Sorry if the title of this post makes your cringe!
I only write this because asking how labor & delivery went is one of those questions I get asked with every (female) visitor that comes by!
Anyways, here is a little summary of the day Ava Jean was born...
It was Monday morning, June 21st, and I woke up 8 days past my due date,
with not a hint of labor in sight!
I had an OB appointment at 9am.
They did the "non stress test" to check on the baby's movements.
All was great, just like it was a few days earlier.
Then they did a sonogram which showed surprisingly low levels of amnionic fluid.
So low, that my doctor looked at me and said,
"looks like your having a baby today.
Try to be at the hospital within the hour."
Yikes. I must admit I was a little worried about baby girl. I even cried on the way home.
The next hour was a whirlwind. We rushed to pack our bags and figure out what to do with our big girls. We took them to Steve & Lizzy's and then headed uptown for our 3rd induction!
Our last picture as a family of four,
taken just before we left the Honea's.
And the last picture of little miss Ava in my belly!
Its hard to believe just hours later she was out!
So we headed to the hospital and arrived around 1:30pm (quite a bit more than an hour later!)
By 2:30pm I was all hooked up and the pitocin was flowing.
Going into the hospital I was only 1cm, so it took a good 2 hours to get into active labor.
During this time Joe & I enjoyed trying to finalize baby girls name (we didn't want to wait until she was 3 days old like with Abigail) and watched the world cup.
There are some perks to being induced :)
Around 4:30-5 pm I was feeling the contractions big time and they were only about 2 minutes apart, so they ordered an epidural. At this point I was still just 3cm.
About an hour later the epidural was good and we wondered if little miss Ava was going to be born that day or take her sweet time. Within 20 minutes I started shaking and sweating and feeling off...and the baby's heartbeat was going crazy with each contraction. This was exactly what happened with Abigail once I got the epidural. In my mind I kept thinking, "I think my body's going trough transition"...but if course the nurses didn't think to check since just minutes before I was only 3cm.
About 30 minutes later the nurse came in to turn down the pitocin since my contractions were crazy and less than a minute apart! (when she told me that I thought- Thank God for epidurals!) Ava's heart rate continued to fluctuate with each contraction so they had me laying on my side (just like with Abigail...this was all very familiar). I finally asked the nurse if she's mind just checking to see if I'd made progress (in the back of my mind knowing that with Abigail I went from 3-10cm in an hour once I got the epidural). And sure enough when she did she said, "I see her head...its crowning". So within 10 minutes my doctor walked in and 1 push later Ava Jean was born!
Ava came out screaming!
A happy sign to me that she was alive.
The moment she was born I teared up.
I think with all that we've had going on in our lives these past 9 months,
I hadn't fully wrapped my mind around the fact that we were about to have a new life added to our family. It was a sweet moment.
For the next 30 minutes Ava continued to cry.
She was showing her feisty personality from the start!
They had to suction fluid out of her lungs that she swallowed during delivery.
Other than that, she looked wonderfully healthy.
Once Ava was snuggled up to us she was all better.
I look like I just ran a marathon...haha!
We're so grateful for this precious blessing!
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