Baby Remmi's birth story.

Dear Baby Remmi,

It's 6:33 AM on May 21st, 2012. You're tiny little body is snuggled up next to mine in our dark, quiet recovery room. It's just you and me here and I'm soaking up as much of you that I can while I have the chance. You are now 17 hours old and I wanted to take a minute to write down everything I can remember about your beautiful birth day so I can tell you about it over and over again when you get older. We waited 2 years and 7 months for you to come into our family, it's sereal that you're finally here.

I was scheduled to be induced on Sunday morning, May 20th 2012 but that never happened. I woke up saturday morning with a few "strong" contractions followed by some bleeding, I knew the baby was going to come today. I walked down the stairs with a smile on my face and said to Jordan, "I think she's coming today." We decided that Kneaders french toast was just the ticket to start out the long but extremely exciting day ahead of us.

We packed our bags and decided to spend some time at my Mom's house since she lives so much closer to St. Mark's than we do. Everyone kept saying, "Since your labor was so short with Hendrix, be careful because your next labor will go even faster." (Weird... don't believe EVERYTHING people tell you.) I know, the thought of having a baby in your car on the side of the freeway is pretty appealing though.

After having contractions 5 minutes apart for 4 hours, we decided to head over to the hospital. They got me checked in and set me up to monitors to watch my contractions. I was dialted to a 4 when I got there and of course my contractions decided to subside for a bit. They sent me on the "walk of shame" as I like to call it, to "prove" I was in labor and see if I would dialate more. An hour later I was still a 4. They were going to send me home but noticed that my water sac was pretty low and might break soon so admitting me was the best solution. My nurse informed me that she had spoken with Dr. Nielson and he told her I could labor on my own, they weren't going to break my water or give me pitocin. I was fine with this but wondered what the big difference of 12 hours would make since I was being induced the next morning anyway.

A couple of hours into "proving" that I was in labor, my wonderful... I mean HORRID nurse checked me, only to annouce that I was still a 4 and they wouldn't give me an epidural until I reached a 5. My contractions became more frequent and harder to breathe through for the next few hours. At some point, I thought I was going to die and kept asking everyone who walked into the room if they had a gun. The nurse kept offering me morphine but I found that extremely silly since I was going to have an epidural anyway. Why pump more drugs into my uterus then necessary?

11:30 PM was my breaking point. I was a 5 when I got the hospital with Hendrix and felt pretty good about breathing through the pain but this time around I couldn't believe how intense the contractions were. I called the nurse in (who reluctantly checked me again) and found out I had finally made it to a 5! YAY! I knew relief was on the way. I was feeling such joy in that moment until my bitchy nurse informed me that they had to put an entire bag of fluid into me before I could receive the epidural. REALLY??? Why didn't we do this 3 hours ago???? 

I FINALLY got my epidural around 12:30 AM. Everyone decided to go home at this point so that we could try to get some sleep and wait for my body to do it's thing. At 12:45 my water broke. At 1:00 I asked the nurse if it was normal that I felt like I needed to poop really bad. The look on her face was priceless. Her reply was, "Oh... that means that you're going to have a baby." She checked me and sure enough, I was dialated to a 10 and ready to push.

The room became chaotic and Jordan started calling people, telling them to turn around and come back to the hospital because this baby was coming fast. The nurse had me try some practice pushes but after one good push said, "Okay... let's not push anymore until the doctor gets here." At 1:15(ish) my doctor arrived and at 1:39 AM our sweet little Remmi was born. She weighed 7 lbs. 2 oz. and was 19.5 inches long. She had a full head of dark blonde hair and was the cutest little thing I had ever seen. Annie and my Mom were the only 2 who made it back in time to see her being delivered. Wendy went to the wrong hospital and missed it by 5 minutes. Ben made it right in time to see her all bundled up.  Here are all of the pictures from labor and delivery.

First Bath