The baby is BORN!!!

Aria Kay McGarrah
Born 12/16/11 at 8:54 p.m.
Weight: 6lbs. 12 oz.
Length: 19 inches

I was set to go to my 39 week doctors appointment which is right next to the hospital.  The night before, we watched the Republican debate and went to bed early, so we could wake up at 9 for our appointment.  I woke up at 1 am and couldn't go back to sleep until 3am.   At 9, I naturally woke up to go to the bathroom, and I felt a bunch of trickling down my leg on the walk to the bathroom.  My water broke!  I decided that I would take a shower and get everything ready so that I could go to my appointment and make sure that it was amniotic fluid.  We got there, and the doctor sent me over to the hospital.

We went over to the hospital, and they put me on a pitocin drip.  I was apparently having contractions, but I wasn't feeling them.  So the nurses slowly moved up my pitocin dosage until I started having regular contractions.   When I came into the hospital, I was 4 cm and 90% effaced, and by the time I started to feel them, I was 5.5 cm and fully effaced.   The doctor suggested that I get an epidural at that point, but I decided to wait until I was in more pain so that the epidural wouldn't freak me out as much.  Oh, and putting in the IV was kinda painful.  We had a little trouble getting it taped down.

So, Travis's parents came by, we called people, and the contractions got worse and worse.  Finally, I decided that I needed an epidural.  I was about 8-9 (out of 10) cm dilated at that point, and I got it.  The epidural hurt a little bit, but my contractions were bad enough to make the pain from the epidural seem minimal.  After I got the epidural, I felt pretty good.  Right after that, the doctor came in and said I was 9 cm and going to be ready to push pretty soon.

Every time I had a contraction, I felt like my butt cheek was spasm-ing.  And a few people came in until I got checked again.  She didn't really have to check me because they could see Aria's head.  So, it was time to push, and they were actually afraid to put my feet in the stirrups until everything was ready because Aria was already starting to crown.  I only pushed for 15 minutes or less, and she was here!

They stitched me up because I did tear a tiny bit, but I really didn't feel anything.  Apparently, I have a high pain tolerance because before I got my epidural, my contractions were really strong and only a minute apart.  I really just was so afraid of the epidural that I dealt with a lot before I caved.  Everything was really very easy.  The worst part was getting the IV.

When they put Aria on me, the first thing I felt was honestly shock and fear.  I had no idea what to do, and I felt really helpless.  Then they took her away and did her APGAR score.  When they brought her back, I slowly started to feel a connection, and after an hour of having her in my arms, I didn't want to let her go.  She fed very easily.  We took pictures, and she actually opened her eyes and smiled!  It freaked out the doctors!  They were amazed by her and said how beautiful she was.

So that was the birth of my sweet baby girl.  Now, we are doing well.  We are getting a fair amount of sleep, and she is feeding well.  It kind of hurts sometimes... but it isn't too bad.   I stopped taking my hydrocodon so that I wouldn't be making her sleepy all the time.  So my stitches hurt.  In fact, we went out to do some errand running today, and it started to hurt the stitches.  I had to nurse her twice while we were sitting in the parking lot.  It wasn't too bad, but I am pretty sure that 3 random people may have seen my boob today....  Oh well.  I think going through birth and having a bunch of people stare at your special places makes you a LOT less modest.  Especially when you boobs are used as a functional thing and not a sexual one.  I think my perspective on boobs in general has changed dramatically.  

Any way, I guess I will end this post.  I will try to update everything as I go along.