Kate's birth story

For those who are interested here is Kate's birth story.
I was scheduled to be induced on Friday Feb 24th. I choose this day so we could capitalize on Russ's time off by using the weekend. I desperately wanted to go into labor before that though. I was trying everything in the book to get labor started. Sadly nothing was progressing. Until my 39 week apt I was dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced. This was on Wed the 22nd. I had my membranes stripped and was hopping for something to happen that day or the next. Nothing happened until Thursday night I started having a lot of braxton hix contractions. Nothing was regular but I went on a long walk and went to bed. The hospital was going to call me in the morning to let me know what time to come in. I woke up on friday morning at 6 am with a painful contraction. They were regular at 6 minutes apart. The hospital called and told me to be there at 9 am. By then I was sure I was already in labor. We got to the hospital at 9 they hooked me up to the monitor and after about an hour my contractions were 5 minutes apart. They were painful but nothing I couldn't handle. They broke my water and there was meconium in it so respiratory had to be there for delivery. The nurse told me if I wanted an epidural I should get it sooner than later because it was a busy day. I decided to get it then even though it wasn't too bad at that point. I got the epidural but it was too strong and I started to get numb up my chest, I got light headed and my blood pressure dropped to 84/40. They gave me some IV fluid and epinephrine and that stabilized my blood pressure. I was anxious about the numbness and was focusing on not freaking out. They turned my epidural off for about an hour. At that point I was a 5. I was nervous to have them turn it back on but they did on the lowest dose. About 30 minutes later I could feel the contractions again. I asked the nurse if we could turn the epidural up a bit. She said no I think you are ready to deliver. I said there is no way I was only a 5 30 minutes ago. She checked me and I was an 8. She said give 2 pushes are you will be there. She checked again 1 minute later and I was a 10 and ready to go. This was so weird to me since I was in labor with Alyssa for 15 hours and it took me forever to progress. They called the Dr and I was ready to start pushing. The nurse said you will probably push for 15 minutes max, again I pushed for 3 hours with Alyssa. She was wrong that time. I ended up pushing for 45 long hard minutes. In the end Kate was posterior (she was face up instead of face down) This makes it much more difficult to deliver. She was born healthy and didn't have any respiratory problems. She has a head of dark curly brown beautiful hair. I am so grateful to have her and love her so much. So glad that she is here and not in me any more =)

getting vitals checked

right after getting cleaned up