Callie is finally here!!

Callie arrived on July 10 at 12:11pm weighing 6 lbs 10 oz and measuring 19 inches tall. Here's her birth story:

Everything was ready. Bags packed, house cleaned, laundry done and put away, room set up, both grandmas in town, and all I had left to do was wait. Callie's due date was July 6, but she wasn't ready to come yet. I had a doctor's appointment that day and the doctor said I was maybe dilated to 1+ (I was at a 1 the week before). I had been having contractions the week before and they progressively got stronger as the days went by. By Friday morning my contractions woke me up and were getting painful. My mom and I went about our day doing various things and that evening I started keeping track of my contractions. They were 5-9 minutes apart for 3 hours straight and were getting stronger so we decided it was time to go to the hospital.

When we arrived I was at 3cm, but I did not progress over the course of an hour. The nurse thought we'd be sent home but called the doctor to let him know my stats. He was concerned that my blood pressure was high initially so he wanted me to stay the night and take some tests to make sure things were looking good and then send me home or keep me depending on if things progressed.

They discovered that I had a bladder infection, so they decided to put me on an IV and get some antibiotics into my system. I continued to have very painful contractions a few minutes apart during the night. I was in so much pain (augmented by the infection), but they didn't seem to think I was really ready to have the baby. They gave me some strong pain medication, but it mostly just made me so loopy I didn't really know what was going on. By the second dose, it wasn't even doing that for me. At some point I progressed to 5cm and then my water broke so they finally decided to give me an epidural (it was way past time in my opinion).

The epidural was wonderful! I was finally able to rest and not feel the pain. Within an hour I was dilated to 10cm. The nurse was pretty shocked. She had to check a few times just to be sure, and then I began to push. In our prenatal class they told us to plan to push for 2 hours and then if it was less we would be pleasantly surprised. Well, after almost 3 hours of pushing, the doctor asked if I wanted him to use forceps to help her out. By that point I was completely exhausted and in a lot of pain in my lower back (we found out later that the mattresses on the bed had separated so I had a nice chunk of metal digging into my back), so I gladly obliged and it wasn't too long after that that Callie was delivered.

The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck twice and she gulped some amniotic fluid before coming out, but it wasn't long before she was okay and breathing fine. I can't even describe the incredible feeling of relief, excitement, and amazement when I saw my sweet baby girl for the first time. Suddenly I forgot about all of that pain and how tired I was. The only thing in the world that mattered was that beautiful little girl. She is so sweet and doesn't cry much (yet). She has mostly slept through her first 22 hours of life. Jason and I are so excited to finally have her here!