She's Here!

Tuesday morning, July 13th at 11:32 am, we welcomed our beautiful baby girl into this world!


Ava Chandler

6lbs. 14oz and 18 1/2 inches long. She is tiny, healthy, and beautiful! We are so blessed by her, and I can't help but feel really proud that she is ours!

So now, for the much awaited birth story (which nobody will probably read all the way through, except me, a million times :)

Monday morning I head to the hospital for my "regular" weekly ultrasound & monitoring. My bp was up again, and my fluids we're up (which is good). But, Ava was asleep during the ultrasound so she didn't pass the "movements" test, and then my doctor recieved my labs from my previous visit and told me I had Preeclampsia. Since I was 37 weeks (to the day!), doc said it was safest to deliver now, rather than wait, because pre-e only gets worse. So...Monday night we started!

I started to really feel contractions at about 6am Tuesday and requested my epideral a little after 7am. By the time the anesthesiologist arrived, it was pretty bad! He tried to get that epideral in not once...not twice...but THREE times! It was awful, really awful. Then, 20 minutes after he leaves...I still have no pain relief. So he comes back & changes the dose, and I get to rest for about 30 minutes before I start feeling more contractions. And more...and more...and more...I was trying hard to stay calm, and my calm turned into just sobbing and trying to breathe! He came back & tried to change the dose again...nothing. Can I just say, at this point, I have never felt any pain like this before. I can't even explain to you how awful it was, at one point, I felt like I was just going to throw up (then die). By the time I screamed for the epideral guy to come back, it was too late! Time to have the baby! I am laughing now, I'm pretty sure my words were "I can't!" "I'm going to die" "Oh my God" "Oh my God" "Why would any woman WANT to feel this?" "I'm NOT waiting on my doctor!" and more I cant's and I'm going to dies. I did not wait for my doctor, but a sweet midwife delivered her since she was there. It was her first delivery in this town :)

I didn't die (somehow...) and I did push that baby out & I did feel it all! (and no, I would not choose to do it that way again!). When she was here, I almost couldn't believe that I did it! It helped a ton that I had the best nurse (& friend!) that a patient could ask for! I was really blessed to have my good friend as my nurse the entire time! And my mom, who was there giving me massages and foot rubs and anything I needed, and then my dear husband, who slept until I was ready to push :)

We only stayed 24 hours in the hospital, and I really enjoyed the night with just me and my baby. We are now home, her older sisters are thrilled over her! Nursing is going great- and I will post more pictures once I rest up more :)

Thank you Lord for our healthy baby, the safe delivery, the amazing people that helped bring her into the world, and for your continued blessings amoung our family!