Baby Girl's Birth Story

Excuse my rusty blogging...

11/9/16: I noticed I was losing some of my mucous plug... I could be going the next day! (This is what happened with my first); I started to feel painful contractions, but they were irregular.
11/10/16: I have an OB appointment and my husband comes with... I tell my doctor my latest news, he didn't seem too impressed. His news, I was still only 1/2 centimeter dilated. What. The. Hell. I asked him if he every recommends any old wives tales to get labor going... since I've started to receive some advice about walking more and eating certain things. My doctor says NO, and that he only recommends I get some rest, because the next thing I know, I'll go into labor at 2 in the morning and I'll be too tired because I've been walking around. I was so disappointed, I did NOT want to work the next week... actually, I just didn't want to work period. My boss pings me to check how I'm doing in the afternoon and I let him know about the on and off contractions. He shares how his wife went into the hospital like 3x and they were all false labor contractions. Bummer!
11/11/16: 2:30AM, I wake up to go to the bathroom and wipe to see blood. I'm not that worried as I know that bleeding can be common after an exam... so I put on a pad and go lay down again, but of course I don't sleep. I continue to get up to wipe to see if the blood lessens or not. It doesn't. I wake up my husband and tell him what's going on and tell him I'm about to call the doctor. At around 4am I call the OB line, my doctors aren't on call, so I talked to another doctor, who tells me what I already googled, "bleeding is normal after an internal pelvic exam, if it continues to increase or doesn't stop by morning then call us back". I thank him, stand up, and feel a gush which I assumed was blood. I call back immediately and thankfully the doctor tells me to come in. We wake up my son around 5. We've been prepping him about this, and he just sleepily gets ready for us. We drive to our friend's house who lives a few blocks away and my husband carries my son in. I get out of the car too because I wanted to bring his bag, but my husband takes it. As my husband walks away with my son, my son's head is on his shoulder, he looks back at me and smiles and waves. It was the sweetest yet saddest moment. The boy's life was going to change and he was just happily going along with it. He is the best son ever. I still think back at that time and hug and shower him with random kisses.
By 5:30am, we are on the way to the hospital. Thankfully, it is a holiday and traffic was light. My husband asks if I feel her moving, and I say yes, she actually has the hiccups right now.
I feel contractions but they are far apart, I get admitted, talk to the nurse and wait for the doctor on call to check me. He does and confirms that my water broke (I had no freaking idea) and says, "looks like you're having your baby today!" I totally forgot to ask him about the blood. I was only 2cm dilated and 80% effaced.
I get wheeled into my room and the nurse talks about getting the epidural and I was like meh, it's not so bad right now... while my husband was like ARE YOU CRAZY JUST GET IT NOW. Not like that, because he was being nice about it, but I know that's what he wanted to say to me.
I close my eyes to rest.. at around 8:30am I open my eyes to see my OB come in! I was so happy and surprised that someone I've been seeing will be delivering my baby. He checked me and I was 3cm dilated and still 80% effaced. He then just told me to get the epidural we'll see how fast I dilate, if I need it, he'll give me some pitocin and we'll get this baby out by 12. I was like wow, I loved his take charge attitude and plan. At 9:30, I got the epidural, the doctor was super nice...
9:40AM Epidural kicked in... nurses told me I could up my dose if i wanted by pushing the button. I could still feel my legs (unlike last time) but I could not feel the contractions, epidural is heaven. My husband tells me our nurse looks like Jennifer Aniston. So I had to stare at her when she came back in. Of course, my husband is right.
10:00AM 4cm
11:00AM 5cm - starting the Pitocin. My husband tells the nurse that she looks like Jennifer Aniston and asks if anyone else has told her that. She says yes (modestly) Lucky girl..., i think at some point my husband tries to take a picture of her for his snapchat followers. Creepster!
11:15ish Baby's heart rate started to drop, the nurse gives me an oxygen mask and turns off the pitocin. The doctor comes in and she tells him what's going on and he said okay checks me and said, well she's fully dilated. The nurse says, "well apparently, you only had to sniff the pitocin!"
12:07PM, The doctor tells me to do practice pushes... which I do.. then he walks out of the room and the nurses take over. I'm so confused at this point, where is he going?
I'm pushing at each contraction now... I don't feel any pain, but I do feel the pressure... I don't notice but the baby's heart rate kept dropping. (My husband notices and tells me this later) Finally around 12:30, the doctor comes in all chill, and he's like oh looks like you're doing good...and calmly says, I think the umbilical chord is around the baby's neck, that's why her heart rate keeps dropping when she pushes. I swear he was so calm saying it, I didn't even panic about that, I just kept pushing when he told me to. I pushed a few more times at this point I actually feel the head crowning, I feel pressured pain, but the doctor tells me to STOP! NO MORE PUSHING! I couldn't speak. The discomfort was unbearable. I swear the doctor took his sweet time to get everything set up, in my head I was like "what the fuck are you doing?!" I was squeezing my husband's hand like crazy.. it felt like forever until the doctor said OKAY PUSH and I guess her head came out, the doctor quickly flipped the umbilical chord off her head somehow and then the rest of her came out. They put her on me immediately, she seemed big and I was crying from the instant relief. Baby Violet was born at 12:40PM, 6lbs 10oz 20.5 inches. Everything about the pregnancy up the delivery was different from her brother's. I couldn't ask for a better OB even though I wanted to strangle him 2 minutes before my daughter was born. My husband said that the delivery was SO INTENSE and I just stared at him and thought, you thought it was intense for you?!

Though we had some scares and had to stay in the hospital longer than normal, we got to take home a healthy baby girl. She is loud but sweet and her hair is out of control. I heart her.