October 31, 2012: The Greatest Joy

The day we've been waiting for for 41 long weeks had finally arrived!!  At my doctor appointment on Friday, October 26th, Dr. Kaufman scheduled an induction for the 31st.  If Baby Anderson didn't make an appearance on her own by then, we would go in on the 31st to be induced.  I had mixed feelings about this.  I didn't want to be induced because I preferred that the baby come when it was ready and naturally.  However, I just about couldn't take being pregnant any more either.  Mostly, I had decided that the 26th was going to be my last day of school until after maternity leave and I would rather spend my days off with the baby rather than at home by myself.  So we decided that being induced was going to be ok.  I still held onto hope that the baby would come on her own between the 26th and 31st.
However, that didn't happen!  On the 30th I was still very pregnant and hadn't had a single contraction. That day was very strange for me.  I knew that the next day our lives would be changed forever and that it was my last day before I was a mommy.
I could hardly sleep Tuesday night and got up at 5 to start getting ready to go to the hospital.  We got to the hospital at 7 and got settled into our room.  Our amazing nurse, Chris, came in and started my IV and got me hooked up to the monitors.

Getting ready to head to the hospital!  

All settled in and hooked up

Feeling good!

Around 8 am, Chris started the Pitocin in my IV and we were on our way to meeting our baby!  Contractions started not long after the Pitocin was administered.  Around 9:45 the doctor came in and broke my water, which was fairly undramatic.  However, shortly afterward the contractions started coming a lot closer together and were more intense.  About this time I was dilated to 6 cm and decided I was ready for an epidural.  My "birth plan" had been to see how far I could go without an epidural. Not necessarily because I wanted to prove my toughness, but more because I was nervous about the side effects I might experience from an epidural.  I've always been very sensitive to pain medication and was really not wanting to feel sick on top of everything else!  I thought that maybe it would be better to just have the intense pain in the moment of child birth but then be done with it rather than have lasting side effects from an epidural.  Welll. as I said, around 6 cm I threw that plan out the window and was ready for some help dealing with contractions!

Feeling a little less great at this point!  Thanks Kyle for capturing this moment :p

Unfortunately for me, the anesthesiologist had just gone into a c-section and was unavailable.  He said he would try to send someone else.  Well, no one else came and in an hour I went from being dilated to 6 to being dilated to 9.5 cm.  There was lots of commotion and things were getting very, very painful.  In the midst of all this, the anesthesiologist came into my room and Dr. Kaufman convinced him that there was still time to administer the epidural.  The baby was still up high enough that there was time-hallelujia!!!
After getting the epidural I was able to rest for about 45 minutes and I am so thankful I decided to get it.  I now know that for the next baby Anderson, I will be getting the epidural right away!!!
After all was said and done, our beautiful daughter was born after about 8 hours of labor.  We were so incredibly blessed to have a relatively easy labor with no complications and an extremely healthy little girl to show for it.
Claire Gabrielle Anderson arrived on October 31st, 2012 at 4:27 pm, weighing 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 19 inches long.  It was love at first sight...