Happy 12th Birthday, Jessica!

Twelve years ago today, I had a beautiful baby girl.

My friend and former BSMer Michelle also recently had a beautiful baby girl, and reading her birth story made me want share mine!

(So I guess I should make the same disclaimer she did..."WARNING: This may be graphic in detail.")

Jessica was due January 21 (3 days before my 31st birthday). My birthday came and went with no baby, which meant I had to get a new driver's license picture when I was 9 months pregnant! I looked like a pumpkin head.

My parents came to Idaho from Arkansas, and still no baby. Mom went with me to a dr appointment on the 25th, and my doctor said we could induce if we wanted to, so I said sure! Mike and I went to the hospital that night, so they could start softening my cervix before starting the pitocin. They said sometimes that's all it takes, so we spent the night at the hospital just in case. (Looking back, I say "HA!") They started the pitocin early the next morning...3 bags of it and 12 hours (and a lot of discomfort) later, I was only dilated to a 2 and they SENT ME HOME. It was not a happy time. They said that obviously nothing was going to happen, so we'd just have to wait.

The good thing was, since this was my first baby, now I knew what contractions felt like. And the next night, watching ER, they started again. I didn't sleep much that night, either, since I had them all night long. We drove the 45 minutes from Lewiston to the hospital in Moscow around 7:30 the next morning and they decided to keep me there, even though I was still only dilated to a 3. They gave me my epidural when I reached 5...I still remember looking at the man and saying, "I think I love you." He said he hears that all the time. It took all the pain away. For two hours. That hospital didn't do epidurals on a drip; they administered a one-time bolus. When it wore off I told the nurses, and they tried to reach the anesthesiologist, but there had been a bad car wreck and he was busy in the ER. And then they told me it was time to start pushing. I pushed for an hour. It might not have taken so long, but Jessica's heart rate kept slowing down when I pushed, so they had to screw that little monitor thingy in her sweet little head, and they would have me push through one contraction, put an oxygen mask on me and breathe through the next, over and over. They were talking about doing a C-section, but the dr. decided to try vacuum extraction first. Putting that suction cup on her head, which at the time seemed about six inches across, was the worst part. By far. But she finally came out (Mike's reaction: It's out! It's a girl!! It's a Jessica!). I needed quite a few stitches--45 minutes worth. They put Demarol in my IV, and it made me LOOPY. I hated it. I felt like I was floating over the hospital room, watching everyone hold my baby. I was so weak that when everyone left and I was holding her, I couldn't even put her back in the bassinet without help. But I slept pretty well that night, except for waking up to (try to) feed her. She had low blood sugar, so the nurses fed her formula out of a little medicine cup once in the night. She loked like a little kitten, lapping it up. The next night the hospital gave Mike and I a candlelight steak dinner, and the next morning we went home. And everyone was right, our lives have never been the same since, and I am so very glad. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love my Jessica!

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