Eleanor's Birth

When I thought about having Eleanor before she was born, I kind of imagined that it would be pretty similar to having Abby. Instead, she decided to let us know from the very beginning that she is her own person and would be doing things her own way. She started by coming early - two weeks before her due date! I've been saying for almost a month that the 21st would be a great day to be born, but that I was expecting her to be a few days late like Abby was. She decided to prove me wrong on both counts, and come even earlier. I'm so excited that she's here for Christmas! I already have grand plans to take her and Abby to see Santa next week and get a picture of their first Christmas together.

I also expected that going into labor would be the same as last time. The timing was almost the same - Abby's labor started around 10:00 PM and Eleanor's started around 10:30 PM - but that's about it. Adam and I had just gone to bed on Thursday when my water broke. We called my parents to come down and stay with Abby, and then started getting ready to head to the hospital. Since I really wasn't expecting her to come for another 3 weeks, I hadn't made any preparations at all. So I did a load of laundry to get the carseat and some baby clothes clean to take with us, packed the suitcase, and just tried to clean up the house a little bit in the few hours we had left. Another nice thing - since we weren't in a rush to get to the hospital this time, I got to take a LONG hot shower. Adam tried to sleep for awhile, but I was too excited about having Eleanor before Christmas. He kind of laughed at me, I was singing and dancing a little bit while I was getting things ready to go.

We got to the hospital at 3:26 (according to my wristband) and headed up to Labor and Delivery. We had decided to try a VBAC, but I was still considered a surgery risk because of having the c-section last time, so they hooked me up to a million monitors to make sure that everything was going well the whole time. By this point contractions had started, but weren't too bad, so we tried to get a little sleep. I know I didn't get any, and I don't think Adam got much either. Around 7 I got an epidural - which was a bit terrifying, but so great. What really pushed me to get it was that since I hadn't last time, I had to have general anesthesia and Adam couldn't be in the room when I had the c-section. I wanted to avoid that this time if we had to have another section. By that point I was in active labor, so the contractions were coming closer and more intense, so when the epidural kicked in and all I felt anymore was some pressure, but no pain, I was so happy that I had braved out the shot in the spine. Another bonus, without the pain I was able to get about an hour's worth of sleep.

It turns out that being in labor is kind of boring. I'm sure it's less boring if you're in intense pain the whole time, but with the epidural making me comfortable, there weren't too many distractions. I told Adam at one point that we should have brought a movie with us - The Muppet's Christmas Carol was sounding good. That lasted until about 1:00, when my epidural began to wear off. The anesthesiologist put something else into the epidural, which helped a little, but from then on I was feeling things again and suddenly labor didn't seem so boring.

Luckily, by about 2:00 I was ready to start pushing. My goodness, that hurt! At that point I was wishing that we had decided to go with another c-section instead of trying a VBAC, but it was a little late to make that switch. I really didn't think that I could do it, but as it turns out there's not really another option, so out she came. I only had to push for about half an hour, so I guess it wasn't really that bad, although at the time it felt like I'd been pushing for hours and that she was never going to come. The really great part about Eleanor's birth as compared to Abby's was that they gave her to me right away, and I got to hold her and see her right then, instead of it being 2 1/2 hours later. So for the next almost two hours, we just hung out in the delivery room as a family. They did all the measurements and everything, but mostly we just got to hold her and sing to her and all the fun stuff. We also got to eat, which was great since we hadn't eaten since 6:00 the night before. I don't think french toast ever tasted so good.

At 4:30 or so we moved up to the 11th floor and postpartum, and we've been here ever since. We're all pretty tired right now - Eleanor from being less than a day old, Adam and me from not really sleeping two nights in a row. I'd kind of forgotten that while you're in the hospital someone's stopping in every couple of hours to check you or the baby, and when you add in feeding the baby every 2 hours and then her not sleeping or crying for whatever reason, it makes for not a lot of sleep. But we're heading home this afternoon, so hopefully things will return to normal pretty soon.