Charlotte Rae was born on August 28th at 9:29 pm, 8 pounds 12 ounces and 20.5 inches of baby girl!! She started nursing like a champ immediately and that's all she's been interested in since. I just got home and had my first tandem nursing experience...once we figured out a good position, it was perfect. 
I'll add pictures and birth story later...once both girls are sleeping (here's hoping we get a joint nap time!)
Pictures!
Brand new
A few hours old
Waiting to be discharged
Birth story (long, but trust me, this is the brief version )
Sunday night DH and I had plans to go to the movies and see Little Miss Sunshine. We figured it would be our last opportunity to see a movie in the theater for a very long time. Of course, Beast chose that night to not fall asleep until about 10 minutes prior to the movie starting and with a 20 minute drive to the theater, we decided to skip it. At around 11 pm, I sent him out to the 24 hour Baskin Robbins where he picked up a prostitute.
Yes, you read that last part correctly. My husband, my wonderful, naive, country boy of a husband was waiting at the drive through to order the ice cream when a woman approached the car and told him some sob story about how she had a sick child at home and she needed a ride further down the street to Pathmark to pick up his medicine. And do you know what my husband did? He let her into the car. And do you know whose car he was driving? I'll give you a hint...it wasn't his.
So, now my husband is driving to the store with a strange woman in MY car who keeps trying to touch his ice cream. She finally got her hands on it, so he gave it to her because the creeped him out. Are you keeping track of all this? My husband, in a car, strange woman, gives her ice cream while his 10 months pregnant wife is sitting at home with their other child sleeping in the next room, waiting for him. Not. Good. For the husband. She propositioned him with some interesting things that I'm pretty sure are not suitable for mothering.com's standards and he dropped her at the store and hightailed it home.
I've told him that this is ultimately what finally made me go into labor, the sheer hilarity of that story.
We went to bed shortly after he got home. Starting around 3 am I was waking every 45 minutes or so with small bouts of cramps and needing to pee after the cramps stopped. This didn't strike me as odd because I'd been having cramping and peeing every 2 seconds for the last month. I'd also decided that I was going to be pregnant forever, so the thought of labor didn't cross my mind. At around 8 30 the cramps were coming closer, at every 23 minutes and were getting bad enough that I wasn't able to sleep anymore so I gave up and went downstairs. That little bit of movement seemed to set everything off because I started having them ever 6 minutes shortly thereafter and realized that hey, I was pretty sure I was in labor.
We got to the hospital and were sent to labor and delivery. I had to walk, there was no wheelchair escort like last time (different hospital) which sucked and then we had to do paperwork which sucked even more because the woman had the nerve to tell me that I couldn't use the bathroom until I was done. I still had to pee after every contraction and they were coming every 5 minutes by then. The paperwork took 20 minutes. You do the math...not going to the bathroom was not an option. Finally I was admitted, though not brought to the delivery room yet but rather the triage or whatever it's called curtain area where they check you first to see how dilated you are and strap a monitor on to see what's what. Part of my birth plan was to not allow internal exams by anyone other than my doctor and luckily I didn't have to pitch a fit about that right away because my doctor was right there.
So I was admitted and brought to the labor/delivery room I would be spending my time in. The contractions were horrible at this point, still coming 2-3 minutes apart and lasting about 30-45 seconds. My bradley classes were NOT helping, no envisioning a flower opening or a soft boat was going to stop that pain so I fell back on the lamaze I learned for Beast to at least distract me and focus on something other than the pain. I started waffling on the epidural at that point because I was starting to feel myself get out of control with the pain. I knew (know) my body was able to handle it physically but emotionally I didn't think I was going to be able to get control of myself and get on top of it enough to ride out what was looking like it would a longish labor. At around 3 (I think) I gave in.
Unfortunately, like last time the drugs stopped working on half of my body after a few hours. I was given more once and it didn't help and then again, but the second time they had me lie on the side that was able to feel the contractions (coming now every 2 minutes and lasting about a minute long, 4-5 centimeters dilated). That worked, though I ended up with a wicked dead leg on that side for a few hours after she was born.
About an hour after the second top off dose (again, I'm screwy on time) was given to me, my doctor came in and checked to see how much I was dilated. Unlike the other hospital, this one was very content to just leave you alone unless you went out and asked for help or your monitors started going off. So when my doctor checked me he said "so, want to have a baby in 20 minutes?". I believe I told him I loved him and um, heck yes. The nurse came in and broke down the bed for the doctor and had me start pushing. One of the things that was VERY important to me was not having an episiotomy. Luckily, the ob that I use was recommended to me by the midwives when they closed and he had worked with them to learn how to get the baby out by massage instead of cutting. The pushing part was awesome, he would tell me one of three things, either a big push, a little push or no push at all. We did this slowly, I didn't get cut and only ended up with the teeniest of tears. I think I pushed for maybe 15 minutes, taking breaks where everyone was cracking jokes in between pushes. This was definitely the best part of the whole thing. And then at 9:29 she was out!
Another awesome thing about this hospital is they encourage nursing right away (which Charlie took to immediately), they didn't take the baby away to weigh/measure/stick/test her for stuff until I'd spent about an hour holding her (and DH was there for that part) and the eye drops were delayed until after that, which is what I wanted. They didn't give me trouble about rooming in, the nurses were all awesome, helpful and friendly and my doctor was great.
