The Birth of Shaylin Joy - Part 3

I think it was around 4pm when I got the epidural. I also agreed to them giving me pitocin, something else I originally didn't want. But I was barely 4 cm & it had been 16 hours since my water broke. They don't like you to go past 24 hours for risk of infection to the baby. Once they gave the pitocin we were to wait & see what happened. If I had not made enough progress by 8pm they would start prepping for a c-section.

Somewhere during that wait Shaylin's heartrate dropping some so they put me on oxygen & started monitoring her by screwing a probe in her head. This was yet another thing that did not go according to my birth plan. But being tired & out of it I didn't argue.

8pm came & I was pregressing very well so we were cleared to continue laboring.

I think it was around this time when my parents made it . . . from Georgia. See, I called my parents at 1am to tell them I was in labor. My mom immediately got online & started shopping for tickets. They had just bought tickets a week earlier to fly the week after my due date. But now Shaylin decided to come 2 weeks early & my mom didn't want to meet her 2nd grandchild for the first time at 3 weeks old. As an answer to prayer they found an incredible deal & were both able to fly in time for the birth!

At 10pm I had made it to 10 cm so it was time to push. That's when they turned off the epidural. Big mistake! I had no idea what I was doing because I couldn't feel a thing. It was just me holding my breath for 10 seconds at a time. Somewhere over an hour later I started gaining some feeling & could even tell when a contraction was coming.

Finally at 11:38pm on January 23, 2010 our little Shaylin Joy entered the world.

To say I cried is an extreme understatement.

I sobbed.

It was a moment I had waited for for 3 years.

Shaylin weighed 7 lbs. & was 19 inches long with lots of dark hair.

And this is our little family. We are so in love & so thankful for this precious gift. All praise can only go to the Lord for this little blessing.

The Birth of Shaylin Joy - Part 2

I'll admit the order & time of what happened the rest of the day is blurry.

I had my first internal check & learned why my OB doesn't bother with those for checkups. OUCH! I thought she was trying to grab my tonsils! We learned that I was barely 1 cm, 0% effaced, & Shaylin was at -4 station, almost as high as she could get. Not a good way to start.

I should also mention that I had tested positive for strep B so I had no choice but to go to the hospital so they could keep me on anti-biotics. This also meant that I couldn't try to labor in the tub. Total bummer.

I do know that sometime around 3am or so my contractions started. The on-call doctor gave me permission to walk the halls to hopefully get Shaylin to drop. So we did & I was checked again & had made little progress.

The nurse was already talking c-section because at that time I didn't want any drugs & wanted it all natural. This upset me pretty bad. So to try to get things going & prevent a c-section I agreed to use cervidil. This forced me to have to stay in bed for an hour. But it got contractions going then. We started walking again but at this point it seemed like contractions were every 30 seconds & I was having a really hard time. So I agreed to some meds, one for the pain & one to help me sleep. The sleep meds worked fast. I remember falling asleep to Jeremy reading me encouraging comments people were leaving on Facebook & the next thing I woke up & my mother-in-law is in his place so he can have lunch. They told me later that I was still having contractions while asleep & was moaning through all of them.

The best pain relief I found was the shower. I could just stand in there with the water hitting my lower back & all the back pain went away. But of course I could stay in there for the next 8 cm.

At one point I tried the birthing ball but after about 2 minutes on it I made the difficult decision to have an epidural. It wasn't something I wanted to do. I was so certain that I could go without. So the pain was not what I thought it would be. My emotions really got the best of me because all I could compare it to was one of my miscarriages so I just couldn't focus.

The Birth of Shaylin Joy - Part 1

If I'm going to have a blog about being a mom, then I should at least start off with the day I became one.

On January 22, Jeremy spent the day with me to get some errands run & help me clean around the house. That night we went to dinner & called it our "last date night" for a while. All day Jeremy was joking that I wouldn't make it to Sunday. He was certain my belly had dropped.


I went to bed around 11:30 & Jeremy stayed up to play a video game. About half an hour later I felt . . . something. I'm going to spare everyone from too many details. But we eventually figured out my water had broken.


Let me just say, that is the weirdest feeling in the world!


My hospital bag still wasn't packed & we didn't even have the carseat installed yet. Jeremy called his parents so they could take the dogs home with them & we scrambled around the house grabbing anything we could think we'd need.


We checked into the hospital around 2am. At this point I hadn't had any contractions yet.


I changed into my lovely hospital gown & the nurse proceeded to ask all sorts of questions. We didn't really like her. We were excited about having our baby & joking around & she wasn't having it. Well, lady, then don't take the night shift!