So Thankful She's Here!

The Lord gave us the most amazing thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving...our daughter Cora Louise!

I had my first real contraction around 6:30 pm on the 23rd after my 40 week doctor's appointment that afternoon. (Many aspects of Cora's birth are so similar to Wes'...I also went into labor with Wes the evening after my 40 week appointment around 5:00pm. With Wes I was dialated to 2 cm and 70% effaced and with Cora I was 2 cm dialated and 75% effaced). We were having dinner at Grammy's house, so she insisted Wes stay with her that night (I wasn't so sure the labor was the real thing) but agreed and called Mike on my way home. They called in his replacement and he headed home to meet me. He had been up on calls the whole night before and was busy all that day, so he went to bed and I attempted to go to bed. Since sleep wasn't going to happen for me, I sat in Cora's room and labored, while Mike got some sleep. Around 3 am I needed his help since my contractions were getting closer together, plus I needed to get to the hospital earlier this time (no screaming in the car that I needed to push!), so we called my doctor and headed to the hospital at 4:45am on Thanksgiving morning.

We got to the hospital around 5am and were pretty much the only people there. (No big surprise, but Thanksgiving Day is not a popular day to be induced!) I was dialated to 5cm when I got there and they hooked me up so I could get my antibiotics and Mike and I began walking the halls. Laboring in the hospital was different than doing it at home, like we did with Wes, but getting to see how my labor was progressing and how the baby was doing, was very interesting. After I finished the antibiotics, they checked me again and I was at 6 cm and a couple hours later I was at 8. Around 10 am I was still at 8cm, so the on-call doctor, Dr. Lei, suggested she break my water. I was a little leary of the "intervention" so we prayed for the Lord's guidence and after another half hour of contractions that weren't dialating me, I agreed to have my water broken. The first contraction after that and I needed to push. Unfortunately, I was only dialated to 9 3/4 cm (bet you didn't know that was possible) so Dr. Lei wanted me to do a couple of contractions without pushing to get me to 10cm. But I had done that before with Wes (the majority of my "pushing contractions" with him were in the car and I was trying not to deliver my baby on the side of the road) and not pushing when you want to is pretty miserable. But after about four contractions of not pushing I was ready and then it took about five or six contractions to deliver Cora. I do feel like labor this time around was milder, the contractions not so hard or long, but once Cora's head and shoulders were ready to come out, WOW!, that was painful!! Wes' delivery was 4 pushes and out he came, but with Cora I was the cliche woman giving birth, begging (ok, it might have sounded like screaming) for the doctor to "get her out" and begging Michael to "please help me!" (Someone even came on over the intercom to ask if every thing was ok...I don't think Hoag Hospital sees too many drug free births :) But here she is my beautiful baby girl:

7 lbs 5 oz, 20", 12:07 pm

November 24, 2011