First...here is our little Kaia Marie...going forward to be referred to as Baby K (because I don't like to use our full names on here and we haven't figured out a nickname for her yet).
And this is how it all went down....
Let's start with Thursday the 19th. My last scheduled OB appointment. During the visit, the doc asked me how I was feeling, miserably uncomfortable, and if I was ready to have a baby, yes of course, and if I wanted to be induced, as soon as possible please. I was already dilated to a three at this point, which is very favorable for induction. She gave me 2 options for induction dates, Saturday the 21st or Monday the 23rd. Believe it or not, I asked for Monday. I still had a list of things I needed to get done and I wanted to spend one last weekend with Zac before we destroyed his life forever.
Friday night, I started getting contractions that seemed somewhat "regular" and so I decided I should keep track of what is going on (and yes, they have an app for that...thanks Apple). After tracking them for a few hours, I found them to be about 20+ minutes apart and only lasting 30ish seconds...no big deal and according to the baby books this could last for a while so I wasn't concerned.
Saturday, we decided for our last weekend with one child, we would go to the Zoo. So Saturday morning we tackled some of my "nesting" items and then hit up the Zoo for the morning. We took him back in December and he liked it, but this time he was sooooo into it! He was in pure heaven with all the animals. We skipped over the boring little animals and went to see the highlights like bears, lions, tigers, elephants, etc. And then on the way out Zac and I rode the train that went around the park adjacent to the Zoo. All during our Zoo visit I was having regular contractions, they weren't
painful nor that close together, so again, not concerned that anything
"real" was happening.
After the Zoo, we came home, put little man down for a nap and got to some serious work to try and finish up all of the big things I wanted to get done before Monday, like mop the floors and clean the bathrooms. That night we had some friends over for dinner and movie and all through this I felt that my contractions were getting closer together and more intense so I busted out my handy dandy contraction timer app and got to tracking the contractions again. By 11pm my contractions were about 7 minutes apart and lasting close to a minute. I hesitated to do anything at this point because you always hear that you need to wait until they are 5 minutes apart and lasting a minute and I didn't want to go in that late at night only to get turned away. I called the doctor and she suggested that I go in and get checked out. By the time we got someone called and over to stay with Zac and got the the hospital it was about 12:30 am on Sunday. I got checked in and they brought me into triage and hooked up to the machines. They checked my dilation and I was at about a 4.5-5 and so they admitted me and got me into a labor room. From then until about 3 am it was just answering questions, getting an IV and blood drawn and dealing with ever increasingly painful contractions (which Jer so lovingly kept me informed of how strong they were on the graph). Thankfully, the Anesthesiologist came in just when the contractions were coming every 2-3 minutes and starting to hurt pretty dang bad. A few minutes after the epidural and I was in heaven.
At 6 am, the nurse came to check my progress and I was a 10 and ready to go. She got everything ready for me to start pushing and had me do a few practice pushes during a contraction. After these few practice pushes she said that I needed to stop and not push anymore so she could go get the doctor. When the doctor came in she had me push through 2 more contractions and at 6:21am, I had a baby. I pushed out this baby like I had done it several times before (the doc and nurse said I was a good pusher, which I think is funny because with the epidural I couldn't feel anything so I felt like I was just going through the pushing motions and couldn't really tell if I WAS actually doing something).
And that's how it all went down. Baby K is great so far and really a calm baby (thank goodness!). She still has days and nights mixed up which is wreaking havoc on Jer's work life, but we can work on that. Zac was a fussy baby so it is nice to have one the is pretty calm most of the time.
So far Zac doesn't mind having her around. He learned her name really quick and knows who she is. He gets a little jealous sometimes, but nothing too extreme as far as acting out. He pays attention to her about a total of 5 minutes a day and asks to hold her (which lasts about 30 seconds) he will give her kisses and hugs. Zac's present to us for having a new baby was to get a cold and pass it to all of us. I got it the worst, I think Baby K got a little bit of a cold, but nothing to extreme. I like to think that it is best I got it the worst so I could pass all of my cold fighting antibodies to Baby K to keep her from getting too sick.
We think she is gorgeous of course. We love her full head of hair. And when you catch her with her eyes open (which is very rare at this point) the muscles are still weak and so they are a little crossed which is adorable.
A lot of people see Zac when they look at her, but there are some definite differences (eyes, nose and forehead) when you put them side by side. I think you will always know they are siblings, but they definitely won't be twiners.
