Introducing Avery Jane

The long wait to meet our daughter is finally over - she was born last Thursday, April 2, at 4:24 pm. Avery was 8 lbs 2 oz of pure cuteness, with a full head of dark hair and huge blue eyes. At first she seemed to resemble Luke the most, but over the past few days she looks more and more like me, despite her coloring. Or at least more like my baby pics.

The birth story:
I went to the doctor Wednesday morning, fully expecting to set up an appointment to induce the following week. However, my blood pressure had spiked pretty high, so my doctor said it was time to bring her on out! They admitted me to the hospital Wednesday night to do a procedure to ripen my cervix for inducement the following morning. My parents and Luke's sister drove in Thursday afternoon, and we all went out for a last supper at Kerbey Lane before heading to the hospital to check in. Luke's parents arrived later that evening, so there was a whole crew of people in my L&D room - I think we overwhelmed the nurse at first.

The procedure went so well Wednesday night that I started having contractions on my own, and they delayed giving me Pitocin the following morning. The pain got to be too much - I thought I'd brave it and push through the pain, a supermom, doing it all naturally, but I quickly gave that idea up and had the nice anesthesiologist numb me up. I felt so much better after that, but in hopes of pushing later in the day, I didn't max out on the meds for fear of not feeling anything during pushing. Dumb idea as I later learned.

Lunch time came and went and still no baby - not to be unexpected, but I wasn't progressing fast enough because they couldn't get the dosage right on my Pitocin, and I kept coupling contractions, rather than having very regular ones. This also put stress on the baby, and with each contraction later in the day, her heart rate would drop by almost half. For a brief period of time there was a flurry of activity in my room as they tried to adjust me and roll me and get her heart rate back up. I finally made it to full dilation, but for a tiny little spot, which they decided to let me try and push through. After about 30 minutes of pushing, the baby was getting worse, and my doctor broke the news that my pelvis just wasn't wide enough for her to fit through, and that she simply didn't have the energy reserves to last through another couple hours of pushing. There wasn't even a guarantee that she'd come out at all this way. So, I was rushed off to the operating room for a c-section, crying and panicking because I hate needles and knives.

They upped my epidural dosage and tested my abdomen for numbness...only my left side went numb, while I still felt everything on my right. More bad news - they had to put me under general anesthesia in order to perform the operation, so that meant Luke was no longer allowed in the room with me. I went under not knowing if anyone had told him what was going on.

I woke up an hour later in a strange room, asking if she was out of me yet. I had NO idea what had just happened. Luke showed up a minute later pushing our daughter in her bassinet, handed her to me, and she smiled up at me, the second she was put in my arms. It was probably just gas, but I like to think that she knew who I was. They wheeled me down to my post-partum room where the entire family was waiting (this time the room was smaller, which probably overwhelmed the staff even more). I had the shakes so badly that I couldn't hold Avery, so I spent the first few hours watching her from a distance. Before the delivery, I had dreams of holding her right away, nursing her, loving on her. Instead, I was drugged up and in pain. But, in the end it was all worth it, knowing that she was her safely and that she was healthy. God was gracious.

We're home now finally, after a very long stay at the hospital where I still battled blood pressure problems. I was up and moving the morning after though, and on solid foods, so I healed fairly quickly, although now that I'm home, I'm still moving slowly and wishing that I would just be better already.