On May 20, 2015 at 11:20am we welcomed our second daughter, Natalie Jane.
6lbs 14oz of pure perfection!
Our sweet girl had quite the arrival, and we learned a lot about my body & labor in the process!
At the end of my pregnancy, around 37 weeks my blood pressure creeped up high enough to warrant bi-weekly appointments for non-stress tests with baby heart rate checks & blood pressure checks. I wasn't so hypertensive that we needed to deliver urgently, but was high enough for close monitoring and my doctor wasn't comfortable letting me go past 39 weeks. My body was saying enough is enough! It worked out well because she came just before Memorial Day weekend and Jordan had a 4 day weekend, so he didn't have to take any time off of work.
I was super nervous about having to be induced if she didn't come on her own. Evelyn came a week late, so I had no hope that she would come anytime before my due date. The time came and it became a reality that we would need to be induced. All I could imagine was a long day/night/day/night with terrible pain from piton and a bad epidural and then a c-section. But thats just my worst case scenario nurse mind going crazy. But every one of those scenarios played out in my mind over and over again. I just couldn't help it! The plan was to head in the evening and get cervidil to help the cervix along and then do pitocin in the morning. The night before we headed in I woke up with some pretty good contractions which helped calm my nerves about a worse case scenario induction. I saw my doctor that morning before the induction and turns out we were dilated to 3cm, so things seemed even better!
That afternoon I was so sad. And excited. And nervous.
Evelyn had no idea what was coming. And I was heading in earlier than we expected, Jordan was stuck at work, so neither of us were able to put Evelyn to bed on her last night of only-childhood. I was devastated and mad at Jordan's work for not being more flexible, even though I knew the more he got done before she was born, the less he had to do after she arrived. Thank goodness for our good friend Kelly who stayed overnight with Evelyn and put her to bed with no troubles! Evelyn LOVES Kelly and it worked out great for her to be with Kelly while we were in the hospital. All that didn't make me any less sad & nervous for what all was going to change in our lives.
The time came to head to the hospital and it was an absolute MONSOON outside. Serious thunder & lightening with monsoon rains. Seriously. Another great friend of mine {Kate} offered to drive me to the hospital and stay with me until Jordan could get there. She has two kiddos of her own and it was incredibly wonderful and I was so grateful she took the time to hang out with me! The cervidil went in around 6pm with no trouble and we were officially getting induced! Jordan got to the hospital around 9:30 and we got settled in for the long haul!
Now this cervidil isn't suppose to induce contractions or anything like that. It is literally just suppose to "ripen" the cervix. Well for me apparently that wasn't the case. I was having some pretty good contractions every 2-3 minutes. They weren't THAT bad and I was talking through them, but nonetheless, I was consistently contracting and they were gradually increasing in intensity. I was able to sleep, but overtime baby girl and I got checked out, those contractions kept up and weren't going away! When the time came to take the cervidil out, my contractions kicked up like crazy! This is when I consider our labor started. It was about 7am. I took a shower before they started the pitocin and we were settled in to have our baby!
My doctor came in and broke my water and we started the pitocin at 8am. They started very low and ended up only increasing it one time! My contractions were strong, changes were happening, and I was hoping it wasn't going to take much longer! When I was starting to not relax very well, I wanted to know our progress because I was getting close to wanting relief with an epidural. Turns out I was at 5cm, and it was now 9:30. I decided it was time for an epidural. With my first experience of an epidural not really working and had trouble with it, my nurse promised me she would troubleshoot if there were problems and would take it out and start over if it didn't work. So the fluid started and we got ready for the epidural. That process started around 10-10:15. I could tell it was a good epidural, but I had a weird pain on the right side of my abdomen near my pubic bone and they told me it was my bladder. They would come and put in the catheter in about 30 minutes to make sure the epidural medicine went where it needed to go and then we would figure out the weird pain I was feeling. That half hour passed and the catheter went in. My nurse checked me when she put the catheter in and I was still at 5cm. My pain went through the roof! My whole lower abdomen was on fire and I was shaking uncontrollably with each contraction. My nurse went to go get some positioning tools, another nurse, and grab the CRNA to troubleshoot what was happening. When they got back 10 minutes later, they were baffled. I was becoming that crazy pregnant lady in labor who cried and screamed and all of the above. They seemed to have no idea why all this pain was happening. The new nurse to came in decided to check me again. Turns out I was at 10cm and the baby was coming! We were all shocked!! I was just relieved that I knew it was time to push. All this pain was because it was time to push, and the end was in sight!
My doctor ran over from her office and her appointment and made it just in time.
One contraction, one push and our sweet girl was born at 11:20am! It was instant love.
During the confusion of my pubic bone pain, the CRNA dosed my epidural again giving me more medicine to see if I was tolerant to the medicine. Knowing I was checked just 10 minutes before and not close to delivery, that was a safe bet. Until I progressed fast. Really fast. So that meant my epidural worked AFTER our sweet girl was born. Meaning, it worked for, like, 5+ hours after she was born. My legs were useless. So that was fun. When it was time to try and get out of bed, we had some deja-vu back to my labor with Evelyn. My first couple times of attempting to get out of bed after delivering a baby are not successful. Turns out, my body likes to pass out and my blood pressure plummets and I scare all my nurses and my husband when my blood pressure drops to 60/30. But now we know, it happens when I have a baby and the next time we can be prepared!
When it was time to decide on a name for our sweet girl, Jordan and I were not totally prepared for what happened. We talked about two names the whole time we were pregnant and I liked one a little better and he liked the other. When she was born, neither of them seemed to be the right fit. We were a little shocked and had to start all over. We had a longer list of names that were rarely discussed and were names that we jotted down when we heard a name we really liked. So we turned to that and the first name on the list was PERFECT. Natalie. This little bundle was the perfect little Natalie.
And we couldn't be more in love.
Natalie's first week or so home we spent time outside [after the monsoon rains stopped!], visited the pool for big sister, ventured out to dinner, and thoroughly enjoyed our Natalie.
We had great visitors in Natalie's first month. My parents came down when she was about 2 weeks old and stayed for a whole week. My sister Katie was able to come over from Nashville and hang out with us too! We went to explore the Oklahoma Salt Plains and the OKC Zoo. I bawled like a baby when my mom & dad had to leave us!
