I do remember it being a pretty painless and easy delivery where I didn't feel like I really had to struggle to bring her into this world. In fact, I had had a pretty nasty cold and was coughing a lot, and every time I coughed, I brought Ella down a little bit farther. The coughing was working better for me than actually pushing!

Ella Mae arrived at 2:07 am, November 6th, healthy and beautiful! She has brown hair, and we think she has blue eyes, but we are waiting to see if they are going to change. She was born 5 lbs and 10 oz, and 18.5 inches long.

She is about a week and a half now and has been such as bundle of joy! I've discovered that she hates being on her back (changing diapers is a challenge because of this), is a side sleeper, and loves to cuddle. She also loves taking baths, but hates being washed. One thing that we are unsure of is if she can hear or not. She failed her hearing test 3 times, and so this Wednesday we are taking her for an ABR test where they will test her hearing by attaching electrodes to her head and placing a headphone in her ear to see if she responds to the noise. We are praying that she passes the test and can hear. I will keep this blog updated on how the test goes and what we find out.