June with a party at the end of it

SHE'S HERE!!!!!

Juno Kate
6 lbs 1 oz, 19 1/2 in
November 17, 2010 12:13 pm

Big sisters Tempe and Helena are thrilled!

They are especially excited that they can now say "Juno" whenever they want, as loud as they want! Tempe was great at keeping her new sister's name a secret--Helena, not so much. She blurted it out in front of my whole family at Disneyland last month.

Do you want to hear her birth story?

Ok.

As I said in my last post, the doctor stripped my membranes on Monday, but I didn't think it worked because 24 hours passed and nada. Well, after 36 hours, I started having contractions (10 pm Tuesday night). I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I also didn't want to go to bed because I was sure they would stop if I did. I stayed up watching tv, but finally decided if they stopped, they stopped, and went to bed around 12. I was still having contractions, but they weren't very painful and they weren't regular.

Around 2 am, I woke up to a pretty strong contraction. I went downstairs and started timing them, and sure enough, they were coming very regularly, every 10-12 minutes. Over the next few hours, they crept a tiny bit closer together--to about 8 minutes--and they definitely increased in strength. I woke Jason up at 4 and told him I was in labor. His response? "Ok... do you need to go now?" When I said no, he turned over and went back to sleep!!! But he got up with me an hour later when they were really bad. They were very strong at this point--some moaning could be heard--but still not close together. I was beginning to get frustrated, because I know you aren't supposed to go to the hospital until they are 5 minutes apart for an hour. But when I started getting really shaky at 7 am, I was worried I was already going into transition, so we threw the kids in the car, dropped them off at Jason's parent's house, and then rushed to the hospital.

Luckily, I was not yet in transition--the shakes must have just been nerves--I was 5 cm, 100% effaced when we got to the hospital. My contractions were very strong at this point and hard for me to get through, but they still were not coming close together! Even so, I made a lot of progress and when I was 8 cm, I decided to get an epidural. I had been awake for so long at this point, and I was really getting exhausted, so the epidural seemed like the right thing to do. And it was!! I wrote a few months ago about the elusive perfect epidural and guess what? They do exist! I actually got one this time! After the epidural, I took a 2 hour nap and when I woke up, I was fully dilated. The nurse had me do a "practice" push to see how well the baby was moving down, and she actually stopped me before she got to 10 because the baby was moving so quickly. My doc arrived about half an hour later and I was ready to push!

My perfect epidural took the pain away, but not the pressure, so I could feel exactly when I needed to push and how hard. Doc told me to push 3 times for 10 seconds each with the next contraction I felt, and at the end of the contraction I heard Jason say "There's her head!" I assumed he meant she was crowning, but no... her head was already out, and her body soon followed. I literally pushed for 30 seconds and Juno was born at 12:13 pm!

A few words about this labor and delivery: even though it was my third, it was my longest at 14 hours. That and the fact that it started late at night so I didn't get any sleep actually made my hardest labor, but the delivery itself was obviously the easiest I've had. I didn't tear with this delivery, which is a huge blessing, and I didn't have any of the negative side effects from the epidural that I did after having Tempe. I feel fantastic!

Juno has her big sister Helena's chubby cheeks and her big sister Tempe's freakishly long, skinny fingers. She has quite a bit of black hair, but only on the crown of her head--not so much the front. She cried just a bit at birth and has been very content ever since. She's a champ at breastfeeding and we are very excited to have her join our family!