Miss Adeline Paige joined the family on Thursday, July 21st at 6:48am. Coincidentally, July 21st was her estimated due date! Even more shocking is the fact that the second it hit midnight (and I mean exactly) my contractions started at 6-8 minutes apart and ended at 6:48am when she was born...less than 7 hours later!! It was a very intense and fast process, but there was very little drama and she did beautifully through the whole thing. It was a long and drawn out story that started Wednesday morning at 6:45am when I woke up to get showered and ready to bring Noah over to Miss Nancy's house for the day. The second I got up out of bed, I felt a little gush and as I ran to the bathroom, there were a couple of more little ones that followed. This was a repeat performance from when Noah was born. I KNEW my water had broken, but was told to call the doctor's office to go in for confirmation. Wouldn't you know that once I got to the office, I couldn't turn any of their test papers blue, they couldn't see the ferning pattern of amniotic fluid on the slides, and when I had an ultrasound of my amniotic fluid levels, there was no significant drop from normal levels. Of course when they tested my fluid levels, it was almost 6 hours after my water broke, which is plenty of time for the fluid to replenish itself. I spent the entire morning in the office with nothing to show for it. By 5pm, I received a call from the office to head over to labor and delivery to repeat all of the tests that I had already done earlier in the day. After about 5 hours in triage at Labor and Delivery, still not turning test strips blue, walking the halls, and a couple of additional hours of listening to a little baby's heartbeat on the monitors, the residents discharged me saying that they could neither confirm nor deny that my water broke and that I was showing no imminent signs of delivering. I can't remember a time when I have been that discouraged and angry. Keep in mind that I have called my parents to drive in from Maine (a 7 hour drive) and have pulled Tim out of work for the day all for people to tell me that I perhaps don't know what I am talking about and that I should go home and wait for something more interesting to happen.
Flash forward a couple of hours, we were back at home and getting ready for bed. No sooner did I lay down in bed when I had a really strong and painful contraction. Tim was trying to read me some of Harry Potter series. A couple more contractions later and I decided that perhaps we should time the contractions. I hadn't right away because I had been having really irregular contractions since the previous Tuesday. Over a week of false labor mind you got me really hesitant to time anything, never mind call back and report anything. After 2 straight hours of contractions 6-8 minutes apart, I finally called into the after hours line and got ahold of my favorite midwife, Janet. She urged me strongly to go back in. By the time we got back in at 3am, I was sent directly into a labor and delivery room (at least a step up from the trip earlier). At 3:30, I was checked and was 4 cm dilated, 80% effaced and -2 station (earlier in the day at the doctor's office I was 2 cm dilated, 50% effaced and -3 station) and I earned an admittance to stay...we were finally going to have a baby! I was hoping to see how far I could go without an epidural, but with very few expectations. I had to be monitored for contractions and the little lady's heart rate in order to earn my way off of continuous monitoring, which wasn't an issue at all. About an hour later, I had my choice of places to labor. I headed into the whirlpool tub and turned on the jets. While the water did ease some of the tension, the pain was still there in a significant way and after about an hour or so of contractions in the tub, I headed back to the room in hopes of getting some epidural relief. Sadly, by that time I was 8-9 cm dilated. The midwife suggested we finish breaking my bag of water in the hopes that it was the bag of water pushing on my cervix and without it there labor would slow down enough to get the epidural in. Unfortunately, once she broke my bag of water instead of slowing down, I dilated completely and was ready to push with no time for an epidural!! I asked for some IV medication to help through the pushing and ended up with a blown IV access point and a bit of Stadol under my skin and that is all. Twenty minutes of pushing later, and an epic amount of pain I cannot possibly describe and Adeline was born at an amazing 8 lbs, 12 oz, 20 and half inches in length, with a 36cm head, much bigger than we were expecting and almost a pound more than Noah at birth.
babywearing so I can still get things done around the house and play with Noah while keeping Addie close, but for now, we are thoroughly enjoying our new addition to the family!
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