adalyn's birth story

our sweet 4th born is already 3 weeks old and i want to make sure that i recorded all of the details of her birth day! what a sweet and special day it was!! some of the best days of my life are the births of my babies!! i would GLADLY re-live each and everyone of them again.. well, maybe not ella kate's, her's was quite painful.... and super long, but still just as sweet and special! the days that led up to adalyn's birth were hard. i have something that my dr calls "irritable uterus", and basically i contract like i am in labor, but nothing else happens. no dilation, no nothing.... just hard contractions every 2-3 minutes. we live close enough to the hospital, that we would just drive up there and get checked to make sure it wasn't labor, then be sent back home. however, one night they kept me over night thinking it was the real deal, but in the morning my contractions slowed down and they sent me home. talk about a major bummer... i think i cried more that day than i had in a long time. i guess thinking that i was so close to meeting my sweet baby, then having it prolonged further was just hard. so you can imagine my hesitation when friday night (march 18) rolled around and i was contracting every 3 minutes. i really didn't want to have our baby at home, so while bill was getting ready for bed i told him that i would just drive down to the hospital and get checked by myself. that would be easier than trying to find a sitter to come to the house last minute while ek, jos and miley sleep. especially since the chance of them sending me right back home was great. so i checked in the the triage and they got me all hooked up. after 30 minutes of monitoring me and seeing my contractions, they called the dr. i was only dilated 1cm, but the on-call dr wanted me to stay overnight again just in case. i told them that i would REALLY prefer going back home. my hormones couldn't take another let down of staying the night just to be sent home the next morning, but the nurse really expressed how much they wanted me to stay. even though we live really close, i told them that if they monitored me for another hour and i show some progression, then i would stay, but if not then i really would prefer to go back home. they agreed. so another hour went by with steady, hard contractions every 2-3 minutes. and when they checked me this time, i was dilated "one and a wiggle". i had changed... even though it was a small amount. they were ready to admit me, but i asked if i could call my husband first and see what he thought. after all, i was here at the hospital alone and without any overnight bags. bill and i were basically on the same page about not wanting to stay overnight, but for some reason i felt good about staying now. i told him that i would be fine to stay by myself, and that i would call him 1st thing in the morning when we knew something. so they wheel me to labor and delivery and start my iv - which is BY FAR the WORST part of the delivery!! i hate those things. they give me something to help me sleep through the contractions, and i try my best to get some rest. i wake up to the nurse coming in my room with a huge smile saying, "this is it! you are having a baby today!" my contractions were still going strong and i had dilated more, so they wanted to go ahead and start me on pitocin. however, with this being my 4th baby, they were concerned that the baby would be here fast, and they didn't want to start anything until i had someone with me. so i call bill and make arrangements for our 3 babies at home. by 9am, the nurse comes in and tells me that the anesthesiologist is here and can administer my epidural now if i want him to. although, i wasn't uncomfortable yet, i figured why wait?? so he came in and after inserting twice in 2 different spots, i was good to go! those things are amazing:) the hours passed and i was showing little progression... around 11am, the dr came in a broke my water in hopes that it would speed things up a bit and we could have a baby by early afternoon. however, early afternoon came and went and still no baby. i was feeling great though. no pain whatsoever, and i was able to get in a few catnaps:) around 6pm my family(and jenna) had all left to go home and get some supper. we told them that we would call if anything exciting happened. and wouldn't you know that about a half hour after everyone left, we went from being 6cm to 10cm. i could feel all kinds of pressure and knew that it was time:) we called everyone to come back to the hospital and that the baby would be here SOON! by that time i was starting to feel some pain in my stomach. i was still numb in all the important areas, but i felt some serious pain in my belly during each contraction. it felt like someone had their fingernails and was scratching and ripping the insides of my stomach every time i would contract. to make things worse, was that during this pain, the nurses were switching over from day shift to night shift and we no longer would have the nurse that we had gotten to know so well throughout the day. we had paged the nurses desk to ask for something for this pain, but it took a while for anyone to come in. finally another anesthesiologist came in to help ease some of the pain and by that time, jenna and my parents were here. the medicine was almost immediate and in a matter of seconds i was laughing and smiling again! praise the lord!! the dr came in and broke down the bed and turned on all of the lights to get ready for the delivery. my sister lauren was at home keeping all of our other babies and we were still waiting on erin to get back to the hospital. she, jenna and bill's mom were with us all day long and all left at about the same time to take a break. although nan couldn't make it back that night for the delivery, we knew that erin was frantically trying to make it back in time and we didn't want her to miss it! i had just started to push when we hear a knock on our door and a familiar voice say, "hey! it's erin!" she ran into the room and behind the dr. who was already in position, grabbed the video camera and could not have made better time! i only pushed 4 times, and at 8:12pm adalyn grace was born! all 7lb 2oz 19 3/4in long of perfection:) we were 37 weeks and 5 days!