Story of the birth of Grace

Birth Story for Grace Elizabeth

I woke up Wednesday June 6, at 2:20 am with stronger contractions and cramps. I had some pink tinged mucus which was new too. I tried to go back to sleep because I knew it wasn't really close to time, but felt like that was going to be the day. I wasn't able to sleep, but I let Jeff sleep up until his normal getting up time of 4:40 for his job. When I woke him up, he could tell that something was going on. He suggested that I seriously time the contractions while he got ready for work. I did, and they were around 5-8 minutes apart. He decided that instead of him going to work, he needed to take me to the hospital. He was afraid to leave me home while he went to work, since it's an hour from his job to home to the hospital. So I showered and got ready and we left the house around 6am. We got to the hospital around 6:30am. I was there to be monitored for several hours before they told me if I was staying or going. I was not dilated much more than the week before, but they let me walk the halls and when my doctor came to see me she said that I should stay. She told me that they would break my water at noon.
I was then moved into one of the birthing rooms with a whirlpool tub. At noon the doctor broke my water and although the contractions got much stronger I wasn't really getting any more dilated. My doctor suggested that I use the whirlpool tub cause sometimes that can help speed along labor. They were going to give me Pitocin at 4, but decided to wait until after the whirlpool tub trip. It didn't really do much for me, so around 6 they gave me a dose to speed things up. I started having some really intense contractions, one that lasted for 6 minutes!!! The nurse saw it on the printout and asked about it, and I said that yes, it was strong, and yes it lasted forever! Sometime later the contractions started getting so bad that I wasn't sure anymore that I could just take them without some help. I'd been up since 2:20 that morning and was up half the night before cause Jeff wasn't feeling well. I was exhausted, and the pain got to me more because of it. Around 8 I asked for some pain medicine, and sometime later, close to 10:30 I guess I asked for an epidural. I really didn't want to do that, but I just had to by then. I was just too worn out.
Around 11 the doctor came back in and she said it was time to start pushing. The epidural was helping and I could then just focus on what needed to be done. They tried to show me what was going on in a mirror, but that didn't really help me too much! Jeff didn't really want to see what was happening too much either. About halfway through pushing the doctor informed us that she was seeing red hair! That was pretty cool to hear, cause we wanted her to have red hair. Then at 12:02 am Thursday June 7 Grace Elizabeth was born. She weighed 7 pounds 10 ounces at birth and was 20.5 inches long.
Not really sure what else to put in here for now. Being in the hospital was strange since I'd never been in the hospital for myself before. I wanted to go home, and did get to leave a little early, after I proved that I could pee on my own. I did have to have a catheter put in for overnight before I went home because I couldn't pee enough on my own. That really sucked. I had great nurses until the last day, and that one was good, she just wasn't very friendly and didn't take much time with me when I had questions.
All in all delivery went well. I didn't quite do it the way I wanted, but I wasn't really dead set against anything when I went in. Breastfeeding is a challenge, but I'm still sticking to that!!! Now to try to adjust the baby's schedule so she doesn't keep me up all night! We're making progress there now too.