Elizabeth’s Birth-Day!

May 7, 2012 by Lindsay

I woke up at 1:00 am on Thursday, April 19 to use the bathroom and couldn’t go back to sleep. I had told myself that if 4:00 am rolled around and I still wasn’t in labor then I was going to take some castor oil to get things moving. Since I couldn’t sleep I decided to go out to the living room so I wouldn’t bother Spencer. At 1:50 I had a real labor contraction. Then I had another at 2:00. I decided to download a free contraction calculator on my phone and start timing them for a bit. Then I had another at 2:10. At this point I decided to tell Spencer, just so he was aware and then I was going to try and go back to sleep for awhile.

At 2:20 I had another contraction and I told Spencer to get up and get ready, we weren’t going to mess around and have a baby at home I ran into the nursery where my sister was staying and told her that if she wanted a shower before we left for the hospital to get it done now!

We called Spencer’s parents to let them know that we were going to get ready and that as soon as we were ready we would leave for the hospital. We ran around for the next hour getting ready, I would yell at Spencer when a contraction started and ended and he would time them on my phone. The entire time we were getting ready my contractions were 5-7 minutes apart.

Spencer’s parents arrived at our house, we prayed together, his dad stayed with the boys and the rest of us headed to the hospital. We arrived and signed in at 3:45am and at 4:00 they were hooking me up in triage to check and see if this was the real deal. Almost as soon as I got settled my contractions spaced out a bit, between 10-15 minutes apart. I actually started to question whether or not we were having a baby!

The nurse checked me and said I was 4-5cm and that we were staying to have our baby! We made small talk for awhile while she got my information and then they moved us to our delivery room. My sister (Emily) and mother-in-law (Alecia) were able to come in at this point and the waiting began.

This entire time my contractions stayed about 10 minutes apart and my greatest concern was that I would not make any change and the nurse would start me on pitocin. (I really didn’t want that.) Around 5:45 the nurse came in to check me and I looked at Spencer and said “Pray that there has been change!” Imagine my excitement when she said I was 8cm! Thank you Lord! The nurse left to call the doctor and I cried tears of joy, we were close to meeting our baby girl!

I think it was at this point that I asked Spencer for my makeup bag and mirror. He thought I was silly, but I insisted

The doctor arrived around 6:45 and checked me again. She looked at the nurse and said “I would say she’s only 5-6cm.” WHAT!?! I was immediately disappointed and felt bad that the doctor had been called when it clearly wasn’t quite time to deliver a baby! She went ahead and broke my water which was quite difficult because Elizabeth’s head was so low. At this point all of the delivery equipment had been brought into the room and was ready to go, we were just waiting on the baby to be ready!

The next hour of labor was hard. My contractions were more consistent and very intense and I just wanted to be done. I would snap my fingers to get Spencer’s attention when I needed a hand to squeeze because I didn’t even want to talk. At one point I remember thinking that I just wanted to get up and leave Even through the pain there were a few times when I could feel her kick or move and I told myself to take it in because it was almost over, my pregnancy was almost done and our girl was on her way into our arms!

I don’t remember much of the conversations that were going on around me at this point but I do remember looking at Alecia and saying, “I know it’s my choice to do this naturally, but I feel like I might get irrational.” Haha! She assured me that I could be irrational and she wouldn’t tell anyone

FINALLY just before 8am I told the nurse that I felt like maybe I could push and she took one look and said, “YES, just wait!” The doctor came into the room, I looked at the clock and it was 8:00 on the dot, my sister was on one side and Spencer was on the other, I pushed twice and Elizabeth Rose was born at 8:01 am!

I heard her cry and the doctor said she was perfect…..I cried tears of joy and thanked the Lord!