adelaide's birth story...

i love reading others' birth stories and want to remember adelaide's, so i thought i would record it here.  i apologize to those of you rolling your eyes and closing your browser right now ha.

all day saturday we were joking about getting labor started.  we kept busy by running a bunch of errands- we stopped by sean's office (where i met sean's new chief of staff with, i'm pretty sure, about 2 inches of my belly hanging out), we grocery shopped, we even got stuck in a rare saturday afternoon motorcade.

that night i took basil for a walk (i'm going for a walk!  to start labor!) and had lemon sorbet for dessert (eating lemon! to start labor!).  basically, we were trying all the things! to start labor!  i had been having zero progress at my doctor's appointments and i was really scared of an induction.

and then, as i was falling asleep around 10:30, my water broke.  thank god i had put a waterproof mattress pad down, even though "only 10% of the time your water breaks at the beginning of labor".  i actually have no idea if that statistic is true but it's what i've been telling coworkers who were afraid my water would break at work.

we drove to the hospital in the thickest fog ever.  like, literally.  it was hard to see the car in front of us.  but we made it and got checked in and i found out i was a whopping...1 cm dilated.  not too surprising since my contractions weren't painful yet.  i wish i could have stayed at home longer but my doctor said i needed to get antibiotics started. oh well.

last belly picture!

we were told to get some rest.  multiple times.  look, i understand how rest and energy works but it is impossible to sleep with contractions every 2 minutes.

so around 3:30 i opted for the epidural.  yup, the evil epidural* came to my rescue and i could finally get an hour of two or sleep. by 7 am i was fully dilated!  my doctor came in and said the baby was still very high, so if i started pushing now it would probably take me about three hours.  as fun as that sounded, we decided to give her more time to descend on her own.  meanwhile, we let the epidural wear off.  basically, we were in a painful holding pattern.

around 11 the nurse had me start pushing "just to see".  i could still feel her up in my ribs at this point but well, she had to come out eventually.  i guess it was working because before i knew it (ok more like an hour and a half), the nurse was trying to find my doctor, who was performing a c-section.  at one point it was just sean and me in the room, which was a little scary.

oh and the nurse excitedly told me she has a ton of dark hair!  and all i could think of was dammit! (i was really hoping for red hair) of course, we decided to keep her anyway.

the doctor finally came and we joked that i had to have the baby before 12:49 (sean's guess on the birth time).  well, i'm an over-achiever because just a minute or two later, at 12:46, adelaide was here!

(by the way, sean was very supportive and not at all annoying.  i could tell a couple times he wanted to throw up- like when my i.v. came undone and blood starting squirting everywhere.  but he held it together very well!)

the doctor, uh, finished things up on her end (sean: "i just saw the placenta! it looked like a movie prop.") while we got to know this squirmy, little baby.

we think she's pretty great.

and i apologize, again, for writing a blog post in which i mention both my placenta and (indirectly) my cervix.

* i didn't really have a birth plan per say.  i did know that if i took an 8 week course, read a bunch of books and committed to a natural, med-free birth and it didn't happen, i'd be really disappointed in myself.  i just didn't want that kind of pressure.  so i decided to wing it.  i think this method is highly unpopular nowadays ha.