I'll add pictures and birth story later...once both girls are sleeping (here's hoping we get a joint nap time!)Pictures!
Brand new
A few hours old
Waiting to be discharged
Birth story (long, but trust me, this is the brief version
)Sunday night DH and I had plans to go to the movies and see Little Miss Sunshine. We figured it would be our last opportunity to see a movie in the theater for a very long time. Of course, Beast chose that night to not fall asleep until about 10 minutes prior to the movie starting and with a 20 minute drive to the theater, we decided to skip it. At around 11 pm, I sent him out to the 24 hour Baskin Robbins where he picked up a prostitute.
Yes, you read that last part correctly. My husband, my wonderful, naive, country boy of a husband was waiting at the drive through to order the ice cream when a woman approached the car and told him some sob story about how she had a sick child at home and she needed a ride further down the street to Pathmark to pick up his medicine. And do you know what my husband did? He let her into the car. And do you know whose car he was driving? I'll give you a hint...it wasn't his.
So, now my husband is driving to the store with a strange woman in MY car who keeps trying to touch his ice cream. She finally got her hands on it, so he gave it to her because the creeped him out. Are you keeping track of all this? My husband, in a car, strange woman, gives her ice cream while his 10 months pregnant wife is sitting at home with their other child sleeping in the next room, waiting for him. Not. Good. For the husband. She propositioned him with some interesting things that I'm pretty sure are not suitable for mothering.com's standards and he dropped her at the store and hightailed it home.
I've told him that this is ultimately what finally made me go into labor, the sheer hilarity of that story.
We went to bed shortly after he got home. Starting around 3 am I was waking every 45 minutes or so with small bouts of cramps and needing to pee after the cramps stopped. This didn't strike me as odd because I'd been having cramping and peeing every 2 seconds for the last month. I'd also decided that I was going to be pregnant forever, so the thought of labor didn't cross my mind. At around 8 30 the cramps were coming closer, at every 23 minutes and were getting bad enough that I wasn't able to sleep anymore so I gave up and went downstairs. That little bit of movement seemed to set everything off because I started having them ever 6 minutes shortly thereafter and realized that hey, I was pretty sure I was in labor.
We got to the hospital and were sent to labor and delivery. I had to walk, there was no wheelchair escort like last time (different hospital) which sucked and then we had to do paperwork which sucked even more because the woman had the nerve to tell me that I couldn't use the bathroom until I was done. I still had to pee after every contraction and they were coming every 5 minutes by then. The paperwork took 20 minutes. You do the math...not going to the bathroom was not an option. Finally I was admitted, though not brought to the delivery room yet but rather the triage or whatever it's called curtain area where they check you first to see how dilated you are and strap a monitor on to see what's what. Part of my birth plan was to not allow internal exams by anyone other than my doctor and luckily I didn't have to pitch a fit about that right away because my doctor was right there.
So I was admitted and brought to the labor/delivery room I would be spending my time in. The contractions were horrible at this point, still coming 2-3 minutes apart and lasting about 30-45 seconds. My bradley classes were NOT helping, no envisioning a flower opening or a soft boat was going to stop that pain so I fell back on the lamaze I learned for Beast to at least distract me and focus on something other than the pain. I started waffling on the epidural at that point because I was starting to feel myself get out of control with the pain. I knew (know) my body was able to handle it physically but emotionally I didn't think I was going to be able to get control of myself and get on top of it enough to ride out what was looking like it would a longish labor. At around 3 (I think) I gave in.
Unfortunately, like last time the drugs stopped working on half of my body after a few hours. I was given more once and it didn't help and then again, but the second time they had me lie on the side that was able to feel the contractions (coming now every 2 minutes and lasting about a minute long, 4-5 centimeters dilated). That worked, though I ended up with a wicked dead leg on that side for a few hours after she was born.
About an hour after the second top off dose (again, I'm screwy on time) was given to me, my doctor came in and checked to see how much I was dilated. Unlike the other hospital, this one was very content to just leave you alone unless you went out and asked for help or your monitors started going off. So when my doctor checked me he said "so, want to have a baby in 20 minutes?". I believe I told him I loved him and um, heck yes. The nurse came in and broke down the bed for the doctor and had me start pushing. One of the things that was VERY important to me was not having an episiotomy. Luckily, the ob that I use was recommended to me by the midwives when they closed and he had worked with them to learn how to get the baby out by massage instead of cutting. The pushing part was awesome, he would tell me one of three things, either a big push, a little push or no push at all. We did this slowly, I didn't get cut and only ended up with the teeniest of tears. I think I pushed for maybe 15 minutes, taking breaks where everyone was cracking jokes in between pushes. This was definitely the best part of the whole thing. And then at 9:29 she was out!
Another awesome thing about this hospital is they encourage nursing right away (which Charlie took to immediately), they didn't take the baby away to weigh/measure/stick/test her for stuff until I'd spent about an hour holding her (and DH was there for that part) and the eye drops were delayed until after that, which is what I wanted. They didn't give me trouble about rooming in, the nurses were all awesome, helpful and friendly and my doctor was great.
Congratulations! Looking forward to the birth story and pics.
