Welcome Alethea Rose!!!

We welcomed Alethea Rose into our arms on Friday, October 14th 2011 at 11:31pm. She weighed 6.2 lbs and was 19.5 inches long.

We are both so thankful to have Alethea here and hold her in our arms. She is such a precious gift from God that we love so much! We wanted to write a post about her birth mainly so she would always know the story and have a record. This blog will change now that Alethea has come and will focus more on stories that we would like her to know about her life and letters from us to her. Please be aware that this story may be graphic or too descriptive for some. We go into ALL the details.

The best place to start this story would be early in the week on Tuesday. I went to my normal doctors appointment at the hospital to be monitored and to check Alethea's growth. I have been going to this hospital twice a week for the last month or so to have fetal monitoring done. During my routine ultra sound to check my amniotic fluid levels they found that my fluid was around 5. (It should definitely be over 5 and they like to be more around 10) This wasn't too big of a surprise to me since my fluid tends to be low on Tuesdays and increase by Fridays. I was told to go home and spend the next few days drinking lots of water and resting as much as possible.  We spent Thursday night joking about how I could get induced on Friday (because my fluid was low) but didn't truly believe they would induce me on Friday. Well low and behold I get to the hospital on Friday and my fluid was at 3, the magic number! Low enough that they wanted to induce me right then.

Now I said I was already at the hospital, but I was at the wrong hospital. There are SO many great hospitals in St. Louis and the one I was at was not the one where we planned to deliver Alethea. Although it is a great hospital it was not the "baby" hospital and was farther away from Jacob's work/school and our church family.  After receiving the news that they would induce me, I called Jacob to let him know so he should turn in his paper at school and get home. I spent the next hour waiting around to get the "ok" from my primary OBGYN that I could leave the hospital and drive to the one where we intended to give birth. During this time, Jacob was able to get home, walk Wallace and quickly clean up the kitchen.

Once we arrived at the hospital we got checked into our room, were hooked up to penicillin (I tested positive for Group B)  and waited. We had to wait about an hour before they started the pitocin, around 1:30pm. Even thought\ I was dilated to 3cm when we checked in, they were unable to break my water until I had 1 bag of penicillin in my body which would take about 4 hours.

4 hours later......

After 4 hours of sitting, watching t.v and just hanging out without much pain, the nurse and resident doctor came in to break my water (5:30pm). After breaking my water my contractions instantly got intense and could be felt.  I was able to talk through some of these contractions and had to just breathe through the rest. Around 8:00 the nurse came in to check me and see how the pitocin was doing and found out that I was 5cm. (I was so happy. After hearing how long people can get stuck at 3 or 4 I was dreading hearing her say I was still 3cm). Jacob and I continued to be able to talk in between contractions and joke around.  At 8:40 we wanted the nurse to check again since contractions were getting more painful and found that I was 6.5cm. dilated. Again we were thrilled! In about an hour I had progressed 1 and 1/2 cm yay!! We figured we would have little Alethea somewhere around 2 or 3am Saturday morning. (based on the norm that most people dilate a cm an hr)  Now was the point when I really needed to stop thinking/talking/walking and work through the contractions. Previously I had been laying on the bed breathing through contractions, but now I had started to walk around and used the pregnancy ball. I LOVE the pregnancy ball. I firmly believe I wouldn't have been able to have a drug-free (other then pitocin) birth without the pregnancy ball. Contractions began to get VERY painful and I began to feel the urge to push and of course was told not to since I wasn't anywhere near 10cm. Finally, it got to the point where I really needed to be checked. There was NO WAY that I was going to continue with this pain or worse for another 4 hours; I NEEDED to know if i had progressed at all. Well Jacob called the nurse and we proceeded to move to the bed. Once I moved to the bed I involuntary began pushing. Jacob called the nurse and said "umm we are going to have a baby in here" (he had to call cause she had not come in the room yet). When the nurse came in at 10:40 I fully dilated and ready to push. I started "officially" pushing at 11pm; my doctor came in at 11:10 and Alethea was born at 11:30.

She was perfectly healthy and so beautiful. I was able to pull her up to my stomach and hold her for a few minutes before they took to wrap her up. Alethea stayed with us in the delivery room for about 15minutes and was then taken to the nursery to get admitted and cleaned up. While she was being cleaned I was finally able to eat! (I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast at 8am that day and only had a piece of toast) I was so excited to have a turkey sandwich. It was delicious!! We were then moved to the recovery room and got to spend time holding Alethea and even breastfeeding. It was wonderful!