Jeremy and Laura's Family Adventure: Labor and delivery story

Apparently my body likes to labor for a long time! My labor with Kate was just as long with Addison. It all started Sunday night/Monday morning when I thought my water had broken. We held off for a little bit, but decided to go into the hospital around 3:00 a.m. I was checked and was only 1 cm. My water had not broken despite having a lot of fluid. I had contractions, but they weren't very close together. They decided to send us home and we got back to the house around 6:00 a.m.

During one of my contractions at the hospital the baby's heartbeat had dropped so the doctor wanted me to come into the office to get an ultrasound to check on everything. I continued to have contractions, about 40 minutes apart, up until the late morning appt. Everything looked great with the baby at my appt. so they sent me home to continue to labor. Fun times! I was 2 cm at the office. I had contractions all day long, still not close together, but around 11:00 that night they really started to kick in. I had to take a long hot shower in the middle of the night to help with the pain, especially because I was having back labor. My contractions were about every 10-20 mins by then, but the intensity and pain was like nothing I had experienced before! We called the doctor even though I was supposed to wait until they were 7 minutes apart. We went back to hospital around 3:00 a.m. again. I was NOT going to be sent home this time if my life depended on it! When they checked me I was about 5 cm. No wonder I was in so much pain!!!

As soon as we got to the hospital the contractions got a lot closer together. By the time I was in my labor and delivery room I was 6 cm. The anesthesiologist finally got down to my room, but had a really hard to time getting the catheter of my epidural in. I had several contractions while she was doing it. Jeremy said the last contraction before the epidural kicked in was really high on the monitor and lasted a minute long. Ouch!!! She finally got it to work and I was 7 cm around 5:00 a.m. I went quickly to 8 cm. We thought I would be pushing soon and I would be having a morning baby again. Unfortunately my blood pressure dropped and my contractions almost stopped. We waited for hours for things to progress. Finally after several rounds of Pitocin they finally broke my water and I was eventually ready to push. I didn't have to push
very long and she was here!

They did kangaroo care at the hospital where they keep the baby in the delivery room for quite some time and encourage the mom and baby to be skin-to-skin for an hour. So nice! After they cleaned her up they brought her to me for skin-to-skin, but they quickly realized she was taking quick breaths. The nurse had to pat all over her chest and back until she "transitioned". Her coloring was much better along with her breathing.

We hadn't named Kate until after she was born. We were down to a few names and I told Jeremy it was his turn to name the baby since I had the final say on Addison Grace. He shocked me with "Kate" about 20 minutes after she was born, even though we both liked it, because he has loved the name Reese for years. Ellen is my middle name, my mom's middle name and my great-great-grandmother's middle name.

After Addie's delivery I got really sick to my stomach so they gave me medicine that made me pass out for a few hours. It was nice to enjoy some time in the delivery room and afterward with family this time around. Once I got up to my room I had immediately since it had be about 20 hours sent I last ate.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to write this down to document it all. Enjoy pictures below of the first hours of Kate's life! More updates and pics to come.

Here she is!