Wow! What An Unexpected Weekend! (Baby Story Inside)

Well, for anyone who hasn't heard, we started Friday morning as a family of five and by Friday night we were a family of six! For those interested, here is the story.

With the last two pregnancies I have had a lot of false labor towards the end, usually starting around week 34-35, some very intense contractions and some more simple Braxton Hicks. Sometimes they are close together and rhythmic and other times random. This is highly annoying and makes it hard to know when these babies of mine will arrive--plus it tires me out and makes life at 8 months pregnant pretty miserable. Still on Friday at 36 weeks I was convinced that despite all the false labor we had at least 1 more week to go. I went to my morning OB appointment for a regular check up and expected that afterwards I'd come home and Marc and I would do the last little bit of baby prep (pack our hospital bag and install the car seat) before an early celebration of our 12th anniversary that night. Little did I know then that I wouldn't be coming home for a while and that maybe I should have listened to the prompting the day before to get the hospital bag packed!

My appointment seemed to be going well, not much dilation despite the contractions, baby's size and position looked good and we were almost to 37 weeks. The only concern was that her heart rate was little fast. My OB decided to monitor her heart rate and my contractions there at the office for a bit to see if she would settle down after some time went by. Well an hour went by and she really didn't settle down at all, so off to labor and delivery I went for some more monitoring. I was pretty sure that after awhile she would settle down and that labor and delivery would send us home, but I called Marc to let him know I was going to be a little bit longer and that just maybe he should check to see if my parents were around. 

Thankfully they were because after an hour or so of further monitoring at labor and delivery my Dr. came over to tell me that she thought all my false labor was putting too much stress on little Claire and that we were going to be having her today!

I was extremely surprised and quickly called Marc to explain. I only had about 1 minute to do so before a bunch of nurses came in and started getting me prepped for an induction. I was a little bit worried about how fast things might go as Spencer's labor went extremely fast once I reached 4m in dilation. I wanted to be sure Marc was there and explained my hope for an epidural--something I missed with Spencer because of his speedy arrival. My Dr. was happy to wait for Marc to arrive before breaking my water and starting the induction. It turns out I didn't have to worry so much because getting to 3cm took forever. 

Well, not forever, but about 4-5 hours which seemed like forever. We had to induce slowly to make sure she wouldn't go into further stress, so that took quite awhile longer than a typical induction. They kept coming in every so often to up the medication. We were beginning to think we wouldn't be having her until Sat. when things suddenly took off. I went from 3cm to fully dilated in about 40minutes. Which, let me tell you, was lots of fun (not), especially since my epidural wore off on my right side. Thankfully the anesthesiologist came back in just before delivery and fixed something so I had some pain relief for the three or so pushes it took to deliver her. 

And she was perfect! She weighed in at 6lbs and 8oz, and measured in at 20 inches long. It took about 2 seconds for her to capture our hearts and we are certainly smitten with her! 

 

 

We love our little princess!