She's here!

Well as most of you know our little girl finally made her entrance. Phoebe Lyn Bickmore has joined are family. She was 7lbs 7oz and 20.5 inches long. You probably all want to know the story of how she got here or maybe you don't but I'm going to tell it anyway.

The Tuesday before she was born I had a doctor's appointment in which I was planning on setting an induction date for that Friday, seeing as how my mom had to change her plans of when she could be there and was going to have to leave by the next Wednesday. Well to my utter disappointment the doctor informed me that he was not going to be in the office on Friday so we would have to wait until the next Monday. It couldn't be earlier than Friday because the hospital policy is not to induce first time moms before 41 weeks unless medically necessary. He then stripped my membranes and offered to strip them again that Thursday if she hadn't come by then. Well Thursday rolled around and still no baby so we went back to the doctor. This time the stripping of the membranes got some more real contractions to start. That evening we went for a walk and during the walk the contractions started to come more regularly and stronger. This was about 9 pm, we spent the next several hours playing games and timing contractions, when my mom finally suggested we try to get some sleep. I think my mom and Brandon got about and hour or so of sleep, I however couldn't sleep. At around 12:40 am I decided we needed to head to the hospital. We arrived at 1:30 and I was dilated to a 4. They then monitored me for the next hour and I moved to a 5. We were admitted to the hospital at 3:30. At 6:40 am I was dilated to a 6.5 and the baby had moved down to a 0 station. Then at 9:10 I was at a 7. At this point the contractions started to become a lot stronger and harder to get through. After 3 that were right on top of each other I freaked out, threw up and asked for something to take the edge off. I was given an IV and a half dose of Fentinol. Fentinol is a quick acting drug that makes you pretty drowsy but takes the edge off, it lasts for about an hour and goes through the baby's system as well. At 9:50 am the doctor came in and broke my water, he also guessed the baby would be about 7 and a half pounds or so and should fit great. He thought she should come pretty quickly. At 11:30 after trying some more contractions on my own I got a full dose of Fentinol. At 12:35 I was an 8.5 and got another dose. 1:30 pm I was a 9 cm and got another full dose as well as at 2:30. Finally at 3:30 I was told that the doctor didn't feel comfortable giving me anymore of the Fentinol because he was worried it was building up in our baby's system, which was really frustrating to hear. I wanted our little girl to be healthy and no one had mentioned that the medication could build up in her or what the restrictions were on it. At this point the doctor said he was going to give me Pitocin to get things going and I could have it with or without an epidural. This part was a little rough because I started getting stressed because of the pain and then our little girls heart rate dropped so they had to move my position to let her stabilize all while explaining what the doctor wanted to do so that I didn't have to have a c-section. So between 4 and 4:30 I got an epidural. Once the epidural was in they rolled me to my other side checked me and I was at a 10. They let me rest for 30 minutes and then it was time to push. So at 5:40 I started pushing. After a couple hours of pushing the doctor came in and said it was time to get this little girl out. At some point during all of this the doctor decided that she was face up so he turned her, she decided to start turning back and ended up being pushed out mostly on her side and then came face up. The doctor used a suction cup to help her our and at 8:12 pm she was born.

It was quite the experience and there were definitely some lessons learned. We are just glad she's here and healthy. Now she is almost 3 weeks old and we are figuring out this new life together as a family.