I had a Baby?

So I had a baby. What a wonderful experience. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to share it with my husband and our moms. I also had Mal Walker there to document the entire morning with photography! I'm so glad she got the shots that she did so we can remember every minute of this special day. Bracken was also a huge help. Supporting, encouraging, and comforting me. We had a little party in the delivery room between Bracken, our moms, Mal (the photographer), the delivery nurse, the nursery nurse, three student nurses, and Dr. Meek. I had my own support group and I loved it. They were all so helpful and so encouraging!

Jayda was born one week before her due date. I am so glad Dr. Meek offered to start me a week early because I was dilated at a 3 and 90% effaced for two weeks straight. It’s a good thing he let me go early because she was about a pound bigger than he predicted and what I was expecting.

Okay, we checked into the hospital on Tuesday February 21, at 12:05 in the morning. The first thing we did was paid for the delivery and hospital stay then got checked into our room. After being hooked up to the monitors and IV’s we were finally able to fall asleep around 2:30 a.m. They started my pitocin at 4:00 a.m. I was able to sleep for most of my contractions, which was very nice. I didn’t even know I was having them. Around 7:00, my mom and Dr. Meek came in. Dr. Meek broke my water and that’s when the pain began! My contractions became worse and worse! I wanted to wait as long as possible to get the epidural, but once my water broke and I could feel the contractions I was not waiting any longer. So by about 9:00, I was dilated at a 6 and got the epidural. It was not bad at all. I didn’t feel a thing!

After that, I dilated a centimeter an hour. By noon it was time to start pushing. Everything was all wonderful until about a half hour into pushing. I started to get frustrated and discouraged because there was not a lot of progress after that half hour. I became very exhausted and couldn’t figure out why the baby was not here yet. I kept pushing and pushing, even though I felt like I couldn’t push anymore. She still was not coming. So after about two hours, Dr. Meek came in to help me out. He did an episiotomy and he had to use forceps. I was super nervous for the forceps because of the pain and the side affects, but he did a great job and we had no problems. By this time, the epidural had worn completely off and I was able to feel EVERYTHING!! What a joy! It was the hardest thing I have ever gone through in my life. Just when I wanted to give up and quick, I got one more burst of energy and was able to get her out. Even though getting her here was a lot harder than I expected, I could not be more grateful that my baby girl was healthy and beautiful!

Jayda Kae was born at 1:42 p.m. on 2/21/12. She weighed 8 lbs, 1 oz and 20 inches long. She was absolutely perfect! We are so blessed and so lucky to have such a sweet baby girl. I am so grateful for her and her health!

I am so glad the delivery is over and we are home from the hospital and get to enjoy our sweet baby girl!!

My support group!

So glad he's having a good time haha

What a relief! :)

My healthy, chunky baby! Love her so much!

Getting stitches without any medicine! :(

Our happy little family!

We love Dr. Meek!

Found her tongue the day she was born!