Week 4--New Arrival

Little Miriam Margaret Hazard made her debut on Saturday, January 25, 2014 at 10:12 PM!

A brief summary of her birth story:

On Monday I went to my midwife appointment and I was 2 cm dilated and 80% effaced. I had her strip my membranes, hoping that would start things in a couple of days. A couple of days later I did start having some cramping, contractions, and bloody show, but it was all really irregular and continued for 3 days more.

Thursday/Friday contractions start to kick in a little more regular and stronger, and I was really hoping Friday would be the day. Nope. Friday night I had really, really strong contractions all night, but each one was probably 20-30 minutes apart (I'm really not sure though--I never looked at a clock because I knew that would keep me from sleeping, and I'd been exhausted the last two weeks. I knew I would know the real thing and get up without needing to time them). Around six in the morning, I was awake and starving, and not sure if the contractions would pick up any minute. I asked Tyson to run to the store to get me some yogurt (that's my middle-of-the-night-snack-when-I'm-pregnant). He said he would, asked me what brand/kind, then promptly went back to sleep. I waited 10 minutes, asked him again with no response. Thankfully, I finally went back to sleep as well for a couple of more hours.

Saturday morning I did walk to the grocery store to get my yogurt. I was hoping the walking would start things up again. Had a few more really painful contractions, but still nothing regular. I took a nap at two. Every single day that week I had a 1-2 hour nap. Saturday I had a 3 hour nap and woke up at 5 feeling crummy. I went downstairs to eat (I don't think I had lunch) and started having hard, irregular contractions again. After a half an hour I was in tears and told Tyson we needed to go. He got the last few things together and we got there about 6:30.

By the time we got to the hospital, my contractions, still hard when they came, had started to space themselves again. I was dilated to a 6 and admitted by my favorite charge nurse. If I'd been working, this would have been my weekend to work (full-time and part-time work every 3rd weekend) so these were some of the people I work with the most. She set me up with the birthing ball and started filling up the jacuzzi. My contractions were every 5-10 minutes, and still not as hard as they'd been at home. I'd been planning a natural childbirth, like I'd had with Xandiron, but I made a sudden decision change while rocking on that birthing ball. I knew what birth was like both ways, both with an epidural and natural, and I was doing it with an epidural this time. When I told my nurse Marie that, she was pretty shocked, and at first thought I was in the transition stage or something to ask for an epidural so quickly when she knew I was planning on not getting one. I knew I wasn't in transition--I felt completely in control at the moment since the contractions had died down, but I was tired of the way this labor was dragging itself out, and dreading how it was going to get worse. If my light at the end of the tunnel had been closer, I may have chosen differently, but my light was just too far off. My last pregnancy I really mentally prepared for a natural birth, and I was not mentally prepared this time.

A few minutes later I got the in the jacuzzi to wait for the anesthesiologist to get there. Both Marie and my midwife, Rachel, reminded me that I had a good support system if I wanted to go natural, it wouldn't be that long, etc. Rachel really tried to persuade me to stick it out. And honestly, I'm glad they were really encouraging in that direction--I wish I'd had nurses/providers like them in a couple of other deliveries. Rachel kept telling me she was pretty sure that I would deliver within the hour (I didn't) and that she didn't even think I'd get any pain relief from the epidural before I started pushing (I sure did).

I got my epidural around 8ish, and it worked fabulously, unlike my last epidural. Rachel broke my water just after that, and it had some meconium. Tyson sat next to me, held my hand while working on some homework while I rested peacefully, just preparing and thinking about the little person inside that was about to be separated from me so we could finally get to know each other and grow together.

At 9:30ish I was just dilated to a 9, and I asked Marie to start some pitocin to speed things up. Just before 10pm I could feel the baby coming down, and I started pushing while lying on my side a little after that. It was the best pushing experience ever-I could feel exactly where the baby was as I was pushing, and could feel that what I was doing was working, and it was awesome.

Our baby emerged at 10:12, after only a couple of minutes of pushing. They placed the crying baby on me and asked if Tyson had seen what gender it was. He had guessed that we were having a boy, and I lifted up our baby's leg and verified that it was a little girl. :) We were both very happy.

I didn't tear, so after a quick clean up Tyson left to get the kids and my mom. They all got to see little Miriam and it was so fun to see their reactions to finding out that they had a baby sister.

The rest of our hospital stay didn't go quite as planned, as Miri was admitted to the NICU the next day and had to spend a couple of days on oxygen and antibiotics, but gratefully she was able to come home the day after I did.

Here are the long-awaited pictures!

 First picture

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 Our family of 7! 

Please ignore the stoned expressions of our boys--

they had been awakened to come to the hospital and it was 11:30 at this point.

 It was later than we planned when we finally were able to leave with Miri from the hospital, 

and pretty dark when we got these pictures. 

Tyson didn't actually take the kayak in the water, but we got as close as we could on the frozen river. 

 

 Tyson and the kids also made cookies this weekend to take to all the people who brought us meals last week--I never had to cook once!!! It was the greatest!

We are just loving life with little Miri!