Lydia Melodie

arrived after only 8 hours of labour on Tuesday, August 31, at 2:27pm, weighing 8lbs 8oz, and 20 inches long :)

This is a little late coming, but at least I'm blogging about it at last! :)

5 days overdue, wondering if I was going to have a September baby instead, and I woke up on the last day of August at 6:30 in the morning with contractions. They were pretty intense and seemed pretty close together. I went and peed and timed them, and they were about 5 minutes apart.


Julie: "Paul? How close are my contractions supposed to be before we go to the hospital?"
Paul: *with his eyes still closed* "How close are they?"
Julie: "About 5 minutes apart"
Paul: "That's not close enough. Wait a bit" *rolls over and goes back to sleep*

So I went and had some cereal (Paul's Silly Circles, as a matter of fact :)) and watched the clock, and my contractions were about THREE minutes apart. But I was hungry. So after I finished, I went and woke Paul up again and said he needed to get up, call his mother to come watch Gabby, get showered, and that we needed to get going. He got up that time :)

Remembering that there were unflattering pictures taken at the hospital after Gabby was born, I put a lot more effort into making sure my hair and makeup were done... silly, I know. Especially since I was contracting every few minutes :) But I knew my priorities!

Thankfully, hospital bag was packed and ready to go (it had been for awhile - we were 5 days overdue!!) and so while I was blowdrying my hair, Paul was feeding Gabby breakfast, and Nadyne arrived shortly after to take Gabby for the day :)

We got to the hospital about 8:30, where we were told that I was only 3cm dilated (WHAT?!?) and that we needed to walk around for a few hours and come back. But not to leave the hospital. So, since it had been about 2 hrs since I'd had Paul's Silly Circles, we decided to head to the cafeteria, have a bite to eat (since who knows how long it would be before I'd get to eat again!) and then come back.

Paul assures me that it should have been a 4min walk, but it took us at least 20, since every 2-3 minutes, we had to stop and wait for a contraction. It was actually kind of funny - most people just gave us sympathetic looks or ignored us altogether, but a few people asked if we were okay, or if I needed a wheelchair. The BEST was when a woman approached us from behind me (I was facing Paul and leaning on him during a contraction, and probably whimpering a little bit) and asked Paul if I was okay. To which he replied that I was in labour, and as she actually passed us from the side, she went "oh! okay!" ... I wanted to hug her. To know that it wasn't totally obvious from behind, even as I'm in LABOUR, that I was pregnant... well, that just made my day. :D

At the cafeteria, I ordered a ton of food, only to have most of it not be very appetizing after all... still had contractions every 2-3 minutes... still had people offering me a wheelchair, but I was supposed to walk, after all...

We finished eating and went straight back. We got back to triage at about 10:30 (they told us to come back at 11, but my contractions were so strong and close together, it seemed stupid to wait around for another 30 minutes) And so the nurse checked me, and ... I don't remember how dilated I was. But it was enough that they admitted me. Actually, I'm not even sure they checked me. I don't remember! But either way, I was given a labour room and changed my clothes, and they called for an anaesthesiologist right away, since I told them straight off that I definitely wanted an epidural this time around.

Paul gave me a blessing in the bathroom, since that was the only place we could find privacy (the nurse was really sweet! Her name was Pat) and in it, he told me that my epidural would go routinely, that everything would be okay, and that I didn't need to worry; I would love this baby just as much as the first one. Everything I was told in the blessin was a huge relief.

The epidural this time around was way harder than with Gabby. Paul pointed out that I had had morphine in my system by the time I had the epidural, whereas this time, I had nothing. Between being able to feel the needle going in (I'm really, really ookey about needles) and having contractions every minute or two, I kept twitching, and the guy was having a hard time getting the epidural in. Finally Paul and the nurse told me (apparently the anaesthesiologist had whispered to the nurse that he wasn't sure he would be able to do this, and was sweating buckets) that I needed to hold perfectly still, and that got me focused. And I sang "twinkle twinkle little star" and the ABC song the way I do for Gabby before bedtime... and that helped me for whatever reason.

The epidural didn't kick in completely or right away, but it definitely took the edge off. As in, I could tell how bad the contractions WOULD have been, but I was able to breathe through them, and sometimes even talk through them. But without the epidural, I definitely would have been screaming. As it was, I screamed a few times.

I don't remember much else between getting the epidural in and actually pushing, except that the epidural made me feel nauseous (not like I was actually going to throw up, but just that I sort of wanted to!) and when the nurse heard, she brought over a pink basin just in case. And when I told her I wasn't actually going to need it, she took it away, but by then I had been focusing on the edge of the bucket, and when she took it away it really bugged me. So I asked her to bring it back just for me to look at. Weird, I know :)

Oh, and the epidural-guy (anaes... is just a really long word!) was sitting at the desk, probably waiting to make sure everything was okay, and I asked him what his name was (I think it was Jerry?) and made sure to thank him... because it's not his fault I suck at needles, and without him, labour would have been much worse!

The doctor (Doctor Bertch? apparently the "female birch", who I'd never met before, who might have been brand new to my clinic which would explain why) asked before I started pushing if it was okay to bring a resident with her to observe my labour and delivery and learn, and I said that was totally fine... I learned last time around that when you're having a baby, there is no such thing as modesty, and having more people around to make sure things go smoothly is always a good. Because with Gabby, my doctor wasn't even there.


So I dilated about a cm each hour, and I think it was about 1:45 when the nurse said it was time to start pushing. So I did, and it kind of felt like nothing was happening for awhile... and then it felt like the baby was going to fall out whether I pushed or not, and all I wanted to do was close my legs and take a break. And when I told the nurse that it felt like the baby was going to fall out, she paged Dr Bertch and the student doctor, and they came... and basically told me that the only way I was going to feel better at that point was if I finished pushing the baby out. I think it was another 4 or 5 contractions-worth of pushing before Lydia's head was out. Somewhere in there, Pat the nurse asked if I wanted to feel the head coming out... I should have told her "I can feel the head coming out just fine, thanks!"... but really, I've never had any desire to touch the baby as it is coming out, or to see anything down there... spare me the gory details, I'll enjoy the baby when all is said and done!

Head came out, and then Dr. Bertch had the resident guide the rest of the shoulders and body out (I don't know who actually caught Lydia) and then they put her on my chest - she was a bit purple, but she pinked up right away. I think Paul cut the cord, but like I said, I have no idea what all was going on down there.

The student doctor stitched me up, with Dr. Bertch's guidance, and she kept saying "you'll feel a little poke"... about the 3rd time she said that, I told her not to tell me, because the anticipation was worse than the actual fact, and I couldn't feel anything down there anyway.

... not much else to tell :) I'm healing up much better now... Paul and I took forever picking out a name again, and changed it from what we originally had been thinking (Olivia Grace) and went with Lydia Melodie.

And Lydia is hungry again, so I'm going to post this already :) Paul posted pictures I think!