Cheyanna has arrived!!

Monday, September 27th, 2010, beautiful Cheyanna arrived into our lives! We drove to Mountainview Hospital and checked in at 1pm and I got ready to be induced. I was induced with Kodiak so I kinda knew what to expect but for some reason I was ten times more nervous. I got in the gown and they placed the IV and started the ptosin. The nurse was telling me that my Dr. has a gift and he sends his patients to the hospital and times it perfectly so that the baby is delivered between 5pm & 7pm (although usually closer to the latter which is shift change :). Well, I thought there was no way for her to be born within 4-6 hours. Well they started the medication and I waited a couple hours and then decided I had better get an epidural before the labor pains got too bad. So they call the anesthesiologist to come and when he shows up, he has a student working alongside him. Of course, the student needs to learn so I expected to be practiced on. Little did I know that instead of 2 tries to get the epidural in (which is what happened with Kodiak), it took 3 and even then, it was a close call (yes, that was 3 sticks with the huge epidural needle, plus several to numb it, and several pokes with a needle to determine if they were following the bones correctly.) Needless to say it took a while and it didn't feel too good. By the time they had placed it, my doctor had showed up. Turns out that after 2 hours of the medication, I had only gone up 2 cm, as is expected. Over the next hour, I had progressed 2 more. So we had expected Cheyanna not to come for at least a couple more hours (where I was only a 5). Well, the nurse started setting things up and we were laughing about how early she was setting up and how it was better to be prepared. As she was setting up, however, the pains were increasing and the epidural wasn't kicking in as strong as it should. I asked the nurse if there was any way to get a little more medicine and she said she had to check me and then we'd decide. Well, come to find out, I was now past a 10 and it had only been 45 minutes from the time I was a 5. The doctor had gone home and had to be notified to come in immediately and the nurse told me that under no conditions was I to push until the doctor showed up......he showed up minutes before she came. :) She was everything we expected and more.

Pictures don't do her justice. We had to switch rooms and in the process, discovered I had major headaches caused by a hole poked in my epidural space from all the attempts. The next day I had to have a blood patch (which is where they draw 30cc of blood out of my arm and inject it into my spine to fill in the hole and clot up) followed by lots of laying on my back. However, despite all of this, I can't help but think of how perfect this delivery was.