The Baby has Arrived! All Hail Baby!

If you couldn't tell, up until this point most of the writing of the blogs has been done by Kit and most of the editing has been done by Basil (I did make a few poor edits and added a few tidbits of my own). This time, with the arrival of the baby (ALL HAIL BABY), Basil is now taking a crack at writing. I'm am treating this particular blog as almost a journal so there will be a lot of detail. If you just want the pictures you can skip or skim the writing, but if you want all the little details they will be here. With mom and baby both worn out after a 9 hour labor with a few scary moments (to be described below), they both took a well deserved afternoon nap. Friday morning (march 7th), Kit woke me up at 10 am, telling me that she had been having regular contractions for about 30 min since she woke up. I timed a few of the contractions and realized that she was having contractions about 4 minutes apart lasting about 1 min. I was freaked. I knew that Kit was in active labor. It took us a while to get ready and we didn't leave for the hospital (on foot) until around noon. We walked over to admitting and by about 12:30 Kit had some contraptions hooked to her belly.

In the Triage room, the nurse and OB kind of freaked out and were worried they were going to have to do an emergency C-section. At the time, they weren't communicating with us very well and it took us a few minutes to find out that the baby's heart rate was dropping significantly with each contraction. They immediately moved Kit to another room while I hurriedly gathered our things and followed. In the other room there were probably 10 people all moving very fast. An anethesiologist asked us about medication allergies while the OB felt baby's amniotic sac. With our permission, the OB broke Kit's water and placed a heart rate monitor on the baby's scalp. Luckily, once the water was broken, baby's heart rate went back to normal. We still aren't sure if the heart rate trouble was an artifact of the external monitor or if breaking the amniotic sac made a difference in her heart rate.

After that initial scare, the doctor mentioned that their was meconium in the amniotc fluid. The OB didn't realize that both Kit and I knew what this was and were worried. He quickly mentioned that it wasn't a lot and then he introduced us to the new OB because his shift was over. Kit began having some serious contractions. I was trying to help her breathe right and to soothe her the best I could, but eventually the pain was too much. At around 2:30 pm, Kit got an epidural. Just before the epidural, they checked Kit's cervix and she was 7 cm dilated. At first the epidural didn't do anything, so the anethesiologist gave Kit a HUGE bolus (And I really mean huge. It looked like it was three times the size of the initial dose). Needless to say, Kit didn't feel anything after that which really slowed things down. It was nice to take the edge off of the pain, which is what Kit wanted, but this got rid of all sensation. The contractions began to slow down. Kristen decided to sit up and this got things started again. Her contractions came regularly and with more force although we couldn't tell at all except on the monitor. At about 5:30pm, the nurse and resident came in and checked to see how dilated Kit was. And surprisingly, she was 10 cm dilated and 100% effaced. Unfortunately, all of the doctors and anethesiologists were doing C-sections at the time so we had to wait another 45 min approximately. Once the OB and anethesiologist arrived, they turned down the epidural and were about ready to have her start pushing. Although Kit did not feel the urge to bear down, the OB and I coached her with pushing and soon we could see the babies head. I became very concerned (as did the OB) when the baby's heart rate kept dropping after bearing down. We took long breaks inbetween each push to get the baby's heart rate back up. Kristen could actually see that I was scared in my eyes and told me that I looked scared and it was making her scared. I moved around to the other side of the bed so I couldn't see the baby's heart rate and focused all of my attention on helping Kit push. Within about 30 minutes of the beginning of pushing, our beautiful baby girl was born. I got to cut the umbilical cord which spattered some blood and the respiratory nurses whisked our baby off to do suctioning of the lungs because of meconium. From the beginning, our little miracle wasn't a very big cryer. In fact, although she got an 8 and 9 on her apgars, she didn't really cry. The nurses tried to get as much done on our girl as possible before giving her back to her mom, but eventually I picked her up (without permission) and brought her over to her mom, Vitamin K and birthweight be damned! Kit delivered the placenta easily and actually got to take a look at it afterwards. Right away, Kit started breastfeeding and amazingly, our little girl picked it up immediately. Not much trouble, which surprised and delighted us.

Our baby had her eyes open almost immediately and she was looking around. She had a nice shock of black hair (which I told my wife about while she was pushing). She weighed 7 lbs 6 onces and was 19 and a half inches long. Her eyes right now are very blue and she has an overbite (like her mother). We love her so much and have relished these past few hours of caring for and being with our daughter. I've found myself crying because of how much I love my daughter. I can't imagine a world without her even after this short period of time. I hope you enjoy her pictures as much as we do.

As a minor afterthought and so I don't forget, the food prep people cancelled or didn't come in today because the snow has been so bad. I think most of the nurses didn't make it in this evening either. I thought yesterday when we walked over was bad, but today was worse. The snow hasn't let up all day. Kit mentioned to me that all of her best days have been snowy and cold (our wedding and our daughter's birth).