Introducing Eloise Asha Singhal (birth story)!
So Eloise Asha is here, as evidenced by the last post by Dan, which included some pictures, more pictures to come soon.
Anyways now for the birth story. I have been having contractions on and off for the past 3+ weeks, but on Friday they were feeling a bit stronger, though not enough for me to think much about it. I did comment that 3/14 would be a great birthday since it is Pi day and Albert Einstein’s birthday.
On Saturday morning 3/14 at about 4:30am I woke up to a painful contraction. I got up went to the bathroom and headed back to bed to see if I could get back to sleep. By 5am, when I had had 5 or so painful contractions, I decided that going back to sleep wasn’t in store. I headed downstairs and brought up the contraction meter on my computer and checked message boards and various other internet sites. About 6:15am I decided they weren’t going away, so I went and woke up Dan. He called his parents to come over and I got in the tub to see if it helped with the contractions any, it didn’t. About 6:45 Desmond woke up and we went downstairs. Around 7:00am we called the midwives since it the contractions were less then 5 minutes apart and for a minute or longer. They wanted us to come into labor and delivery. Once my in-laws arrived about 7:30am we headed out.
Once we got to the hospital we went right into labor and delivery and got put in a room. We got there around 8am. The midwife checked me around 9am and I was between 4 and 5 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced. The contractions were coming for about 70 seconds 3 minutes apart, so I decided it was really painful and while no drugs would be nice an epidural would be nice. So they started the bag of water to go in so I could get the epidural. Around 10am I threw up the first time and lost my mucus plug. Around 11am I finally got the epidural, it was so nice! Until it stopped working as well around noon. So I got a booster. Actually in the end I got 3 boosters and a new epidural to see if it would work better.
Around 2/2:30pm I had to throw up again, which was so much fun, on the plus side my water finally broke at the same time. Shortly after that around 3:30pm I got the second epidural since the first one wasn’t working right, the second one worked a lot better. My mother in law also came over because Dan was having issues with me being in pain, which isn’t a problem, except for the fact that he was the only person there for me, and I needed the support. If we have a third, we’re definitely going for a doula. About 4:30pm my mother in law got there. I had been put on oxygen around 3pm because baby’s heart rate was decelerating some, so when the midwife checked me at 5pm I was fully dilated and effaced so she decided it was time to push to see if it helped with baby’s heartbeat issues.
So I started pushing, once I started pushing the contractions that had been coming every 2 to 3 minutes slowed to every 6+ minutes, which made pushing a bit harder, since we had a longer period between pushes. At 5:52pm she was born. She had her cord loosely wrapped around here neck, which what was probably causing the decelerations. She pinked up right away and was immediately put on my chest, where she latched on and nursed like a champ.
Her stats were 19 3/4 inches and 7 pounds 5.8 ounces, her APGARs were 9 and 9. Born on 3/14 (Pi day!) at 5:52 pm via VBAC.
All in all it was a great birth and delivery, I did have a second degree tear from pushing, but it the recovery so far has been so much nicer then the recovery from the c-section after Desmond. She is nursing like a champ and Desmond is not sure what to make of her.