I know for some of you this is information that you care nothing about but I wanted to remember the details of her birth story. With that said, there may a little TMI in this post so don't continue reading at this point if you don't want to know.
Baby Girl's (which is what we called her until she was actually here) due date was December 30, 2013. As we approached December we were preparing not for her arrival but for the time Brett would have to leave Connecticut and come to Utah for his clinical affiliations. We were starting to pack of the house and get things squared away with that. Brett was to start clinical on Jan 6, which we were told that would be the first day they would induce me if I went over. I was very,
very, let's add another
VERY nervous that I would go over because my mom had done so with her deliveries. This was probably my biggest fear of my entire pregnancy. I DID NOT WANT TO BE INDUCED! I also have heard some pretty terrible induction stories and wanted my labor and delivery to be as natural as possible. I had been doing some reading as to what other women had tired to induce themselves/prepare for labor. One of those recommendations was exercise. During my pregnancy I was running 2-3 times a week for a couple of miles, all the way up until 37 weeks. Then at 37 weeks I changed to walking at a brisk pace. Looking back, I feel like this is what helped keep me in shape and ready for labor - maybe that is all in my head but I hope I can do a fair bit of exercise during all of my pregnancies.
Another recommendation was casteroil. Yup, casteroil.... So I got some a few weeks before just to have on hand.
At about 38 weeks, I started losing my muscus plug, just a little bit at a time. I was having no other symptoms of labor, no braxton hick's or anything. I was still feeling great and had lots of energy. This was the case through the end.
I went to work on Christmas Eve, conducted rounds with the IICAPS teams, saw two of my clients and then headed home. Christmas Eve was pretty low-key and we stayed at our house and watched back-to-back Christmas movies: Elf, Christmas Vacation, and then flipped between Home Alone and Christmas Story. As a kid, it was tradition to sleep under the Christmas tree, not on Christmas Eve but it has always been a favorite thing of mine. So we set up the air mattress in 'under' our
tiny Christmas tree, more like next to, which just so happen to be in front of the tv. Before we started our Christmas movie marathon, I asked Brett if he wanted to have a Christmas baby. He said he would rather have a Christmas baby than have to miss the birth of our first child. I agreed, so I ended up drinking some casteroil, which some had said they used and saw no results and some said that within 12 hours they were in labor. We decided to give it a try, if she was suppose to come, she would come, if not, well then I would probably have some diarrhea and that would be the end of it. I did have a small, nothing major, bout of diarrhea but it wasn't terrible.
We enjoyed the Christmas movies well into the night. Until about 230 AM when I woke up having contractions. They were consistent and happened about once every 5 minutes. I waited for an hour, just laid in bed and timed them, before waking Brett up. He woke up, we called the on call Dr. He suggested that with it being my first baby, I would probably be in labor for awhile so he suggested taking a shower and making myself as comfortable as possible. He said to go into the hospital only when I could longer breath through the contractions. We followed his suggestions and took a shower then went back to bed and ended up falling back to sleep at about 4ish. I woke up at at 530 with more intense contractions, a little closer together but I could still breath and talk through the contractions with no problems. I again waited about an hour before waking Brett up. So about about 630 AM, I am walking from one end of our apartment to the next, having contractions about every 3-5 minutes but I was still able to walk and talk through them so we weren't sure what to do. We called the Dr at about 7 but didn't get an immediate response. Brett had breakfast and got ready for the day. We still hadn't heard back from the Dr by about 8 so we decided we better head in just to get things checked out. On our way to the hospital the Dr called and said to head in. We told him we were on our way! As we were driving to the hospital, I told Brett, "I hope that I am dilated to a 7 so they don't send me home. I don't want to play this back-and-forth game to the hospital."
We arrived at the hospital at about 830, parked the car, went into the emergency room and the nurse looked at both of us and said "which one of you is going to the patient?" Brett told her that I was in labor and she started to laugh and said, "I couldn't even tell you were pregnant." They sent us upstairs to the delivery room and hooked me up to the monitors. The nurse explained that even though I was having contractions I would probably go home to progress through the dilation stages, since she thought I was at the beginning stages of labor. Once they got me all hooked up to the monitors, she checked my dilation and I was dilated to a 7! She was very surprised and started doing all of the intake paperwork and hooked me up to the IV and all of that. She mentioned that if I wanted to get an epidural I would need to get one ASAP or I wouldn't be getting one at all. She and another nurse said that if I had made it this far without one, then I would be fine. So we opted not to get an epidural. Brett put on some Christmas music that played throughout the entire delivery. It was very helpful and a great reminder of our Savior's birth on this very same day. The nurse had a difficult time finding a vein for the IV, probably due to the clean out from the casteroil, which probably made me a bit dehydrated. Once the IV was in and the paperwork complete she checked me again and I was dilated to a 9. Ready to start pushing!
At about 10:30 they started to have me push to attempt to break my water, which hadn't broken yet. They kept saying that once my water breaks, baby would be here. Well I pushed for about 30 minutes and was getting a little tired and couldn't break my water. We decided to take a little rest and just breath through the contractions. At around 11:30 the Dr came in and broke my water. Then the real pushing began. I pushed for about 40 minutes and Baby Girl arrived at 12:19 pm!
We still had not decided on a name, it was going to either be McKall Gale or Taylor Rae, and both of us were happy with either. We decided that since we had both liked the name McKall from before we were even married that we would stick with our original name. Now that we had a name, if was time to announce her birth to our families! Everything had happened so quickly and smoothly that we didn't really have a time contact anyone and let them know that we were headed to the hospital. Brett did mention a few days before the birth that it would be cool to surprise our family if we could. I wasn't too keen on the idea but on that day, contacting family was about the last thing on my mind. So it just so happened that Brett's wish came true and we were able to surprise the family via Skype.
We told them, since it was about 11 AM Christmas morning, that we were going to be going to our Bishop's house a little earlier than expected and that we wanted to talk to all of them while everyone was together before we left. We called Brett's family first since they were dispersing to other parts of the state later on in the day. When they pulled us up on the big screen tv there were 3 of us instead of just 2!!! They were all jumping up and down and screaming. It was a beautiful surprise for all. Here's a picture of us on the big screen.
While we were chatting with them, Greg, our brother-in-law, sent a text to my dad telling him congrats on becoming a grandpa. Well, since we hadn't told my family yet, he somewhat spoiled the surprise for them. We have considered writing him out of the will for this but have decided we still love him dearly and even though my parents now had a suspicion, nothing beats seeing their new grand baby for the first time.
We also put a skype call into the Joneses in Juneau, AK and back to my parents later that afternoon once my grandpa had arrived.
Since we lived in Connecticut when McKall was born, our visitors to the hospital were not great in numbers. My boss, Susan Sherrick came. My co-worker Darby Cotter, our friends Kari and AJ and my dear friend Stacy Mitchell from our ward. We weren't very good at taking pictures so we only have a few but here they are.
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| Stacy |
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| AJ and Kari |
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| First Photo |
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| Weighing In |
