Ethan and Gemma

Ethan and Gemma

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Gemma Natalie Shealy is Here!

After thinking about it a lot, we ended up deciding that it would probably be for the best to just go in on Friday morning to the hospital and have them help me along with my labor. In the end, that turned out to be the right decision for sure. I was up most of Thursday night having contractions for about 5 hours, but again they never got closer than 8-10 minutes apart and eventually they just stalled out completely again. Friday morning we got up around 5 to get ready to go to the hospital and the contractions were back to being extremely mild and about 15 minutes apart. I lost the rest of my mucus plug right before we left.

We got to the hospital and they got me all checked in. Around 8:30 or so, they broke my water and started me on Pitocin to regulate my contractions. I wanted to wait on the epidural as long as I could in hopes that it would help my labor progress. It turned out that waiting on the epidural actually might have kept me from progress. After two hours of strong, consistent contractions, I was still only at 5 cm. By then I was starting to be in a lot of pain so I went ahead and got the epidural. An hour later I was at 6 cm. A couple of hours later I was at 8 cm. A couple of hours later, I started feeling really bad. I felt like the epidural was wearing off, and I started vomiting, which I thought was a reaction to the antibiotics they were giving me.

But then the doctor showed up to check me and it turned out that I was fully dilated and that the baby was at +2 - already on her way out! They got me started pushing and about twenty minutes later, she was out! On my final push, she didn't quite make it out, so they tried to get me to do a couple extra pushes. I was too exhausted and so they decided to wait for the next contraction. But then suddenly, she just came squirting out!

Everything about her was great! She was born at 4:25 pm, was 7 lbs, 5 oz, 19 3/4 inches long. She had great color and she latched right on when I tried to nurse her. All three of us are healthy and doing well. We are so excited to finally have our little girl and we love her so much already!

1 comment:

Aubrey said...

Hurray! i'm glad things went so well. You know, sometimes having the epidural can help you relax... When I was in labor I took some Iv pain medicine and then actually dilated some. She is so beautiful and we all can't wait to meet her.