Baby Katelyn!

Warning: long birth story post, for those who are interested.

We welcomed Baby Katelyn Glover into our family on November 21, 2011!  We are so excited to have her in our family and already lover her so, so much.  With Emma being such a big baby we decided to induce Katelyn a week early.  The hospital called me on Sunday night to tell me that they would call me between 7-9 the next morning.  It seemed so weird to know that I was going to go to bed that night and wake up the next morning to have a baby instead of just waiting to see when she would come on her own.

The hospital called at about 7:45 and told us to be there at 9:00.  After dropping Emma off with Todd's mom we headed to the hospital and only showed up 10 minutes late.  I have a really hard time being on time to big important things like this.  I finally was in my room and hooked up to the monitors and IV and all of those fun things at about 10.  I started the morning dilated to 3cm.  They started me on pitocin and I started contracting about every 2-3 minutes but they were not super painful yet.  The only problem was every time I had a contraction baby's heart rate would drop from about 140 bpm to 60.  Because she wasn't stabilizing they turned the pitocin off for about an hour to see if her heart rate would normalize.  This made my contractions almost completely stop and when I did have them I could barely even feel them.  They turned the pitocin back on a little before noon and the contractions slowly started again.

My nurse told me that the anesthesiologist was getting ready to go back into a C-section and wouldn't be able to give me an epidural for an hour and a half.  I still couldn't feel any contractions so I told them I would just wait until he was done.  I didn't want to have the epidural and then have to turn the pitocin off again and just lay in my bed numb all day.  This ended up being a bad decision on my part.  About 10 minutes after I told them I didn't need the epidural yet the contractions started to be really painful.  I probably have the lowest pain threshold out of anyone I know so I wasn't doing very well handling them.  Poor Todd didn't have much feeling in his fingers after a while.  They gave me a few pain killers through my IV which would work for about 3 contractions but then wear off pretty quickly.

After what seemed like forever the anesthesiologist came into my room and gave me my wonderful epidural.   I really love those things!  I don't know how people can have a baby without one, they amaze me.  I don't think I could ever do it.  It was about 1:30 at that point and I was dilated to a 5 1/2.  I started feeling alot of pressure at 2:30 and was dilated to a 10.  Katelyn still hadn't dropped very low so they had me wait at a 10 for about 30 minutes to see if she would come down on her own so I wouldn't have to push as long.  She never dropped very far because she was facing the wrong way and was apparently really comfortable hanging out in my ribs.  At 3:00 they had me start pushing.  It took about 15-20 minutes of light pushing to get her facing the right way and then 10 minutes of real pushing and she was out! It turned out that the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, which was what was causing her heart rate to drop. Even with the few complications we did have, it is amazing to me how much easier she was to deliver than Emma.

I had a few complications after the delivery that kept us down in the labor and delivery room until about 7:30, which seemed like forever.  We were excited to finally be able to get up to our room and have a few of my siblings come meet her.  And I was very excited to finally be able to eat something that day!

Katelyn looked almost exactly like Emma did when she was born and was just as big as Emma.  Almost the exact same stats actually.  9 lbs. 3 oz. 21 1/2 inches long.  Emma was 9 lbs. 3 oz. and 21 inches long.  Apparently I feed my babies really well.  When Katelyn was born everyone was so surprised by how big she was and immediately started guessing how much they thought she would weigh.  Almost everyone guessed over 10 lbs.  Luckily they were wrong and Todd who guessed 9 lbs was closer than anyone else.  I guessed before she was born that she would weigh 8 1/2 lbs but this was just wishful thinking that I wouldn't have to push another 9 pound baby out of me.

She has been a wonderful baby so far and we are so happy to have her in our family.  Emma was very nervous of her at first and didn't like that I was sitting in a bed with all sorts of tubes hooked up to me.  She has warmed up a little bit so hopefully she will continue getting more used to the idea that "baby sister" is finally a real person and not just mom's belly.  We feel so blessed to have two beautiful girls in our family and love them both so much!