The story of Kaitlyn Mikelle

Apparently I have an anxious audience. :)

And since I'm awake and the baby is sleeping, what better time than to blog? Except maybe I should be sleeping too... Good thing I have to eat, otherwise who KNOWS how much longer you'd have to wait.

I started trying to get Kaitlyn to come out last Monday. I walked, spent a lot of time on my birth ball and hands and knees and other various things. By Thursday she still hadn't arrived. And to make me feel really good about all that I had been doing, I was still dilated to a 3... no change from the previous week.
I really wouldn't have cared if she came early or not, I was just trying to be a nice wife and have a baby so that Jon could go up to Dallas to go to the Utah/TCU game. Because if I had not had her, there was no way I was going to let him be 3 hrs. away.

He tried to reason with me and tell me that the risk wasn't that great and that I could call him and all would be fine. He rationalized that since my labor with Alex was induced (water broken artificially and he was born 5 hrs. later {but ready to push 4 hrs. later... they made me rest out of concern for his heartrate}), we didn't really know how my body would labor on it's own and he should be able to get home in time to help me through labor.
My concern was that I wouldn't know I was in labor until I was in hard labor and the baby would be ready to be born within 2 hours.

No baby by Saturday, but I was definitely having more contractions and he didn't get to go to the game (good thing he didn't miss out on much of a game).

On Sunday, we decided to go on a little walk out by the lake. We started walking and then decided to walk the whole way around... Jon said it was like, 1.75 miles. Umm... nope. Try three miles.
So by the time we walked there and back and around the whole lake, we had walked 3.5 miles.

3.5 miles is probably a pretty good guarantee to put someone into labor.
I definitely started having more contractions that were a little more intense, but still really manageable. They were about 5 minutes apart and 30-45 seconds long for most of the evening. I was thinking that maybe they would lead to having a baby at some point, but there was no indication of them picking up in intensity, so they could have just as easily stopped.

We went to bed around 11 and I remember thinking, "okay... do I really want to go to sleep and risk my contractions stopping and not having a baby, or do I want to work with them and get them to pick up?"
I decided on sleeping.

Around 2:30 I noticed a more intense contraction. I watched to see when the next one would come, figuring that this was probably labor, but I may still have a while if my contractions were far apart. They were about 5-10 minutes apart, but were lasting a minute to a minute and a half and they hurt.
So at 3:30 I woke up Jon and we timed a few more contractions... they suddenly picked up to apart now. So we called the birthing center and luckily Joan was already there with a mom who was ready to push, so I didn't feel too bad that we needed to come right away. We told her we would be there in about 25 minutes.

We gathered our stuff together (which was really fun having to pause every 3 minutes for a hard contraction) and left the house at about 4:30.

The good thing about having a baby at night/early in the morning is that there isn't a whole lot of traffic to worry about.
The lights were kind to us and the toll road was such a blessing! Jon was flying down the freeway at least 80 miles an hour.

We got to the birthing center and in our prepped room at about 4:45. They immediately checked baby's heartrate and then my heartrate while I had two contractions almost on top of each other and they were going to check my cervix after the next contraction. The midwife asked if I wanted to get in the tub or shower and I said, "shower... no tub... "

But then the next contraction hit and I was saying that I was ready to push. There was a mad rush in getting my pants off and having me lay on my side (to help prevent tearing) and the midwife looked and said I was definitely ready to push and we all laughed when she said, "I guess we won't be doing the tub".

So it was all just a LITTLE bit crazy. :)

Five minutes after we got there I was pushing and Kaitlyn was born 15 minutes later at 5:05 am.
I think I proved my point to Jon that I would be having a fast labor. :)

She and I cuddled up and she nursed while I was stitched up. I ended up with a 2nd degree tear... (the midwife said that I have a short perineum which is why it was that degree).
Kaitlyn was weighed about an hour after birth and came in at 8 pounds even.

We did her bath at about 3 hours after birth and she enjoyed it until she had to come out of the water. We had a couple more hours of vitals and cuddling and Alex and my parents came to get us at 10:50.

Alex was happy to see me and was I think a little perplexed that I had a baby in my arms. It's one thing to talk about baby Kaitlyn coming out of mama and coming to our house and another to have it actually happen.
He was really excited about the present baby Kaitlyn brought him though! That was probably the highlight for him.
Okay, it WAS the highlight.

Here's the video of Alex meeting his new baby sister:

So at 11 am we packed up and brought our new baby home.
We climbed into bed and have been trying to catch up on sleep ever since. Sad to say, I think it may be awhile before we really feel fully rested again. :)


Jon's nerdiness has been coming out and he's getting an ftp site set up where we can send people a link to to see pictures, so that will be coming soon.


Here are some pictorial highlights!