Tessa Quinn Rogers made her grand entrance into the world on Monday, February 18, 2013, at 5:31 pm. Here's how it all went down...
On Wednesday, February 13th, at our final Centering, our midwife, Susan, offered to check me to see if I had made any progress toward labor. I had been telling her that I didn't think I'd felt any contractions yet, but was having a lot of what felt like cervical discomfort. I had also been carrying a LOT of extra fluid in my feet and ankles and belly and was pretty ready to have this baby out. When she checked me, I was 2-3 cm dilated and 90% effaced. I couldn't believe it! It was so exciting to know that labor truly was imminent.
On Friday, February 15th, I finally experienced some false labor pains. The midwife on-call advised me to take some Tylenol, drink some water, take a bath and go to sleep on my side. If the pains didn't stop after all that, it was real labor. Well, they stopped. :-)
On Sunday, February 17th, James and I ran a whole bunch of errands around town. We stood in Verizon for about 2 hours, then walked around Target and Best Buy. It was getting increasingly uncomfortable for me to walk and stand. It was one week before my due date!
At 2:45 am that night (Monday morning, February 18th), my water broke! I was asleep and sooooo happy that I thought to put one of the baby's waterproof crib sheets on my side of the bed. There was so. much. fluid. I called the midwife on-call and she advised me to come to the hospital as soon as I could. It was difficult to get the fluid to stop flowing, so packing up my toiletries and other final things proved harder than I had anticipated. Also, contractions began about an hour later. They were never more than 2-3 minutes apart, and their intensity increased pretty rapidly. We arrived at the hospital at 4:45 am. The midwife was in the middle of something like 4 other deliveries (!), so she wasn't able to check me for awhile. The contractions were getting pretty uncomfortable, and I really wanted to have an idea of how much I was dilated. I had the goal of laboring without any pain medicine, but I wasn't completely committed to it. I had never been in labor before and wasn't sure if I could really handle the pain. When the midwife checked me around 5:45 am, I was 4-5 cm dilated. I was encouraged that I was progressing, but still felt like I had a ways to go. And I was already pretty uncomfortable. So I decided to ask for an epidural. The anesthesiologist arrived at 6:30 am. By that point I was so uncomfortable I barely gave the procedure of actually getting an epidural much thought. It was over by 6:45 and by 7:00 I was feeling much better. :-)
The epidural gave James and me the opportunity to rest up for the main event after only sleeping for a couple hours that night. By noon my mom had arrived at the hospital. She and James ran downstairs to grab some lunch. While they were out, the daytime midwife came in to check my progress. I was completely dilated, effaced, and ready to go! Mom and James came back to the room shortly thereafter to hear the news: it was time to push!
All the medical people set up their supplies. When everything was ready, I started pushing. This went on for about an hour. They determined that the baby wasn't turned the right way and wasn't coming down the birth canal quite like they anticipated. They decided they needed to start Pitocin, turned me on my right side, and then let me rest for a couple hours.
Around 4:00 pm, they came back and had me start pushing again. After another hour, it was clear she still wasn't coming out very easily. The midwife called the doctor to come assess the situation. The doctor figured out the baby's head was turned sideways. They advised a vacuum-assisted delivery. I was pretty nervous about this at first, but my amazing nurse, Peggy, took the time to show me the vacuum and tell me how the procedure would work. Dr. Campbell was also amazing and with two more contractions, Tessa was out! It was such a wonderful moment. Tears of joy were flowing from me and James.
You see that weight? She was 8 lbs, 13 oz! No wonder she needed a vacuum to get out. :-)
I had a little problem with anemia after the birth, but I doubled-up on my iron intake and was better in no time. We headed home on Wednesday, February 20th.
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| Getting ready to go home! |
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| Daddy holding our little fashionista! |
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| Meeting the pups |
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James, Randi, & Tessa
