Our Early Arrival

As many of you have already heard, our baby girl arrived early this weekend! As of our last doctor's appointment we were still on target for delivering March 17th, but sure enough, just after midnight Friday night, my water broke. I was getting ready for bed, Chad was watching tv in the livng room. When it happened I wasn't entirely sure that it was what it was. I told Chad that I thought my water broke. He quickly jumped to his feet. We called the hospital and described our situation. The nurse advised us to "come on in".

At this point I was not yet having contractions. The hospital told me to go ahead and take my time finishing packing my bags. Chad and I wandered around the house trying to comprehend what was really happening. I am just like my mom in that when I know I'm going to be gone for a few days, I prefer to leave the house clean, dishes washed, laundry done, things put away. So there I was 37 weeks pregnant, water broken, unloading and loading the washer and dryer. Chad must have thought I was crazy, but I just kept thinking I wanted to bring our baby girl to a warm, clean, inviting home. At one point Chad was standing in the bathroom with his hand on his head. He looked at me and said, "I'm not ready for this." I too felt the same way, it was all happening so fast. We called Susan and Gary to tell them our news and asked them if we could drop Stella off to spend the night with them until our friends could pick her up the next day. We finished packing our hospital bags and headed out the door.

We arrived at the hospital around 2:00 am Saturday morning. Because it was so late, the hospital was very quiet. They were able to get me into my delivery room immediately. At this point I was still awaiting contractions. The nurse checked me and I was only 1 cm dialated. Chad and I were so tired but too excited to sleep. We turned the lights down and tried to relax. Once the contractions started, sleep became next to impossible. The nurse told me at that point I could go ahead and get my epidural whenever I wanted it. The contractions weren't that bad at that point so I just pushed through them. However, as soon as they grew stronger, I decided if I was going to have an epidural anyway, I might as well get it earlier than later and give myself a chance to sleep. The epidural was very scary to me. The doctor came in and walked me through the process. Chad had to leave the room. I can't say it really hurt, but I was shaking and very nervous. I've never been admitted to a hospital before so I really am a bit of a baby when it comes to anything hospital related. Overall the epidural went very smoothly. Chad and I then were able to fall into a deep sleep for a couple hours. The nurse came in and I was 4-5 cm dialated. It didn't take long until I was already at 6-7. In the meantime Susan and Gary arrived and sat with us as we patiently awaited for me to progress. At some point later that afternoon I was finally ready to start pushing. The nurse seemed very optimistic and encouraged us as we pushed through the first hour. She really thought it would only be another hour at the most. That second hour seemed to drag on and I really didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. Finally the doctor came in. He determined almost immediately that the baby was most likely going to need to be delivered via C-Section.

I can honestly say that I never, in a million years, would have thought I'd need a C-Section. I had it in my head that they were for at-risk babies or for women who were too small to deliver a big baby. It just so happened our girl was posterior when she should have been anterior, she was in fact a "big" baby and apparently I have a small pelvis. Those things combined would make it very difficult, if even possible to deliver vaginally. So there we were, making the decision to have a C-Section. I had tears streaming down my face. This was not part of my plan. Before I knew it I was being given more drugs and Chad was stepping into his scrubs. They wheeled me to the OR, where there were a ton of people. All I could see was the blue sheet in front of me. I was so out of it and nervous that I was starting to feel nauseous. I couldn't keep my eyes open. Finally they brought Chad in and started the procedure. I slept through most of it. I came to when they announced we had a baby girl and I could hear her crying. Again, the crocodile tears started flowing. Finally they brought the baby to me. It was nothing short of amazing.

We were then brought back to our orignial delivery room where we got to spend some time with the baby before she needed to go off to the nursery for her first bath. We moved to our private room and got some much needed rest. The last couple of days have been a whirlwind. We will be at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital for the next couple of days and will post more photos and info soon. I'm off to take a nap now.

Here are the baby's stats:

Name: Vienna Marie Blockley

Date Born: February 28th, 2009

Time Born: 4:06 pm

Weight: 8 pounds, 8 ounces

Length: 20 inches

On our way to the operating room............