Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

It is so hard to believe that she is already two days old! Finally have a moment to sit down and recreate our birth story - we are set to be discharged tomorrow morning.

I went into the hospital Sunday evening at 8:30 to be admitted and start cervidil, due to my chronic hypertension. My docs did not want me to go past my due date, so inducing a week early was always in the cards for me. My last appointment had been Tuesday, where I still had made no progress - no dilation, no idea about effacement. Going into the hospital, we were very open about where the birth process might take us, knowing full well that as long as we had a healthy baby and a healthy mom, we would have success. We started the cervidil at 10:30 (I was 0cm dilated and at a -2 station. Around 11:40, they gave me an ambien to try and sleep through the night.

Contractions did begin overnight (at least, painful contractions, not those fun BHs), and at 8:05am, my water broke - quite the dramatic gush! They checked me - barely 1cm, but still, the cervidil obviously did SOMETHING, and at 8:50 they started the pitocin. Mom (who flew out from CA) and J really helped through the labor - it was definitely strong - and at 1:45, my doctor checked me and I was at 4cm. I was given the go ahead for the epidural, but was first started on magnesium - something usually reserved for pre-eclampsic patients, which I wasn't, but given my bp issues, they decided to do it all the same.

By 6:30 PM, I was at 5cm and 100% effaced, but desperately started to need a booster of the epi, which I got. At this point, I was only at a -1 station. By 9:30 I needed another redose of the epi, and I was at 6.5 cm. Doctor mentions that she feels baby's head with some swelling, inserts an internal monitor to check the strength of the contractions - she wanted to see if it was worth adjusting the pitocin or if the contractions should have been enough. By 10:35, there was no change - the contractions should have been strong enough without additional pitocin and the call was made to go ahead and find another exit strategy. At 10:50, DH was scrubbing up, and I was being prepped for surgery. At 11:33pm, Michal Kalanit was born.

Her first name, Michal (mee-chal... like "hall," but with a gutteral "h"), is for J's late father, Michael. Kalanit is for my grandfather, whose middle name was Kahn - the Kalanit is a lovely wildflower found in Israel. She was 8lbs, 5oz., and 20 3/4 inches long at birth.