The Birth Story

On Monday, November 19th - my due date - Geoff & I went to bed at 11:00 pm which is usual for us. I had grand plans of running my last errands & cleaning my bathroom the next day. At 12:30 am (Tues.) I woke up feeling wet. I woke Geoff up & told him I think my water broke. We turned on the light & yup it definitely had. Geoff asked if we could go back to bed. I firmly told him to call the doctor to see what we should do.
So, we called the OB's office, and they sent us to the hospital. We got there around 1:30 am. We weren't in a hurry because I hadn't had any contractions yet. The nurse didn't really believe that my water had broken because it still wasn't coming out. She thought I had wet the bed due to the baby kicking my bladder. Hello, my bladder held 2 tsp. & believe me there was way more than that sitting in my bed! She tested me & then finally believed me, so we were admitted. We went into a room & tried to rest while we could since minor contractions were starting.
By 7 am not much was progressing, so the OB had me put on pitocin around 8 am. The contractions finally showed up, but not too regular. Every 15 minutes they upped my pitocin dosage. Around noon I was about 4 cm and got a drug to "take the edge off" which did a lot more than that for me. I hadn't slept at all since my water had broken, and this drug knocked me for a loop. I couldn't keep my eyes open, but could hear everything. I could still feel the stronger contractions to breathe through them, but napped through the minor ones. It wore off around 1:30 & I got a refill at 2:00 . At 3:30, I had progressed to 6, and asked for the epidural. Well, the anesthesiologist was in the Operating Room with 4 patients, and didn't come until a little after 4pm. I was ready for it by then because I was at 8cm. Geoff went to phone our parents to keep them updated & when he came back 15 minutes later, I told him that nurse had just told me that I'll probably be pushing around 4:45-5:00.
At 5:00pm we began pushing, and Maleia was delivered at 5:56 pm. The nurse said that was pretty good since many of her past patients first time moms have pushed an average of 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours.
Afterwards, Maleia was not nursing very well in the hospital. This did not help her jaundice, and the jaundice made Maleia want to sleep more than usual which also did not help with nursing. It would take us about an hour to wake Maleia up to try to feed her! We did come home Thanksgiving afternoon, but on Friday when the at home nurse came to visit us we were sent to the ER. Maleia went home from the hospital at 6 lbs. 12 oz., but on Friday was 6 lbs. 7 oz. which was too much of a weight loss with the thought that she might be dehydrated. After having her bilirubin checked the ER doctor sent us home with orders to feed her every 2-3 hours using breastmilk or formula. Thankfully, my milk had come in that day, so I started pumping like a madwoman! Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were spent back & forth between the hospital and home getting her blood work done to check on the jaundice. Finally on Thursday, she had her sixth and last poke - thank the Lord, because I don't think I could have taken any more. The jaundice never got bad enough for her to need the special lights or blanket, but was still high enough that it needed to be checked.
On Friday, we got the great news that her numbers had finally gone down. At 10 days old she had also regained her lost weight & was 1 oz. over her birth weight & 1/2" longer!!