Julia Elizabeth
7 pounds
20 inches
9:47PM
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
My doctor decided to induce me on 8/13 (I was 40 weeks 4 days pregnant at that point!). The night before I started having contractions when I went to bed, but they were only about 10 minutes apart and not intense. Knowing that we were going to meet our baby girl the next day, it was really hard to go to sleep that Tuesday night! Around 12:30 a.m. (and after tracking my contractions for about an hour) I decided that I needed to get some sleep since I knew we were going to have a long day ahead of us. In hindsight, I should have tried harder to get a full night's sleep because I'm not sure when I will get one of those next!
Jeff and I arrived at the hospital right around 8 on Wednesday morning. We checked in and got settled in to our room pretty quickly and then the nurses spent the next hour or so asking me questions and getting my IV hooked up and attaching me to monitors. Once they started me on the pitocin, I started having regular contractions pretty quickly. Once they started getting a little painful, I got some painkiller through my IV, but that wasn't taking the edge off to my satisfaction. I ended up getting my epidural around lunchtime- wish I hadn't waited so long, because it made all the difference! Speaking of lunchtime, I was STARVING. Jeff and I went to Local Lime the night before for dinner and I hadn't eaten anything since. The only thing I was allowed to "eat" until I had Julia were ice chips. How rude. Anyway, things were just going along with me having regular contractions, but I wasn't progressing super fast. I was beginning to wonder if Julia would be born on the 13th or 14th. It was pretty boring just sitting around (I couldn't get out of the bed), but at least we had some family keeping us company. Besides Jeff and me in the room, my mom, dad, Michael, and Jeff's mom were all in the room- just waiting... and waiting. I'll skip over the part of my labor where my epidural had essentially worn off and my contractions were INTENSE and coming fast. During the time I was waiting for more of my epidural, I actually felt the baby drop. Ouch. Once I got more epidural, and no longer felt like crying from the pain, the doctor was called back to the hospital to deliver the baby! The actual delivery was not that bad. I think I pushed for 20 minutes or so and then Julia was here!
Once Julia was here, Dr. Hutchinson immediately placed her on my chest. I couldn't believe that she was here. And I couldn't get over how tiny she was! She was absolutely perfect. We were in love with her from the instant we laid eyes on her.
We spent some time alone with her (this wasn't really by choice, everyone just left the room and we were alone with our baby- after a little while I asked Jeff if he thought anyone was going to come back and check on us!). After a little while, I told Jeff to go get our families so they could come back and meet Julia. He was intercepted by a nurse on the way who wanted to give Julia her first bath and get her dressed. That ended up taking much longer that we thought, so our families had to wait even longer to come back and meet her- I know the wait just about killed them!
Around midnight, Julia's grandparents and Uncle Michael finally got to meet her!! Of course everyone loved her and couldn't get over how precious she was! We celebrated Julia's and Grandpa Medford's birthdays with funfetti cake. How special that those two get to share the same birthday!
We stayed in the hospital until Friday and then they sent us home with Julia- without any instructions! Hah! So far, so good. I hope I remembered to document all the important things about this special day! It was a day I truly never want to forget.
Julia, you are perfect and our greatest joy. All those months of "morning" sickness were most definitely worth it!
