The Lewis Family: Ellie Marie Lewis

Monday, December 17, 2012

Ellie Marie Lewis

12.12.12

12:10pm

7lbs 14oz

21.3 in

(Dr said she's only 19.5 in)

The morning of December 11, a Tuesday, I had a doctor's appointment. Since I was measuring at 40 weeks, she decided to strip my membranes to see if labor would start. I was already a good 3cm and 60% effaced so we were hopeful. I had cramping all day and just felt yucky. Around 7 pm, I started having contraction every 7-10 minutes. By 9 pm, my contractions were every 2-4 minutes apart and painful. Jacob's sister, Audrey, came to pick up the kids around 10 pm. They headed home with her husband and she came with us to the hospital.

In triage, they checked me and realized I was now 5 cm dilated. We were hopeful this labor would be fast! I received my epidural around midnight and was still at 5 cm. This was so weird Both Talmage and Emma were very fast labors. Talmage was 6 hour and Emma was 4 hours. I proceeded to labor into the night, slowly dilating. Ellie was very high and would not drop low enough to break my water. This meant trying all kinds of positions during the night to help her drop. Finally, at 9 cm, the doctor broke my water. A few hours later, I was ready to push. I think it was around 9 am. I pushed for awhile with the nurse and not much happened. She was still pretty high.

Then, the doctor came in to try a few pushes with me. Still, not much was happening. Around this time, I was having lots of pain and pressure. With the other two, it was just pressure. The pain got more and more intense and I had to stop pushing. I couldn't hold back the tears. I felt like weak since I had an epidural. They called the anesthesiologist to come in to see if he could help with my pain. By this time, I could move my legs perfectly and I could even feel the cathedar sting. It was at this time that I realized the epidural had been turned off. The anesthesiologist was the one who told me it was turned off. He was puzzled why the doctor would do that. I was not too happy! Apparently, she wanted me to feel enough to push. I think she thought I'd only push for 15 minutes. Anyways, by this time, it was pretty much too late for anything to help.

Luckily, they were so busy that extra doctors were called on to help out. This meant I got a new doctor, the doctor I wanted! She was the one who gave the okay for me to get more medicine in my epidural. We immediately started pushing through the pain and I was actually making some progress. She kept manually stretching me to help prevent tearing. She also put mineral oil to help with elasticity. Overall, she was great! I ended up tearing a little but not too bad, considering she was my biggest baby.

After 15 hours of labor and 3 hours of pushing, Ellie was born face-up. She was purple and had a cone-shaped head. The labor and pushing were prolonged because she was face-up. It's a lot harder for babies to be born that way and a lot more painful. The nurse said 85% of babies face-up result in a c-section because they get stuck. Lucky for me, I was able to push her out. She inhaled fluid, which caused her to turn purple from lack of breathing. After suctioning her airways, she let out her first little cry. It was beautiful and definitely a relief.