labor story

As written to Gretchen Elaina:

Well holy cow!! You were a great surprise to us today. Early, just like your mother! Gretchen Elaina. Middle name after your Grandma LaPean. You surprised us at 3:08 a.m., weighing 7 pounds, 10 ounces. Earlier during the 26th (Wednesday), I was feeling contractions for a better part of the day. They were getting noticeably strong around lunch time when Charlotte was napping and I was trying to get some rest. I spoke to your Grandma LaPean a few times that day and by 5:00 p.m., after a nice, hot shower, I started keeping track of my contractions. They were anywhere from three to eight minutes apart, and lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute. 

We called Grandma Horstmeyer over the house just in case you decided to come early. Boy, that was a good idea. She was able to stay at the house and watch Charlotte until more people showed up. I went to bed at 9:30 p.m. and finally around 11:30 p.m., after a few calls into the nurse's station, I paged the doctor to ask when we would be ready to go in. At that point, my contractions were about 1:45 seconds long, and a good 6-6.5 minutes apart. We left the house around midnight. We got to the hospital around 12:15 a.m. a nervous wreck and wanting to know if this “was the real thing” or not. 

All the nurses we had were so wonderful! The hospital was very quiet. We got checked into room 33 and waited while I was monitored for almost an hour. Our nurse was DeAnna, and we did all of the admissions questions and my contractions were definitely getting stronger. I was really having to breath through them. It turned out, at that point, I was around five to six centimeters dilated, and it was decided that we were definitely going to be staying overnight at the hospital. Kevin made phone calls to all of the grandparents to let them know the anticipated news. 

Grandma and Grandpa left Green Bay around 2 a.m. to come down. We had the anesthesiologist come in and give me the epidural around 1:45 a.m. It was a little harder than the first time around, because things were moving so quickly, the epidural wasn't quite able to kick in with as much strength as it had for Charlotte's pregnancy. At 2:32 a.m. Dr. Hellman came in and broke my bag of waters. That sure was an interesting feeling. 

Shortly after that point, I was already 8 cm dilated. I ended up pushing like five minutes to get you out! It was so fast. You were born at 3:08 a.m. and quickly got cleaned up and weighed. To our shock, you didn’t have much to say when arriving. I actually said, “Is she gonna cry or what?!” Then you wailed to let us all know you were doing just fine. By 4:00am, mom started breastfeeding you and dad spent some time rocking you in the chair. He was so happy to have another daughter! He left around 5 a.m. when both Grandmas showed up to meet you. they left around 6 a.m. so we could all get a little rest.