i am oh so sorry for the major major delay in blogging. i have been oh so busy. my little nora bird is here! i can't believe it... even still and today is her 2 week birthday. :) i wish i had a cupcake to celebrate. hahaha... :)
so let's see. where to begin... mmkay - may 19th, 2009:1:45 am - i woke up from my peaceful slumber in a pool of what i first thought was pee. then i remembered my friend brittney telling me that when her water broke she thought that she had peed her pants. :) so, in all my glory, i reached down and made sure i was soaked and said, "kevvvv! i think my water just broke!" he sleepily replied, "no, no, no, no, you're fine. no. no." i rolled out of bed and waddled into the bathroom trying to keep my legs together so that nothing came out... LOL. i sat on the toilet and started saying, "oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." i guess all the frantic calling to God woke kevin up because at this point he was standing in the door to the bathroom. he says to me, "well maybe nora just punched you really hard in the bladder and made you pee." i looked up and said, "kevin... do you hear that noise? (water was very obviously dripping into the toilet) it sounds like i'm peeing right? well, i know when i'm peeing and i'm not peeing right now. we've got to go to the hospital!" he goes, "welll... maybe we should call someone! we need to call someone." so i say, "oh... good plan. ok. let's call someone. who should we call?"nice, huh? so we called the hospital and they told us we needed to come in and get checked. i knew this was not your standard "checking" that we were going in for... this was it. sooo... i stood up from the toilet and realized at 37 weeks 3 days i had not yet packed my bag. who does that?! :) so - there we were, middle of the night, kevin in frantic daddy helper mode, me leaking amniotic fluid all over the house packing our hospital bag. nothing like the last minute, eh?
so we get to the hospital at about 3:30 and they did a test on the fluid to confirm it was in fact my water that had broke and they brought us into our birthing room. it was awesome! flat screen tv, leather couch and ottoman and my personal favorite - big ole' jacuzzi tub. :) my contractions were few and far between and i actually hadn't even felt any of them so when the doctor came to talk to us at about 4:15 she put me on pitocin to get my contractions going and get them regular. then she told us to take a nap because we would need our energy because it was going to be a long day. :) so kevin took a nap... and started snoring. loudly. :) ohhh how i love me some kev. :)
at about 10:00 i started feeling contractions. and it progressed into some serious pain at about 10:30... so i hopped into the tub. and that's where i stayed until about 1:00. it was awesome. i wish that deaconess offered a water birth. at about 1:00 i got out of the tub and tryed everything i learned in our birthing class to escape the pain. i tried to sit, i tried to stand, i tried to squat, i tried to hang off kevin, and i even tried to dance away the pain. i just couldn't escape it. at one point i started bargaining with the nurse, "pleassseeee lori. just give me like, i dunno, 10 minutes with no contractions. i'll give you anything." as if she could do anything... i felt like my hips were in one of those crank machines where you turn the handle and it smashes holds whatever you are trying to grip. so - my labor nurse, lori checked me. i was only at a 3! ack! so - my birth plan was to wait as long as i could and only get it if i needed it... well, i needed it. :) part of me was really hoping lori would say i was at an 8 or so. HA. so i opted for the epidural.
the epidural guy came in at about 2:00 pm and gave me the epi. it was a two part deal i guess. i got an inital shot of something that stopped the pain almost immediately and was supposed to work until the epi kicked in.
when he was setting the epidural in my spine he told me, "ok - you are going to feel a little twinge down either your right or your left leg any second now." and about two seconds later the most gut wrentching pain "twinge" shot down my right leg and it automatically reflex kicked high in the air and missed kevin's head by about a centimeter. i just about kicked him in the face. funny, no? i was so worried he was going ot pass out and instead i almost knocked him out!
soooo - the initial shot was amazing. i was feeling no pain at all. none. i still knew when i was having a contraction because my stomach tighened up but zerrrrooooo pain. in fact - kevin took these goofy pictures (below) of me in the middle of what was the hard part of my labor where i was two thumbs up. i was feeling good. they told us to take a nap... so we tried. for about 40 minutes.
and then it happened... boooo. i started feeling contractions again. except this time it was worse than any of the other ones. and it got worse and worse. i told lori (my labor nurse), "you better get that guy back in here! he did it wrong! it's not working!" of course this was in my nicest angry voice. hahaha. so while someone was working on getting the epi-giver back in there lori says, "well, let's check you." and she did. and she said, "ummm, i need to grab someone else to confirm but i think you're at a 9."
at this point my doctor, who was not on call, walked in and said, "hey! how's it goin?" "aaaahhhhhh." was my reply. apparently she had a scheduled c-section at 3:30 and just happened to be in labor and delivery and was just stopping in to see how things were going. how awesome is that? so she checked me and said, "tell them we're going to deliver this baby first" and started to suit up. i had gone from a 3 to a 9 in less than an hour.
now i've watched enough baby story on tlc to know that when the doctor suits up - it's business time. no messin' around. and the next thing i knew i was pushing. and it hurt. i was so far ahead of my epidural that i felt everything. i mean everything. i think the most painful part of the pushing was nurse lori and kevin pushing my legs back up towards my head. i'm a pretty flexible person... but dang that hurt!
i really only pushed for about 40 minutes but i remember saying, "ohhhhh LORD! dr. augustyn, how many more?!" and she said, "well, i don't know for sure. maybe 2 or maybe 50." and i said, "FIFTY?! ohhhhhhh! FIFTY?!?! are you kidding me? fifty more pushes?" and she said, "HEY! didn't you hear what i said first - i said maybe TWO!" and i said, "fifffftttyyyy.... oohhhhhhh!"
i was in labor and delivery about 3 months ago for one of my friends baby's birth and there was this crazy lady down the hall from her room screaming like a maniac - scared me half to death. wellllll... after i assured myself it couldn't possibly be that bad - that crazy banshee screaming lady was me. hahaha. i actually felt really bad about it later. i told my nurse to tell the rest of the girls in labor and delivery i was just kidding. :)
dr. augustyn also made sure kevin got a good view of everything... i mean everything. i remember her saying, "ohhh kevin, take a look at this!" and "ohh, kevin, you don't want to miss this! come and see!" great. thanks dr. augustyn. apparently she doesn't want to see me as a return client. LOLOL.
right before nora came out dr. augustyn said, "mckenzie - listen to me. look at me right now. FOCUS! look at me right now!" and as i was moaning out my next moan of pain i looked down and saw her catch (for lack of a better word) my little nora. i felt nora come out and dr. augustyn had my little baby in her arms! she suctioned her out real quick and set her right on top of my once baby belly. it was amazing. i really have no words to describe it. amazing. everything good i've ever done all added up don't equal having my sweet little healthy nora in my arms. it was the most intense moment of my entire life.
i'm so thankful that dr. augustyn delievered nora. i had pretty much prepared myself to have a stranger deliever my sweet babe but fate dropped my most favorite doctor into our room just in time. :) it was awesome. she is amazing and i adore her. i'll also never forget her yelling at me to look - had she not told me i would have missed it. i was in another time zone! LOL.
and so - here we are. i love my little nora. she is amazing. and such a good baby. she really only crys when she's hungry and she loves to cuddle. :) i am oh so in love. and so incredibly blessed. :)
my sweet lil' babe is growing up so fast. i can't believe it's already been a whole month! my days get away from me sooo fast these days - it's crazy. we seem to live life in 3 hour chunks. :)
