It was a huge blessing to have her wait a little longer. Due to Joseph's work schedule, we knew it would be extremely difficult to have a newborn plus have him working his turnaround as he would be very limited in vacation/paternity leave. Gemma arrived the week after his long hours stopped. And his mom was here already as we thought the baby would arrive early. His mom was able to watch the kids for us while we were at the hospital.
Here's her birth story. Mainly so I don't forget the details during the fuzzy, sleep-deprived newborn stage.
I had been to the labor and delivery unit around 37 weeks with dehydration from a nasty stomach bug. I was having contractions there but with lots of fluids and medicine, they were able to stop them. This was nothing new. From about 36 weeks on, I would go to bed every night with contractions and then wake up in the morning feeling fine. Every day I thought, "tonight could be it!" It was a long four weeks of thinking that!
On March 14, I woke up around 3 or 4am with contractions ten minutes apart. They were painful enough where I had to work through them. When Joseph woke up around 6:30, they were about seven minutes apart but I told him to head to work as I wasn't sure this was the real deal. By about 9:30, they were five minutes apart so I decided to get a hold of Joseph and have him head home. But I couldn't reach him. I tried everything I could to contact him (aside from calling the emergency number) and he was stuck in meetings so couldn't answer. By 11am, I got desperate as the contractions were getting closer together and harder to breathe through. I called the emergency number at Dow and got in touch. He headed home and we went straight to the hospital. Laboring at home with a four and two year old is no fun either. I didn't want to tell Ashton what was going on in case the contractions fizzled out. So they kept asking for snacks and fun things as I'm struggling through pain. Finally around 11am, I decided it was time for a movie as a special treat.
They examined me at noon and I was 6 cm dilated so they admitted me. That was exciting as I've never made it that far along before. With Ashton, I was not even a cm dilated and with Tanner I was at a 3. My doctor was already in the hospital so he came to my room. When he came ten minutes later, I was at a 7 and they were doing everything they could to hurry up and get me an epidural. To receive an epidural at our hospital, you have to receive IV fluids and have blood work done. This takes time obviously. The nurses and doctor weren't sure I had enough time to do all this but I desperately urged them to try and hurry it along. The doctor felt if I wanted to forego pain meds, he could break my water and I would be at 10 in no time.
I really wanted the epidural so asked him to wait. He gave me some anti-nausea medicine which knocked me out between the contractions. Looking back, I wish I would have known more about this medicine before giving them the okay to administer it. It was really strong and I could barely answer questions to nurses between contractions. I appreciated the "break" between contractions but felt way too out of it for my liking. It did help the nausea as I felt I was going to throw up all the time.
Once the anesthesiologist could start the epidural process, I was at 8 cm. It took a few tries to get a good placement. Then the doctor broke my waters and about 30 minutes later, it was time to push. Baby girl was pretty high so it took a little longer than it did with Tanner but nothing like it did with Ashton. Once Gemma was born, the doctor thought she was over nine pounds. She cried a little bit and then was calm.
After about an hour, they took her and weighed her. Eight pounds, 4 ounces and 19 inches long. Bigger than Tanner by two ounces and bigger than Ashton by a pound. It's probably a good thing she hung on a little longer than her siblings as she would have been a tad smaller.
We've been home just over a week now and I wish I could pause time. She is so little and sweet. She doesn't talk back or make huge messes. And she's very easy to entertain. Gemma seems sleepier than our other two but maybe that's just our lack of memory. She doesn't fuss much and is a great eater. We're happy she's here! I'm happy to be much smaller and back in my normal clothes again. I was so excited to pack up maternity clothes and put that bin away for a long time.
Ashton is thrilled to have a baby sister. Tanner likes to point to her and say, "Baby" or "Sister" and then he continues on with his life. He is a little clingy to me but not a huge difference. I'm grateful Joseph has lots of paternity leave over the next few weeks. He'll be working half days a bunch, which is a lot of help to me. The big kids also have preschool until mid-May so that gives me a little bit of time to finish out teaching this semester. We're so happy to have sweet little Gemma in our family!
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| Our birthday cake tradition for Gemma. |
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