Callie's Birth Story

So I have been home for a couple days and am now sitting down getting ready to type out Callie's birth story. She has been an amazing little newborn so far and we are all just in love with her. Wilson is slowly getting used to her. He comes up and will look at her and pat her on the head. I think that's about as good as it is going to get for now. I think he is still too young to understand what is going on. But anyways onto birth story!

We went to Willis-Knighton Medical Plaza at Midnight on December 1, 2011. I had preregistered so I had to go through the ER entrance and get checked in.
By 1 am we were in our delivery room 8 on the second floor, and we had nurse Stephanie and she let us get settled in and took care of little things and at 3 am I had my iv put in and a pitocin drip started.
It caused regular but not painful contractions. When I got checked I had only progressed to 3 cm dilation and still 50% effaced. I was a little disappointed that the pitocin hadn't progressed my labor a little more.

So from there we slept and being a hospital would get randomnly woken up.

At 7:00 am, my ob Dr. Gina Gomez came in and with one swift jab with what I call the "knitting needle" broke my water.

Contractions at this point were extremely painful and strong. They came in at less than 3 minutes apart and after the first couple contractions I was READY for that epidural!
I had a new nurse now, her name was Tracy and she told me I had to wait until I was at least 4 cm, so she would check on me in an hour.

Well she made me wait a little longer than an hour but I tried to endure. Finally at 8:30 she came in, and checked me and I was at 5 cm dilated and 90% effaced. FINALLY!
She went and started prepping for the epidural for me and in about 15 minutes, the anesthesiologist came in and popped that sucker in quick! With Wilson I had to wait a long time for the dr. to get the needle and all that in place and this dr. had it done in less than 15 minutes!

My contractions started feeling less painful and by the normal 15-20 minutes all I could feel was some pressure every time a contraction came up. THANK YOU MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY!

I was worried I might have complications from the epidural, as you know things can always go wrong or not work right, but this epidural experience was amazing. I got a different type of drug this time though, where I actually had the ability to feel my legs and move them.
I don't think I would've been able to walk around but at least I wasn't just completely useless from the waist down.

A friend had come and offered to take pictures of the birth for us, so she had come and she, Andy, and I sat around and chatted until 10:30 am.

Nurse Tracy came back in to check me and realized that Callie was ready to come out. Like her head was already in the birth canal. She immediately started getting everything ready and Dr. Gomez notified.

By 11:00 am, everyone was all situated and ready to go. I was ready to push.

I had to wait for that first contraction to start pushing and from the first, I could see a headful of dark dark hair. (I had requested a mirror to be able to see.)

I was so excited and by the 4th contraction had my daughter out!

Callie Joy Kirk was born on December 1, 2011 at 11:25 am.

She weighed 7 lbs. 12 oz and was 20.5 inches long.

She literally was almost the exact weight as Wilson, but Wilson was an inch longer.

She looked very tiny compared to my memory of Wilson. I think it may be because of the head shape. Wilson had the very cone-shaped head where Callie's head didn't look like it got misshapen in the birth canal at all.

She had facial bruising and swelling and burst some blood vessels in her eyes from having such a fast delivery. She cried for a little while, but finally calmed down and was now being the typical sleepy newborn.

 

 

I am amazed at how much faster and easier her birth went. I am thankful for having a healthy baby girl and that everything so far has went well. She hasn't had any of the issues that Wilson did. And I will have another blog post about my decision to bottle feed instead of trying breastfeeding again. But I won't make that long. I am at peace with my decision, and no one can make me feel guilty about it.