Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Alivia's Birth Story

Our baby girl was due Saturday, November 23. At my "last" doctors appointment I still hadn't progressed and my doctor let me know that I would probably be going about a week late. We scheduled a date to be induced about 9 days after my due date. So needless to say I had a lazy, bad attitude about getting anything ready(including making sure that my house was clean, packing hospital bags). 

When some friends invited us to go to the drive-in movies the night before my due date we didn't think twice about it. It was the opening weekend of Hunger Games Catching Fire and I wanted to see it before baby girl came. It was a double feature with Ender's Game, which we had already seen, so we decided to take off after Hunger Games. We drove the 30 minutes to get home, I walked in the door around 10:30, and right as I got to the bathroom my water broke. I was extremely surprised since I thought I was going to be going late and I hadn't been having any contractions. I called my doctors office and they told me that I had 3-4 hours to get to the hospital. Since I hadn't packed my bags I took my time while Abram cleaned the house. I still wasn't having contractions when I got to the hospital. 

I was admitted around 1:45 AM on Saturday November 23, my due date, and they started me on pitocin to help my labor along. Within a couple of hours, I started to feel the contractions every couple of minutes but they weren't very strong and I was able to "rest" in between them. I had decided to try to be strong and go as long as I could without getting an epidural. Finally, around 11 AM my contractions getting pretty strong and I had finally dilated to a 5. So I asked for an epidural. They came back after a little while and let me know that the anesthesiologist had an emergency and another expectant mom in front of me. They started pumping me full of the liquids needed for the epidural, all along telling me I would probably be in labor for a while still. By 12 I felt like I was needing to push and asked them to check again. I was dilated to a 10! That's when I realized I was going to be having the baby naturally, after saying my entire pregnancy I was going to have an epidural! After a lot of rushing to get everything ready the doctor and nurse were ready and our beautiful baby girl was born at 12:45.

Alivia Amalie Clay was born November 23, 2013 at 12:45 PM. She was 6 lbs 15 oz and 20 inches long!
Right after Alivia was born.
Daddy's girl!

Heading home!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good for you Melissa! You sound almost exactly like me. I never thought I would go natural...but I was at a 7 when I got to the hospital so it was no big deal for me. You had to work at it for a while! Your little girl is so cute!

Erica Locke said...

Melissa she is beautiful! I love birth stories and this one is great! Miss you.