Happy Birthday Savannah!

Our sweet Savannah is finally in our arms. I had an appointment yesterday with my OB/GYN at 1:45pm. He set me up with an NST for 20 minutes to monitor contractions and follow the baby's heart rate. Though he wanted to induce me at 39 weeks, I declined. I really wanted this little girl to come on her own time. At my appointmet yesterday, I was 40 weeks 4 days along and decided to have him strip my membranes. Since I was already past my due date, almost 5cm dilated, and 25% effaced, there was a chance it would 'stir things up' and get labor started within the next 48 hours. After the appointment, Mike and I took a nice long walk through Arbor Hills. It was beautiful! The kids and I had been to the playground there once beforehand, but this was the first I'd been on the trails. We walked for almost an hour and a half. Throughout our walk, my contractions were becoming more frequent and gradually more intense. I wasn't in any pain, but since we were timing them 2-5 minutes apart, we decided to check ourselves into Labor & Delivery. I'm so glad we did! We got to the hospital at 4:00pm and active labor started at 4:30pm. By 5:00pm I was 6cm dilated and 50% effaced. My contractions were then consistently 1-3 minutes apart and getting stronger.

At 6:03pm Dr Endelman broke my water. He gave me 30 minutes to continue laboring on my own, but instructed the nurse to hook me up to Pitocin if I made no further progress. Knowing that I wanted to avoid Pitocin, the nurse waited closer to 45 minutes before checking me again. Thankfully, by that time (around 6:45pm) I had dilated to 7cm and was 80-90% effaced! Yay for no Pitocin! I decided to try the IV pain killer as the contractions were quite strong. I had never tried this form of pain killer during labor with Brooklyn and Jeremiah. It was supposed to just take the edge off. It made me a little drowsy and allowed me to rest my body a little more in between contractions. By 8:00pm, the pain medication had worn off, so I asked the nurse for another dose. It ended up taking longer than I expected for her to get it for me. She had to get consent from my doctor and we were all preoccupied with trying to get the baby to turn her head. She was looking up instead of down, and it was preventing my cervix from fully dilating and causing my contractions to 'couple' (back-to-back contractions, followed by a about a 4 minute lull...repeatedly). By 9:00pm she had my pain medication ready but needed to check my cervix one last time. We were all surprised to find that I was completly dilated and ready to push (and also too late for another dose of pain killer). One problem - they had yet to call the doctor in because he was 20 minutes away! Those 20 minutes were, by far, the longest part of labor. Though I had an irresistable urge to push, the nurse was instructing me to wait until the doctor got there. Needless to say, the baby's head was crowning as the doctor came into the room at 9:20pm. Three contractions later, our beautiful Savannah Kate entered the world at 9:28pm, weighing 9lb 12oz and 21.5" long!