How Anna made her entrance

So here's how it all went down: I went to my "officially overdue" doctor appointment on Monday to see if I'd made any progress and schedule an induction for sometime this week, as my doc doesn't let his patients go more than a week overdue. I thought it would be best if I could make it to my SE class on Tuesday, and then be induced, so he told me to come in for a cytotec pill on Tuesday afternoon. Sure enough, Tuesday morning around 2 a.m., contractions started waking me up! Luckily, my body didn't go into freakout mode like with Claire and not allow me to sleep. I dozed during the seven to fifteen minute gaps between, and although they never got regular, they were definitely pretty hard. Of course, I was laying down, which is probably the least efficient way to manage pain.

Claire also woke up twice during this time with a fever! So I gave her alternating doses of Motrin and Tylenol to try to bring it down.

In the morning, Jay called Diane to ask her to come over to take Claire to the doctor. As I mentioned in the previous post, Claire had had a gunky eye for a couple days, and now with this fever, we didn't want to take any chances on her getting worse and/or getting baby sister sick. So Diane got there lickety-split, and I took it easy all morning, counting contractions and trying to rest up. After lunch, Jay and I went to the hospital. By the time we got checked in and I got hooked up to everything and finally got checked for progress, I was already at a 5! So the nurses and doc said I didn't need any induction meds; they would just see how I progressed. That was at about 2 p.m. I was really antsy to get up and move around as my contractions got harder, but they were lasting so long that the doc wanted to keep me hooked up to the baby monitor to make sure her heart rate didn't dip too low. So since I had to stay in bed, I went ahead and asked for the epidural, and got it at about 4:30. It was perfect; I could still feel the contractions mildly, and wasn't totally numb in my legs like last time.

For the next few hours, I just visited with the people who were anxiously awaiting Baby Sister and read my book--gotta love the epidural! Claire came up at about 6, and was not too happy to see Mommy lying in bed all hooked up to stuff. She was much happier to play with visitors in the waiting room.

By 7:30, I had gotten to a 10, and it was time to push! Twenty-five minutes later, she was here! It was awesome! My nurse would coach me along through a contraction--three big pushes per--and then I would talk and laugh with Mom and the nurses (Jay was entirely too nervous to say much). That's pretty much all there is to tell! It was a very smooth process; thank you all so much for your prayers for that very thing! We got to go home the next night after Anna had hit the 24-hour mark, thank goodness. I barely slept at all while we were there. I was a little nervous about being comfortable at home without nurses waiting on me, but it was so much nicer sleeping in a quiet house in my own bed. After Jay got over the trauma of the birth, he was an excellent helper at the hospital and at home. :)

Claire just hit the 24-hour mark on her antibiotics, so Diane brought her home today, thank goodness. I'm so glad to have both my girls at home, and now I'm ready to get us into a good two-kid routine!