Welcome, Madeleine!

Five days ago, our lives completely changed. Madeleine Florence H. arrived in the world!

She was due on July 3rd, but decided to make her entrance eight days early. She is already showing her considerate nature: she arrived over the weekend, so I wasn't at work, while my parents were already in town! When we went to sleep on Friday night, our main plan for Saturday was to clean up the apartment, finish decorating the nursery, and fix the screens on the balcony. Expectations = UNFULFILLED.

I awoke at 4 am on Saturday morning, thinking that I had to go to the bathroom. I soon felt what I would usually describe as menstrual cramps, and between 5 and 6 am, it dawned on me that perhaps I was in labor! I walked around to see if they would stop, but they didn't. By the time I woke Dave at 8 am, my contractions were coming about every 10 minutes. I had thought that I would spend several hours in that state, so Dave took care of some last minute details, and we planned to go for a walk later. But by 10:30 am, my contractions were 45-60 seconds long, 5 minutes apart, the threshold for going to the hospital. By the time we arrived, I was in a lot of pain. So I was shocked when the doctor told me that I was only 1 cm dilated and that I needed to go home, walk around, and labor elsewhere for several hours. Actually, I cried when I found out, because I already knew that I wasn't in good enough shape to walk around, and I didn't see how, if I already made the threshold for being at the hospital, I would know when I could come back.

So we went home discouraged, and I screamed a lot. Dave took patient care of me, but there wasn't much he could do. Those hours at home are a blur to me – in between contractions, I was so tired that my eyelids would close involuntarily and my mind would start to drift. After a few hours of this, I called the doctor and begged him to admit me to the hospital. He agreed, but he was unhappy about it: to start an epidural so early in the process increased my risk of c-section; if labor continued to go slowly, they would need to intervene, but I was not yet at my due date, etc. But I didn't really care at that point...I don't really remember getting to the hospital and being admitted. I think I was delirious at that point. Dave would ask me straightforward, yes-or-no questions like, "Do you want more water?" And I would say "MAYBE" or "I DON'T KNOW." Poor Dave.

Epidurals are manna from heaven, better than true love! I was shaking in agony, unable to process anything going on around me, in a complete fog; I had dilated to 3 cm, though, which was a good sign. Two minutes after the epidural went in, I was chatting with the anesthesiologist about the Common Core curriculum at the University of Chicago – I was back to my self again. Fifteen minutes after the epidural, though, baby's heartbeat dropped. A bunch of people rushed into the room, turned me to one side, then the other, put me on oxygen, got me on all fours, and after 7-8 minutes, baby's heartbeat returned to normal. The nurse told me they were about to take me to the OR for a c-section! After all that excitement, Dave and I took badly-needed naps while my contractions continued every 2-4 minutes.

So I was shocked when the doctor said at 7:30 pm that I was still only 3 cm dilated. Had my labor stalled? I had been in labor for 17 hours, but was not technically yet in active labor! The doctor broke my water and administered pitocin. By 9:15, I had dilated to 9 cm and was running a fever. It was time to prepare to push and get this baby into the world! The doctor and nurses gave me instructions and encouragement, I pushed for about an hour, and out came a whole little person! It wasn't easy; I had tearing and an episotomy, which took a long time to stitch up, and M. still has a big hematoma on her head from the delivery. But finally, at 10:27 pm, we were officially a family of three.

Because of my fever, M. was whisked away to the NICU for antibiotics and observation. She was back in our recovery room, though, by Sunday morning. Just in time to meet the family!

We were discharged from the hospital on the afternoon of Monday, June 27th. My mom is staying with us and keeping us all alive, while Dave is taking care of everything else. I'm trying to recover from labor and learn how to be a mother to a newborn. But we couldn't be happier or more enthralled with our little baby. Welcome, Madeleine!