Month: May 2015

On May 9, 2015 and 1:31pm, we welcomed our second child into the world. She was 7lb 15oz and 20″ long. Her birth story is just as quick as Garrett’s … but a lot more painful.

It was a Saturday morning. Thankfully it was Nathan’s Saturday off (he works every other). Him and Garrett had just gotten back from picking up McDonald’s for breakfast. I had already eaten before they both woke up, but Nathan brought me a hot chocolate. As we’re standing in our little entryway, he hands me my hot chocolate and all of a sudden I feel like I’m peeing myself. I calmly put my drink down on the table, told Nathan to go ahead and eat with Garrett because I needed to go to the bathroom.

When I got to the bathroom I had a feeling my water was breaking, but when it broke with Garrett it was all in a gush. This was just a trickle. But it kept trickling. So I did what any normal woman in labor would do, I  shaved my arm pits, considered washing my hair (decided against it because it takes too long to dry because it’s so long) and got dressed. By that time Nathan was in the bedroom asking if I was okay. I calmly looked at him and told him yes, but that we needed to get started on our way to the hospital.

At the beginning of my pregnancy, I knew that we would be moving mid-pregnancy. I also knew that I had two options … stay with the doctor that I love to pieces, who is now an hour from my house, or find a doctor who delivers at the hospital 20 minutes from my house. I chose to stick with my doctor. I knew we were facing an hour drive to the hospital. So I didn’t really want to waste too much time. We made it to the hospital parking garage in 45 minutes flat … I won’t tell you how fast my husband drove 🙂

After getting settled into my birthing room, and being checked out, I was already dilated to 4. Then the IV hell began. I have horrible, horrible veins. With Garrett it took 3 people to get an IV in me. With this pregnancy, it took 5 people and a total of 2 hours. It finally took the anesthesia guy being able to numb my vein to get it in place. Yeah,  fun. At that point my doctor came in and informed me that I could have the epidural at any point, but that my contractions were so irregular that she was afraid that taking it so early would possibly slow down the process. This terrified me. I only had 5 hours from my water breaking with Garrett until I was holding him in my arms. The last thing I wanted was a looooong labor. So I held off. Besides, the contractions weren’t painful at the point, just mild cramping every so often.

Big mistake.

Both of our parents were in the waiting room by this point, and they took turns coming back and visiting with me. My in-laws were in the room and my contractions were starting to come a little harder and more often. But still only uncomfortable. Luckily, they could pretty much tell that they were not the people who needed to be in the room at that point. They left and my mom came in. At this point the nurse came around and I told her I wanted the morphine and to get the fluids going to get the epidural process starting.

I got my morphine shot.

16 minutes later I was pushing my baby girl out.

Folks, 3.5 hours from the moment I walked into the hospital until I was holding my baby. One hour from the time my doctor told me my contractions weren’t consistent enough to be considered in labor until I had our daughter. Talk about a whirlwind.

No epidural. Only a morphine shot that really hadn’t kicked in. Talk about things not going according to plan. But you know what, she’s healthy. That’s all that matters. It’s true what people say … you really do forget about the pain the moment they are out of you.

So now, I am proud to introduce you to our daughter, Katelyn.