The Meaning of Life (yes, a Monthy Python reference)

My little bean is here!!! Charlotte Adventure was born on Wednesday, August 24th at 5:21pm. :) 7.7lbs and 19inches long.

I started having contractions on Tuesday, August 23rd, 10 minutes before the earthquake that hit the east coast (yay my first earth quake!).  I thought nothing of it, mainly because the next day we were going into the hospital to be induced since I was "late" and we were concerned because of my gastric bypass.

The contractions got stronger throughout the day, and by 9:30pm when I had to go pick up my husband, I knew they were real contractions.  But since my water didn't break, I still waited it out.  My husband then decided to "talk" to my vagina (he literally placed his head at my vagina and talked to it, and told the baby to come on out.  At midnight, I stood up, felt a gush of liquid, and it was blood, so off to the hospital we went.

Contractions were definitely getting stronger, but still tolerable.  I was admitted, and from there we waited.  I wasn't dilating properly (my inner cervix was dilated more than the outer), so I had a foley bulb placed, and after a short time it fell out on it's own.  Then started the real fun!


I started progressing fairly quickly. I went from 4cm to 8cm in about an hour. During this time, I had an epidural, which ended up wearing off. That made me sad.  Funny thing is, I wasn't crying or screaming. I would just close my eyes, and breathe through it, and occasionally moan or make a joke with my husband.  The doc came in, gave me an extra dose, but it didn't work. So they redid the epidural, and I was ok for a while.  All of a sudden I felt the most intense pain on my left side, turns out the epidural failed again.  So they gave me MORE medicine and by that time I was ready to push. Even though I could totally feel everything (at this point I had wanted a natural child birth, but boy was I glad that I was flexible with what I wanted)

I only pushed for 23 minutes, the midwife said I pushed like a rock star, I had a first degree tear that required two stitches (woot!) and that was that.  When the baby came out and they placed her on my chest, I was in shock, then me being me I said, "holy shit! we have a baby!"

They checked her out and she was perfect.  She actually fought the nurse who was cleaning her up and such, so she is quite strong.  My husband was the first to hold her.  She was wide awake and alert, and about 5 minutes after, she started to suckle on her own, so she was ready for breastfeeding!

My sister in law and nurses kept commenting on how good I looked right after childbirth.  Apparently I jumped back to being my normal self once they had me cleaned up and such.

I am so glad my little bean is here. We are home and doing great. She feeds like a champ!