"L"'s Birth

I am not giving out an official name, yet. I don't feel ready to make that commitment, but I did want to post some pictures here. If you don't feel like reading the birth story you can just skip to the pictures.

Birth Story:
Tuesday Waterloo was hot, 93 degrees. Our main floor was 80 and I'm sure upstairs was even worse. I didn't get any sleep but about midnight I felt was confused because it felt like I was loosing control of my bladder. By one o'clock I realized that my bag of waters had ruptured. We called my midwife and she said to go to the hospital and they will check it out.

We called Jamie J and asked her to come stay with the boys then called Shannon and Kyle who were returning from a trip to Idaho. They were still an hour outside of Waterloo but said that they would just come to our house and releave Jamie, neither of them had work the next day so it worked out.

We got to the hospital around 2am and after monitoring me in the triage room the sent me to a labor/delivory room. My contractions weren't really steady or to strong so Morgan and I spent a lot of time walking the halls to keep the contractions coming. We were only in the hospital with Josh for about 4 hours before he was born so I had my wishful thinking. I had also decided that I wanted to do this naturally.

Hours and hours went by. Morgan and I both tried to take little power naps - he is better at it then me. We called Morgan's mom and asked if she could come up and spent a couple days with the boys, which she did. Amazing woman!

I see two midwifes and the first Kim was on call when we came into the hospital. She left at 8am and Anne came in to replace her. Anne suggested that we use a breast pump and stimulate some natural pitocin. It really worked and kicked up those contractions.

Around 1pm or so Anne was supposed to leave to go to a conference in Minnesota but she ended up staying through the labor and delivery but Kim was back as the official midwife of the hour.

I worked through the contractions, praying for it to be over. Morgan was an excellent support person throughout the whole ordeal. I would have asked for an epidural hours before if he had not been so great for me. All of the doctors and nurses were just great, helping me be comfortable (as possible) and keeping me cool or warm depending on what I needed at the time.

I was finally progressed enough to push and we got her out. I actually grabbed her by the underarms and pulled her right up to me. It was nice to have her there so immediately. They were letting me hold her as long as I wanted, and just checking her vitals while she was on my lap.

Unfortunately I was bleeding a lot after the birth and the placenta was not coming out well. Will all of the poking they were giving to me I handing the babe to Morgan. After much uncomfortableness they think they got me cleaned out, they pulled out several large clots and figured that I had lots 1200 cc's of blood which is 20% of a normal person, but less because in pregnancy you have more blood. I did loose consciousness once on the bed through all of their workings but was not out for long.

Anyway they gave me all sorts of drugs after the birth and checked my iron this morning, I am at a 7.2, but have decided that as long as I am not feeling dizzy or lightheaded than they will not give me a transfusion.

Last night I got to get up for the first time and go to the bathroom and take a bath to clean off. I had Morgan helping me and as he was helping me get dressed I passed out again, luckily I think I felt it coming so I had sort of grabbed/hugged onto him and he held me until the nurse brought a chair to set me on.

We got me back in my bed and Eli, Josh, Oma, Shannon and Kyle came to visit, but I will post those pictures next.