Whew

Before I begin, if you're looking for pictures, they'll be in the following posts. I haven't had time to really take many besides the ones we got at the hospital and I'm really bad at taking pictures when people come to visit because I just want to talk and not be up in people's faces with my camera. So I will try to condense the "birth story" and current conditions into one medium sized post. :-)
Tuesday, August 10th at around 7:00 in the evening I started with some contractions that felt different then braxton-hicks ones. They were low and crampy and getting increasingly more painful. I wasn't breathing through them yet, so we continued on with our evening as usual. They weren't really getting that much closer together as the night went on, but they were certainly getting more painful. We went to bed at around 10 p.m. and I tried to sleep unsuccessfully. That was the first clue to me that we'd be heading to the hospital before too long because I couldn't sleep through the contractions. They were more uncomfortable when I was lying down, so around I think about 1 in the morning I went and sat in my rocking chair to time them for an hour. When I was sitting and/or standing, they started coming about 4-7 minutes apart. By then I was getting very tired, so I went to lie down again. Still no sleep, and the contractions would slow down when I was lying down to about 8-12 minutes apart, but they were stronger when they did come. I decided to just wait it out as long as I could (at this point I was definitely breathing through almost every contraction) and around 6:30 I was ready to head to the hospital. We showed up at MCR and the nurse there (who also happened to be a parent of some of the kids I teach at school) measured me at a whopping "stretchy" 4cm (which means that it's really about 3 cm, but when stretched became 4), 80% effaced. My heart sunk, I was fully expecting to be much further along than that and the thought of going back home with how uncomfortable and painful my contractions were getting was disheartening, to say the least. However, for some strange reason the doctor on call there (unfortunately Wednesdays are my doctor's day off and so she wasn't able to deliver this time) admitted me anyway and was confident that my contractions were dilating my cervix. But I still was apprehensive because I knew I had a long ways to go. Once we were in a room and I was changed, I labored in bed for a while- the contractions didn't seem to be coming on very quickly nor were they getting closer together. So we were instructed to walk around some. As soon as I started walking, they jumped right back up to 3-5 minutes apart. I took a cup of ice with me as we would walk and munch on it and actually walking helped me work through the contractions a little better, if I breathed through each one and just kept walking. After about 40 minutes, they hooked me up again and within a short while they were back down to 8-10 minutes apart. So we went walking again, same results, back in bed, same results. At around noon, they measured me again and I had progressed to 5 cm, which was good news because the nurse had mentioned the possibility of getting sent home still. So we made a plan to speed things up. Dr. S (the doctor on call) was confident that if he broke my waters that it would kick start me into stronger labor, so I decided to get an epidural and then as soon as it was administered, he came in and broke my water. Craig was just chillin' the whole time- we tried to watch a movie for a while, but the little remote they have at the hospital was the only source of sound coming from the TV, so it was virtually inpossible for the two of us to hear it at the same time. So two hours passed by while Craig watched Inkheart (apparently it wasn't very good) and thankfully the epidural was doing it's job because I konked out between contractions for a while. But they still weren't coming on very fast and after measuring me again, I was still at 5 cm. The next step was starting pitocin in my IV (so glad I had the epidural by then). Again, just a little bit because surely my body would take to it quickly. Half an hour later they had to up the dose again, I guess my uterus just wasn't getting the clue. After they upped the pitocin, though, suddenly my body got the picture and I was contracting about every 2-3 minutes. By this time it was about quarter to four and after that short hour and 15 minutes, I went from 5 cm to 9.5 cm (again, SO glad I had the epidural!). The warming tray was brought out and Dr. S was on his way over to see if we were ready. He checked me and asked if I wanted to try pushing, so I did once the next contraction came- he stopped me abruptly and said that we were ready and he needed to go get his gloves on. On a side note, the clot was continuing it's passage the entire time- and there was a LOT still left in there. At one point the nurse said I passed a good 6cm sized chunk of it, and that wasn't even the half of what came out. It must have been huge when it happened back at 14 weeks for it to be that much. After the doctor was ready, I pushed and bore down and the head came out, pushed again and the rest of her was out. Quite simple, quite painless, and she was a good healthy baby when she came out! She had some meconium *yuck* stuck in her lungs a bit that they had to suck out of there and then she just cried and cried and cried. They put her on my chest and wanted as much skin to skin contact as we could get- she was pretty ucked up in her breathing so they didn't want me nursing quite yet, but apparently the skin to skin contact really helps them work everything out when they're all gunked up. After a few minutes, I was able to nurse and after about an hour, we were moved to our postpartum room. Aside from it being rather long, it was probably my easiest delivery so far. So the clot passed with the delivery and for some strange reason, they couldn't find the cyst on the placenta/cord afterwards. He said the placenta looked healthy and there was an area that might have been where it was, but he didn't see anything that looked like a giant cyst. Huh. But he sent it in for my doctor to look at and I'll have to ask Dr. B at my six week visit what she concluded. So all that stress and worry and more stress and more worry and more stress and more worry for a healthy, beautiful girl in the end. Was it worth it? OF COURSE.
Odell has brought a very, very sweet spirit in our home so far. She's a pretty good baby, she hasn't been a screamer much and she loves to be held and cuddled. Her bellyruben (sp???) levels were high at the hospital, so she's had a few more blood draws since then. She looks yellow, but not any more than my other kids were and the more she feeds and the more she poops the better she looks. :-) Nursing is going...well, it's going. I had to resort to the breast-shield finally and am a bit more healed than I was, so I'm stating to try to take it off for a few feeds a day. She's eating really well, though. She eats about every 3-5 hours generally if she's sleepy, and will have a good cluster feed for an hour or two in an 18-24 hour span. So far they've usually happened at night, so from about 1-6 in the morning I don't get a lot of restful sleep. But she sleeps a lot during the day, which has helped in transitioning my other young ones to having a baby around and helped me keep my sanity a little more. I have definitely, unfortunately, sunk into some baby blues the last couple of days. I did with Chloe for about two weeks after she was born, didn't have a problem with Linus in that regard at all, but for some reason it's back with avengence this time around. It's pretty manageable during the day when the sun is out and I am occupied with the kids. But once night comes around, it feels like my heart kind of sets with the sun and I just start crying over everything. Craig has been very helpful this time around and just tries to be cheerful and help wherever he can with the baby and the other kids so I can recover how I need to. I'm not even sure what I'm crying about half the time, I just feel bad and depressed for no reason at all. Sometimes it's like someone put a magnifying glass on my faults, especially as a mother, and then turned up my water works full blast. Other times I just have to think about anything that involves emotion at all (which is basically everything) and the tears just squirt out. A couple things that I know have and will help me if I continue to do them:

• Read my scriptures or listen to conference talks or do something spiritual as frequently as I can
• Spend quality time with Craig when I'm around him
• Sleep when I can- the fatigue brings it on a lot quicker
• Eat good food and not junk all the time...and chocolate doesn't help anything, despite what my stomach is trying to tell me
• Spend time with my older two: the more quality time I can spend with them, the less misbehaving they do, and the happier we all become

Garrr...Odell had her blood checked on Saturday and the Youth Clinic called me back just now to tell me her levels were still high and that she should have gone in yesterday to get checked again, but to make sure she gets in touch with her doctor now as soon as possible. Thanks for telling me now! So that's all I have to report now, I'll try to find some time to get some decent newborn pictures and actually make an announcement to send out this time! Thanks for all the congrats and warm wishes. :-)