Ok, well, she's really been here for 10 whole weeks now but that's how long it's taken me to find time to sit down and write out her birth story. Corinna made her grand debut to the world at 40 weeks and 2 days on 11/12/13 at 12:05 am weighing in at 7 lbs., 8.5 oz and 19.5 inches long. Already showing her attention to detail, she waited a few days so she could have a fun birth date and an easy birthday for others to remember and she got it by a whole 5 minutes!
On Monday, November 11th (Veteran's Day), my mom came up to essentially be on-call for child care duty and since I was scheduled to be induced on Wednesday, November 13th, we knew the baby would come Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Adrienne was home with us as she was off from school (Luke went to vacation camp at the JCC) so we were out and about at Barnes and Nobles and then went the Distillery for lunch. I'd been having contractions for months so when I was having them that day, I didn't think much of it. Until they started to get more intense. And then, I thought, well maybe I'll beat the induction and have the baby on Tuesday since it still didn't seem likely the baby would arrive that day. We got home that afternoon and everyone took a small snooze and shortly after that, Matt and Luke arrived home for dinner. During dinner, the contractions picked up in strength but still didn't have any sort of pattern. And they tell you over and over again that you shouldn't think you are in labor or go to the hospital until there is a distinct pattern and they are 5 minutes apart. So after struggling thru a few contractions that evening, at 9:30 pm, I thought I should probably head to the hospital just in case since the contractions were quite intense at that point. We threw our bags in the car and made a sort of rushed exit. We called the Dr.'s office on the way to the hospital and the on-call Dr. did not want us to delay any further since this was a 3rd baby. That was the right call. As soon as we got to the hospital and checked in (10:03 pm) things picked up very quickly. I was in severe pain in triage and 6.5 centimeters so off we went to the "birthing center." Fancy words meaning "across the hall from triage."
So this is where the fun starts. As soon as we got over to said "Birthing Center," I was assigned one clumsy and one grumpy nurse - jackpot! I guess that's what you get for going into labor late at night, silly me! I guess I should have planned to go into labor at like 10:00 am instead of pm. There's always next time, well, as long as you aren't talking to Matt :-) Ok, back to the story. Nurse Clumsy starts attempting to get an IV into my arm - into my already protruding, ideal, cannot miss them, veins. After she tried and failed 3 different times (spanning at least 45 minutes) which included dropping the IV kit on the ground what seemed like 6 times, another vein poker was called in to get the job done. And after another 20 minutes, she did it, but it was.not.pretty. Ok, awesome, finally got my IV, now I can finally get an epidural, right? Wrong. Of course, I hit the jackpot again and landed a shift change during what was a very transitional part of labor. So I had to wait roughly 5 hours to get my epidural while the new epi guy came onto his shift. Alright, I AM exaggerating but it felt like 5 hours. So I'm in a lot of pain for a while longer while the anestesiologist is placing the epidural. At this point, I feel a shift in my belly and a "pop!" and that was my water breaking. This happened at about 11:45 and the epi catheter was in at about 11:46. I ask why the epidural isn't working at 11:47 and then they tell me it could take up to 30 minutes for it to work - WHAT? Um, with my 2 other births, I had instantaneous relief! Whaterver, no time to argue because my body just starts pushing the baby out on its own. I had not really ever felt it quite like this but I was not in control of the pushing. That baby was coming out, stat! The nurses attempted to try to have me wait a few minutes while the doc got set up. I started intentionally pushing somewhere in the neighborhood of 11:55 pm and out she came 10 minutes later.
Corinna was perfect upon birth and I was very relieved to not be in pain any longer. I forgot to mention the part where the epidural didn't actually go to the right parts. Who knew the epi could make your face numb instead of down yonder? Certainly not me but that is exactly what I got. A few days later I ended up with an epidural headache and a lovely trip to the Geneva ER (thank God for G-ma!) for a blood patch. Not so fun but this baby girl was worth it!
Here are a few pictures:
Moments before leaving for the hospital - looks like this was snapped mid-contraction by the look on my face:
