Averie's Birth Story

In honor of Mother's Day and because I started our blog after Averie was born, I decided to post Averie's birth story! It's not gross or gory (in my opinion) but feel free to skip this if you don't want to read!

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When I hit 40 weeks without any signs of going into labor, I started getting desperate and trying everything to get labor going (including castor oil, which I would not recommend!). None of it worked. I had a doctor's appointment at 40 weeks 5 days and when I arrived, my blood pressure was 150/90. They gave me a few minutes to see if it would go down after relaxing with some deep breaths but it was still 140/90, so they ordered me straight to the hospital for induction. We rushed home to do some last-minute packing and got to the hospital around 5 PM. They took my blood pressure when I got there and it was back to normal - 110/70. I was so upset, I thought they were going to send me home because my doctor's policy was to induce at 41 weeks and I was a couple days "early." Luckily, they decided to keep me and induce me!

I was 2 cm, 80% effaced to start. At 7 PM, they gave me prostin gel. At 1 AM, I still hadn't made a lot of progress even though I'd been having some regular contractions. At 4 AM, they broke my water and I got an epidural. At 7 AM, I hadn't dilated any further so they give me Pitocin. At 9 AM, I had dilated up to 4 cm and was convinced I was going to be in labor FOREVER since I had only progressed 2 cm in about 14 hours. I worried I would end up with a C-section, which I'm not opposed to, but I was concerned about the longer recovery time and wanted to avoid that. I fell asleep a little bit after that - at that point, I'd been awake for over 24 hours.

I woke up a little before noon with an urgent need to push. Chris got the nurse and I was finally 10 cm! I started pushing and about 1 PM, Dr. Broberg came in. I was having trouble getting her head out so they asked if they could use the vacuum, which I was fine with. Immediately after that, I remember dreading the pushing even more because that meant shoulders were next. However, after he got her head out with the vacuum, I pushed one more time and her shoulders were out, then one more push and I was done! It all happened very quickly. I remember I was rather hysterical - probably a combination of relief, excitement and temporary insanity :D - and screaming that it was over and my baby girl was here!

In total, I was in labor for 17 hours and pushed for almost 1 1/2 hours. Averie was born at 1:23 PM on November 3, 2009. She was 8 lbs 3 oz and they said 19 inches long at first, but we thought she looked longer and re-measured her later that day at 22 inches.

Averie, 1 day old