Sweet Baby Girl

The start of a long night of labor (I got in trouble for the bottled water, too)

My sweet baby girl
My babies :)
Getting her first bath! She likes having her hair washed, too!
Little blue hands!
Daddy did the first diaper change...I love the nurses' expression!!!
Me and my girl!
He hung in there with me...all 43 hours :)
She may have her daddy's hair, but she has my elf ears!

Short: Isabella Grace (Izzy) was born at 11:38 a.m. on August 11, 2008 (5 days early!). She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz, 20 1/3 inches long, 13 3/4 inch head, Apgar 9/9! By the way, she is the smallest baby in the nursery...which is weird because Jason was 8 pounds, and I was 8 pounds 12 ounces! We make small, petite, perfect (to us anyway) babies :)

Long: On Sunday morning 8/10/08 , about 4 am, I started having contractions...well, what I thought were contractions. I had spent Friday and Saturday walking (at the mall, around the neighborhood, up and down the driveway!) so, I had been trying to give Izzy a "push". Anyway, it turns out the contractions were just false labor (they went away when I laid down to take a nap at 10:30). I was SO disappointed because up until then I had not felt a single Braxton Hicks contraction or anything, and I thought this was the real deal! So, I decided to putter around and see if I could start some contractions, so I started weeding the flower beds in our front yard (they look better, by the way). I started supper an hour after finishing the beds and I started feeling what I thought were BHC. These finally got strong enough to convince me to call my doc. They went from 10-15 minutes apart to 3 minutes apart in about a half hour!!! They told me to go to L&D; by the time we got there at 9 p.m., I had been in labor for 3 hours. I was dilated to 2 cm (had been for a few days per my doctor's appt on Thurs) and thick and she was really high. SO, they gave me a shot for pain and told me that I would be monitored for 4 hours and they would decide whether or not to keep me. After 4 hours, I had not dilated any more, but I had thinned out some (70%) so the nurse said she would keep me til morning (my contractions were still 3 minutes apart). I had 3 pain shots in 12 hours and let me tell you, they really did not help. The first one helped a good bit, but the other 2 only lessened the volume of my "oh oh oh's" and "help me's" and "make it stop's" My hospital only gives epidurals starting at 4 cm. So, for 12 hours, I labored and labored and only made it to 2.5 cm. The nurse said the doc would probably start pitocin or send me home. I was about to cry my eyes out!!! Contractions HURT!!! So, when the doc gets there at 7 a.m., she checks me and said...Hey, she is at 6 cm, I am breaking her water and let's get her an epi! I could have kissed her! I jumped from 2.5 cm to 6 in about 15 minutes! I have heard that contractions are worse when they break your water, but it had the opposite effect on me. It helped make them easier!! (It might have been that I knew an epi was coming...who knows!) After the epi, I labor for 3 more hours with a pitocin drip. I get to 10 cm and the nurse said let's start pushing! So, 20 minutes of pushing (with 5 of those minutes spent sitting and waiting on the doc to get back!) and Isabella Grace is brought into the world! She is beautiful (of course, I am biased!) with a head full of black hair! (The heartburn was worth it!) She did have the cord around her neck (normal), but the scary thing is that she had what the doc called a "true" knot in the cord. IT WAS IN AN ACTUAL KNOT!! Turns out, a knot can be pretty dangerous! All that is a moot point, though! Jason and I have a beautiful daughter that we are madly in love with!!! She is worth being awake for almost 2 full days and all 18 hours of labor!