Madeline Clara's Birth Story

Well, our daughter is here. It was a long road at the end, but of course she is worth it!

On Monday night, I said goodbye to Oma, Opa and Katarina and Nick & I went to the hospital. I got there and they made me change into my gown, hooked me up to the fetal monitor and took my vitals. I was having contractions again, but just mild to medium ones every few minutes. They put in my heplock. Dr. G came in around 7.30 and put in the Cervadil. He told me that since things were starting on their own, I didn't have to keep it in the whole 12 hours. The first two hours I had to lay there - no getting up. Nick stayed for a bit, then he went home to put Katarina to bed. The Cervadil caused my contractions to be one on top of the other and I was getting pretty uncomfortable. When the nurse came in around 9.30, she took the Cervadil out and gave me some Nubain in my IV to help me sleep.

Nick arrived Tuesday morning. I was still having contractions. They started the Pitocin in the IV. Contractions started to get more intense. I think I spent the morning just watching them on the monitor. My nurse, Alice, wasn't happy b/c I "wasn't in enough pain" so I wasn't in real labor. I was also only about 2 cm dilated when they started things. Around 11, I was 5 cm dilated and the pain was getting much more intense. A little later, they gave me a little more nubain because I still wasn't dilated enough and the pain was getting unbearable.

All of a sudden, I was still out of it, but I had the need to push. Everything seemed to happen very quickly but I was still so loopy I don't really know what was going on. I do know that Kathy, the midwife, showed up and everyone was giving me directions. Unfortunately, I wasn't mentally ready to start pushing and a little freaked out that it was going to be happening. I started pushing. In my mind, it felt like I pushed forever and it felt like this baby was stuck and I was never going to get her out. I just kept on pushing, contractions or not, because I wanted the pain to stop. Now, the nurses and Nick tell me that I did great and I had 2 contractions and pushed a total of 5 minutes. Much different than my perspective!

Finally, the big moment came and they said, "it's a girl" and they put a baby on me that looked exactly like Katarina as a newborn. Nick cut the cord and gave me a kiss. I had a hard time keeping my eyes open and had to go through the gross post-delivery stuff. They took our little surprise girl and cleaned her up and Nick took pictures and I drifted off.

Madeline was born on June 24th at 12.50 p.m. She was a whopping 8 lbs and 11 oz and just like her sister, was 8 days overdue. So far she has been a great baby - good eater, good sleeper, a beautiful baby. And now, this blog is done and since Madeline has joined our family all updates will be in the regular family blog.

Thanks for reading this for the past 40 weeks!