Introducing Miss Anna Rose!!!
Born October 31st 2020 at 37 weeks 2 days.
6 lb 2oz, 20.5 inches long, born at 1:34 AM
Miss Anna Rose's birth story:
Whew! It has been a long week, and I have been feeling miserable, I have had some sort of pinched nerve in my back and it has been sending horrific pain in my back and down my legs. Making it hard to move or think, or drive, or walk, or even roll over in bed. Urhg!!
We had a busy week. We are refinancing our home, so we had to have an assessor come and take pictures of our whole house and yard, including the closets. Talk about stressful when you can't even move without pain. I needed a lot of help from the kiddos. It was also our YW's Halloween Party and our party for our Home-school group this week. So I have been under a bit of stress.
When Friday finally rolled around and I went to my appointment. My back and legs were so sore I was in tears and could barely move. I have been very nervous this entire pregnancy about going into labor. I really really wanted to have an epidural, but epidural's take time and I felt like the deck has been stacked against me. Because I am on anti-coagulants, my blood has to be tested and cleared before I could even get one. In the past my babies have come really fast and I didn't see how that was going to work out. My babies are always born early and the hospital has a policy to not induce before 39 weeks. As my due date got closer and closer I started to experience more and more anxiety that this sweet baby was going to be born in the car. :(
So to my surprise at my appointment, my doctor agreed to induce me the next week.. which would have been 38 weeks. He said I was at a 4 and baby was ready. I was quite happy about that. He then said, but I believe that you are in labor NOW, so i really think you should come head on over to labor and delivery. Haha hahaha. I told him I wasn't experiencing any contractions(that I could really feel over the nerve pain) and I wasn't going to go in and wait and be sent home. :P He really felt like I should stick around town though. So to humor the doctor, I called Ellie, told her I wouldn't be home for a few hours and then called Barry and asked him if he wanted to go out to lunch because supposedly I was in labor and needed to stick around town.......I slowly waddled around CSI for about an hour waiting for Barry. It was truly a beautiful peaceful day.
We went to Blaze pizza and I got my favorite White Top pizza. We drove over to the canyon rim and watched people walk along the trail. There were some cute tail-less stray kitten's there that people would stop and feed. During that time I began having some mild contractions spaced about 10 minutes apart.
They were really nothing though, and Barry nor I took them seriously. We walked around the visitor center for awhile, with not much happening, but it was a lovely sunny day. Then we decided to head home. Barry had a meeting that afternoon that he could Zoom at home, so I thought that was a good idea. I was super tired from not getting any sleep the night before. I had two more contractions on the drive home and then laid down while Barry attended his meeting.
While I was laying there, I thought about how different this pregnancy has been than last pregnancies and that maybe these really mild, pretty consistent contractions were a GIFT to me, and answer to my prayers that I could make it to the hospital in time to get an epidural. I texted my Mom and my sister's they all agreed that i should go in. Jeana even mentioned that the early contraction were possibly a gift as well.
Sooo, I took a bath and waited a bit longer.....
I asked Barry for a priesthood blessing to have wisdom to know what to do. At this point my contractions had almost entirely stopped, but I felt like we should go into town. So I grabbed my bag, kissed the kid's goodbye and Barry took me to the hospital. I felt extremely foolish heading into the hospital having NO contractions, so I asked Barry if we could walk around the hospital for a few minutes. It was slow going because of all the nerve pain, but we walked about 2 miles and I had about 2 contractions. Then I decided that I needed some ice cream. So we drove over to Cold Stone and got some of the best ice cream that i have ever had. I gobbled it up. On the way back over to the hospital I had two less-mild contractions about 10 mins apart.. At this time I believe Barry was losing a bit of patience with me. So I agreed I would just go in and get hooked up to the monitors for 20 minutes just to check things out and then we could go home. I felt extremely foolish going in and didn't even take my stuff. The lady at the front desk made it clear she didn't believe I was in labor,(haha, and I agreed with her) but she sent us up.
I changed into a gown, which was quite difficult because of the nerve pain and answered some questions vaguely about my contractions. The nurse could tell I was in A LOT of pain, but she thought it was because of contractions. After a few minutes of being on the monitors and not really seeing anything, she decided to check me, and was shocked to find out I was at a 6! They took my blood pressure and it has climbed up to 169/97, and my urine showed protein in it. Both signs of preclampsia. I now did not have the option of going home and was admitted to the hospital. Then the nurse said something to me, that made me smile. She said, we'll since you are at a 6 and here, we can get you your epidural. I was soo surprised that they would give me an epidural with no real or consistent contractions, but they WOULD, and I wasn't going to try and talk them out of it. :D The epidural instantly took away the horrible nerve pain and I was a happy camper.
Somehow I got to a 7,(seriously no idea, how that happened) before they even gave me my epidural and then I took a little nap. There were two other ladies at the hospital, desperately trying to have their babies before Halloween the next day so I let the nurses focus on them. I didn't want to have a baby on Halloween either, but I had my epidural and I wasn't going to complain. After my nap, I decided it was time to get things started, so I asked to have my water broke. The doctor came in and broke my water, within a few minutes, I began having regular contractions. Big Ones! at least that is what the monitor showed. I felt absolutely nothing. I began to feel very nauseated and threw up. The nurse said that was totally normal for a woman about to give birth. (I was like What? about to give BIRTH?) After a few minutes the nurse came in and said the baby was crowning, so she called the doctor in. I was still in shock at how easy peasy this had all been and felt like I was in some alternate reality with everything being ready and taking a little nap before giving birth. :D
I pushed through ONE contraction(that I couldn't feel) and baby was born. No major bleeding, no issues, baby was fine, I was fine. It was crazy.
I got to hold my sweet nameless baby right after she was born and snuggle with her for awhile. It was wonderful!
After giving birth i threw up 4 more times and am sad to say The Blaze is no longer on my list of favorite restaurants and It will be a LONG time before i go there again. I also got the shakes really really bad, so that is why many of the pictures I took are so blurry. Sorry.
Through the whole birth process, I felt extremely blessed, and loved, and that God was watching out for me and baby.
Previously, Barry and I could not agree on a baby name. He really wanted to name her Anna, and because of a dream I had, I really felt like we should name her Rose. When I read that Anna meant God is gracious. I decided I wanted that to be her name too.
We decided on a compromise and to name her Anna Rose.
She is very sweet, couldn't be more beautiful or more dear. She hardly ever cries. She is very alert and had zero trouble figuring out how to breastfeed. She is such a blessing to our family.
Her brothers and sisters already love her dearly. I already couldn't imagine our family without her.
More pictures in next post....
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