Lydia Katherine Wagner

I've been working on this post since Lydia was born, but nothing is getting done very fast around here right now :)

Last Thursday afternoon around 2:00 pm, I noticed that I was having regular contractions and started timing and recording them.  They were coming about 10-15 minutes apart and were not painful at all yet.  I had a doctor's appt later that afternoon, and my doctor said I was 4 cm dilated and 75% effaced.  We talked about it and decided to go ahead and strip my membranes (which is very different from rupturing membranes), to encourage things to keep moving along toward a delivery that night. 

The membrane-stripping procedure was even more painful than I remembered it being with Caleb, but, it only took a couple of minutes, and soon the contractions were coming even more frequently.  I started making phone calls to Marcus, Mimi, Wendi and the Pollard's to plan the rest of our evening and work out childcare for the hospital stay.  I also stopped at Walmart to get dog food, which we were completely out of :)  Marcus had the boys at the park while I was at the doctor, so we all got home about the same time.  He bathed C & E while I tidied the house, made the boys' dinner, and finished packing our bags for the hospital.  My friend Quenta arrived around 7:00 pm, just in time to finish up the boys' bedtime routine with a few books and them down for the night.  Marcus and I headed to the hospital when she arrived.  My water had still not broken and my contractions were still not painful, just a little more intense, and they were coming steadily every 5-6 minutes.

We were checked in to a labor & delivery evaluation room around 8:00 pm.  They started monitoring my contractions and the baby's heart rate, and asked the usual 100+ questions.  The OB resident came in and checked me, saying I was still about 4 cm dilated, but 90% effaced.  A little bit later my doctor came in and cleared me for full admission to a LDR room.  She would have broken my water then, but I tested positive for Group B Strep, so I needed to complete a round of IV antibiotics before things progressed.  (We were actually glad for the slight delay because it gave Mimi a few more hours to make it here from Florida for the birth.)  So we got into our LDR room, the nurse started my IV, and Marcus and I watched a movie for a couple of hours.  Meanwhile at home, Wendi arrived at our house around 9:30 (after she got off work) and relieved Quenta of babysitting duties for the night.

Around midnight, anesthesia arrived for an initial consult about the epidural.  For whatever reason, I was exceptionally freaked out by the idea of the epidural this time around, even though I had one both times before with no complications.  I'd been toying with the idea of going without pain relief this time, but Marcus thought that was a bad idea, so we went ahead and gave the thumbs up for anesthesia to do their thing.  Again, I don't know why, but I was completely and totally spazzing out mentally about having the tube inserted in my back.  It didn't help that the anesthesia resident was entertaining me with a verbal barrage of risks and possible negative outcomes while she worked.  I cried a silent but steady stream of tears all the way through the 5-10 minute procedure of numbing my spine & inserting the epidural.  I was already shaking from the cold of the IV fluid in my arm and being mostly naked in a cold hospital room; add to that the fear I was experiencing about the epidural, and I was trembling rather violently.

But she finally finished.  I could tell immediately that something wasn't right.  My right side was going very numb very quickly, but my left side was normal.  I told the resident, and she started messing with my back again, attempting to adjust the tube so that it would deliver anesthetic to both sides.  (Whatever she did didn't work, at least not very well, because the numbness remained lopsided through my entire labor.)  After the anesthesia resident left, the nurse came in to put in a catheter.  Unfortunately, the combination of turning over onto my back with the newly-introduced anesthesia caused a wave a nausea; almost immediately, my blood pressure started falling and I started to black out.  Everyone started to fade away and I could hear them talking to me, but couldn't respond.  They turned me back over on my side, and my head began to clear but my BP stayed low.  All I remember about this part is that there were a lot of people in the room.  They put some meds in my IV to help with my blood pressure, and soon we were back on track.

My doctor arrived and broke my water sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 am.  In the past, I have enjoyed the epidural and slept through the last part of my labor, but the epidural wasn't working well enough for that, so I was wide awake feeling contractions for the next few hours.  Marcus was able to sleep for about an hour and a half.  Marc's mom, "Mimi," arrived at the hospital around 4:00 am.  The doctor checked my progress not long after that, and I was still only about 5 cm dilated, fully effaced.  I was discouraged that more progress hadn't been made, and very, very tired from a long day and then staying up most of the night, so I finally fell asleep for about an hour. When I woke up, Marcus was watching a movie, so I watched it with him for a little while.  I had not pushed my anesthesia button for hours and hours, since I did not like the one-sided numbness, so much of the original numbness had worn off and I could feel every contraction pretty intensely.  As I was breathing through a contraction, I suddenly felt a lot of pressure and immediately told the nurse that I thought I was ready to push.  Sure enough, she checked me and declared me to be complete.  It was time to deliver our daughter!

My doctor here in Birmingham had a very different approach to this part of the process than my doctor in Florida.  She wanted the baby to be born at a slower pace to reduce the trauma to my body, so she did not have me push at every contraction.  I pushed a few times, rested, then pushed a few more times until the head was out.  Then she had me wait and not push through a couple of contractions, giving my body time to adjust to the baby's passage through the birth canal.  Even with things slowed down a bit, Lydia was out in less than fifteen minutes.  I delivered the placenta immediately afterwards, and my job was finally done.  I was much more exhausted from this labor than from either of the others, mostly I think because of the reduced anesthesia, and because I labored all night and delivered in the morning, instead of laboring all day and delivering in the evening.

So, our lovely daughter, Lydia Katherine Wagner, was born on Friday, April 8th at 7:16 AM.  She weighed 7 lbs, 7 oz and was 19.5 inches long.  She had a good amount of light brown hair and beautiful dark blue eyes (which we did not see until later in the day).  They put her on my stomach immediately and I was able to breastfeed her just minutes after birth.  I was overwhelmed with how tiny and delicate she was: both her body and her facial features.  She was just a little bit smaller than Ethan was as far as birth weight, but much more delicate and feminine in every way.  She was so very beautiful to me from the first moment, and I was again amazed by how the heart expands to love each additional child just as much as it loves the others, with unexpected nuances for each child.

A couple of random memories from the delivery...I remember being absolutely starving all through the second half of my labor, and I was very frustrated that it took an hour or two for the hospital to change my dietary status so that I could order food from the hospital cafeteria.  I also remember being taken aback the first time I changed Lydia's diaper: after changing little boys for the past five years, it was very odd to open up a diaper and see no penis :)

Our family of five, taken when Lydia was just over one-day-old

 Mommy holding Lydia just moments after she was born.

 

Getting weighed (she was 7 lbs, 7 oz at birth) 

 

 

 Looking so sweet in big brother, Ethan's arms.

 Being admired by both big brothers :)