Miss Ellie's birth story!

This is going to be long, but I didn't want to split it up so I apologize in advance for the length... it was a pretty lengthy labor!

Monday afternoon we had our weekly appt; because I was overdue we decided to set a date for an induction on Friday if I hadn't gone into labor by then. After our appt we went out to dinner, did a little Christmas shopping, and headed home. That evening I started having contractions about 1/2 hour apart but not painful. I was able to fall asleep for a couple of hours but woke up around 1am and couldn't really fall back asleep.

Tuesday I woke up feeling a little off, just kind of icky, almost flu-like. I wanted to get up and move around a little though, so I went out to breakfast with my mom and then came back home to TRY and catch up on some rest. Tuesday night I was still having contractions, they were getting progressively more painful, but not any more consistent. They would range anywhere from 5-20 minutes apart and last anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. I spent most of that night on the couch breathing through contractions or in the bathtub trying to relax... no sleep though.

Wednesday I was having contractions all day. They were getting more and more painful, but still not consistent, so I decided to call my midwife to see if we could come in and get checked to make sure baby was not in any sort of distress. We headed in that afternoon and Ellie was doing great but I was only dilated to 1cm. We were told to head home, get some rest (ya right), and come back when contractions were 5 minutes apart and too painful to eat, sleep, walk or talk through. So we headed home and I immediately started having more intense contractions. I spent all of Wednesday evening and most of the night awake trying to breathe through contractions. They were incredibly painful at this point and any move I made sent me into another contraction that lasted anywhere from 1-5 minutes, but were still 5-20 minutes apart. At about 4am Thursday morning I was so discouraged, thinking that if the only way I was going to be admitted to have her was by the timing of the contractions that it was never going to happen. Because I was in a lot of pain and unable to eat, sleep, walk or talk through these contractions I called my midwife and was told to go to the hospital to be checked.

So Thursday morning at 4:30am we headed into the hospital and layed in a hospital bed through about an hour of contractions only to be told that I was still only at 1cm and that my contractions weren't consistent enough to be admitted. Because I was in so much pain and couldn't get any sleep I was given a shot of Morphine and was told to head home and try and rest and come back tomorrow if I had progressed. They checked me one more time before leaving and I had actually progressed to 1+cm and effaced about 20% more... PROGRESS!!

So I headed home, slept for about 2 hours, and was again awoken by these unbearably painful contractions. I was still exhausted from the Morphine but I couldn't sleep through them any longer, so I got up and the hubby and I spent the day breathing through my contractions still too inconsistent to do anything about. They still lasted anywhere from 1-5 minutes and came anywhere from 3-15 minutes apart. At about 3pm Thursday afternoon again unable to function from the pain, I called my midwife hoping to move the induction up to Thursday night. We headed into her office and were given a few options. I couldn't be induced that night because there wasn't room for any elective inductions at the hospital, however she would move the induction up to 5am Friday morning. She also said that because I had been in labor for more that 72 hours at this point my uterus was probably too exhausted to actually deliver and I had about a 50/50 chance of having a c-section, so we could go ahead and just schedule that instead; we decided to just go in at 5am and start the induction. She then checked me and I was dilated to 4cm! This was an automatic admit to the hospital because I was in active labor. So we headed over to the hospital around 5pm Thursday evening.

Waiting for our little girl

Things actually went really fast from here- thank God!
Admitted around 5:30pm, dilated to 5cm already.
Epidural in around 6:30pm, dilated to 6cm.
SLEEP and REST for all!!
Fully dilated at 9pm.

At this point she hadn't dropped far enough, so they gave me Pitocin to get my contractions consistent (they NEVER were consistent until the Pitocin was administered, the nurses were a little baffled that I was dilating but not contraction regularly). The hours of 9pm Thursday night to 12am Friday morning were spent being flipped from side to side to help move Ellie down. Around midnight I was checked again and she had dropped but was now laying sideways across the birth canal. My midwife then mentioned that this often results in a c-section. BOO! There was no way I was going through ALL of that and then having a c-section. I was determined to push this little girl into position and out. So with everything I had I started pushing around 12:30am and by 12:40 she was in position. My midwife was shocked, she said what took me 10 minutes usually takes women over an hour! I felt pretty great about that. I continued to push and miss Ellie was born at 12:54am! She was perfect! We were in love!

I had some excessive bleeding due to the long labor and had to be worked on and watched a little longer than usual, so were finally moved over to recover at about 4:30am Friday morning.

Proud Daddy

 Finally headed home!

 More photos of all of our visitors to come!