Hope's delivery timeline

8:40am- Arrive at my regular o.b. appointment

9:50am- call my sister to complain that I'm still waiting to be seen (so thankful my kids are with my mother-in-law)

10:10am- Doppler picks up very irregular heartbeat. as in, bump, bump bump, silence..... bump, bump, bump, silence... time to go for an ultrasound (VERY thankful my kids are with my mother-in-law)

10:20-John arrives for ultrasound.

10:45am- ultrasound of her precious squished self and a not so great heartbeat

11:15am- midwife comes in and says the perinatologist (sp?) recommends inducing. I of course have to ask if this could end in a c-section (like she can predict that) and she says my body has a very slight chance of that happening due to it being my fourth. She says go home and get your bags and some lunch and be back at 130pm

12pm- lunch date at Panera with my husband (a nice surprise) where we "discuss" if I should go natural or have an epidural. He assures me he's in it if I want to but he will never choose for me to be in crazy pain and I'm nuts. (basically) Oh, and we discuss names. I told you we like to wait until labor.

1245- Say goodbye to our excited and a bit confused kids. I had one of those "frozen in time" moments when we were pulling out of the driveway and the kids were standing on the porch waving goodbye. I was going to capture the moment with a picture but they weren't quite as sentimental about it as me. By the time I got the camera out they were already in the house.

130- At hospital and in a room waiting for the pitocin (I have no idea how to spell any of these medical terms) to arrive. I blog, we take some silly pictures, John posts a status on facebook and realizes how effective it is. He kept saying, "Someone else has commented!" We're old. I was actually having some contractions on my own but not even enough for me to know if it was a contraction or just the baby shifting. The midwife saw them on the monitor when she came in and confirmed that it was contractions. That was encouraging.

330- Pitocin finally arrives. My midwife assured me she would start the dosage out minimally and increase it only a little at a time. So, we started at a 6 and the dosage can go to 20. So, now we waited again. John asked if I was nervous. I said, "Well, I'm waiting to be in pain so, yes."

630pm- The midwife says she'll check me at 7pm but I told her I still wasn't feeling much of anything so she said she would wait until 8 so I wasn't discouraged if I hadn't progressed. "Good idea." I thought. I doubted I had progressed.

8pm- Midwife isn't around but I'm not concerned because I'm still barely feeling anything. I'm on a dosage of 16 wondering what they do when you get to 20 and still aren't contracting. I didn't have to find out...

8:15- They start right off and I was needing John's help to remember to breath. I always hold my breath when I'm in pain. or crying. or frustrated. or nervous. It's not a great habit.

8:45- I'm in significant pain and told JOhn I was going to call for the epidural thinking I have hours of this and who was I kidding by thinking I would go naturally. This is when John's natural gift of teaching/coaching comes in, "You can totally do this Kris, you don't need the medicine!!" I'm not sure where the "I'll never ask you to be in that much pain" went. I assured him I wasn't doing it and we called for the epidural.

8:50ish- Midwife comes in joking about being a little late and I'm standing on my tip toes trying to focus on John telling me to relax and breath. She says, "What happened in the last 30 minutes?" She checks me and I'm only 4 centimeters dilated. Note to self- pay no attention to dilatation!

910ish- most wonderful man on earth (after my husband of course...) comes in to take away the pain... right... that's what he's supposed to do.

920ish- most wonderful man on earth says he's done but nothing is happening... oh help! I keep saying, "Why isn't it working!?!" He makes some adjustment, tells me there can still be some pain (thank you) and leaves the room. "Wait! why is he leaving! It still hurts!" :-)

I've lost track of time by now- the midwife checks me and says, "You're 8, I'm going to go bring in the delivery equipment." or something like that. She leaves the room and I want to push. My wonderful husband says, "push then". So I push through 2 contractions without her. When she gets back she asks if I want her to call our moms in (which was the plan) and I say, "No, I want to push!" She breaks my water and I push, asking her (some may have called it yelling...) to stop hurting me. She said, "That's not me Krissy that's your babies head." (**I'll pause hereto say that I had completely resigned myself to labor taking forever since I had to be induced. I didn't anticipate going from no pain to pushing in one hour so I was freaking out a little because I thought the nurse anesthetists had left me in serious pain for the next three hours.**)

938pm- two contractions later Hope arrived. I was in shock. I doubt I had full feeling, the epidural had to do something but I hadn't ever felt that before and besides it just all happened so fast!

So, that's the story. I love the moments after delivery when you see this precious baby for the first time and there is such relief. Major relief. After things were cleaned up the family came in and everyone was ooing and awwing. I was still sitting in the bed saying over and over again. "I'm still in shock." :-)