Baby Maegwin is here

So our little baby finally arrived with some serious help. I was due the 11th and my doctor finally scheduled an induction for yesterday. We came to the hospital at 6am and then the nurses stuck me three times trying to get an IV in. I have small veins so I knew I would have trouble but I hate when everyone thinks "they can do it" and insists on trying. They finally called in an anaesthesiology nurse who was supposed to numb me. She came in and started prepping a needle and my husband was like "Aren't you going to numb her first?" and she said "I only plan on sticking her once. I'm going to get this IV in." Bless his heart he said, "Well I'm sure all the other nurses thought that too so why don't you just give her the lidocaine." She gave him the nastiest look but I was really crying at this point since they had blown two of my veins in both hands so I had swelling and we weren't even started yet. She numbed me, got in the IV and then they almost lost it again trying to draw blood from it. I told them to just take it from my elbow like normal, I'd rather have another stick then have to find another suitable IV vein.

My doctor showed up at about 7am expecting me to be started but the nurses hadn't even started my pitocin yet. I could tell he was not pleased. They immediately got me going with that and I was ok until about 11ish when the contractions started coming on pretty hard. Normally I'm not so bad at dealing with pain but this sucked. They gave me some narcotic since I wasn't dilated enough to get my epidural yet. It helped a bit but mostly just for relaxing between contractions, not for the pain itself. By the time I could get the epidural they told me I had to have 1.5 bags of saline first. I was sort of irritated that I didn't know that right off the bat so ladies, if you plan to get one, make sure to tell them to up your IV right from the start. Sitting up for it when having really bad contractions was horrid. :P

I was able to go to sleep/rest until about 5pm when they came back to check on me. At that point I was at 10cm and it was time to push. At first pushing was ok, but I developed a hot spot because the baby was on my sciatic nerve so my whole left leg and hip felt like it was on fire. That got steadily worse throughout and I pushed every four minutes or so until 7:05. I got the head out with the help of a very fast episiotomy but her shoulders got stuck in my pelvis so they had to dislocate one to get her out. Again, NOT fun. She had a bowel movement during the head/shoulder thing so they whisked her away and there were a few very nervous moments there where I didn't know what was going on. I was really out of it but it felt good to get her off that nerve. They suctioned her out, took her scores, and she was pinking up nicely.

End result:

Maegwin Elizabeth
height: 21.5 inches
weight: 9 lbs 3.9 ounces (the doctor on call said if she had been 4 ounces instead of 3.9 I wouldn't have been able to have her naturally-she is literally the biggest baby I am capable of having)

Totally worth it. :) She is already a champion nurser and latched on perfectly the first time once we were in the room and she had a chance to calm down. It snowed non-stop here last night so I'm glad we got to the hospital before that started. We are both very happy and proud parents. I guess if we do this again they will monitor me more closely by ultrasound for size so the baby doesn't get that big again.