This might be my most favorite story I’ll ever tell… the birth story of our daughter, Lucy Laurel Deaver.
On Thursday, May 27th I went in for my 38 week check up. At that point I was 38.5 weeks pregnant and was a finger tip dilated and 60% effaced. I was feeling really uncomfortable and super swollen. They took my blood pressure, like they always do, and it was 150/90 (which is pretty high). I had a really great pregnancy up until then with no complications so having this high blood pressure was worrisome to my OB. She came back into the room and told me to head straight over to the hospital to get monitored and said that I could potentially be staying to be induced. I was completely shocked! I called my husband right away, and he rushed over to the hospital from work. We were anxious but also kind of excited that we could be meeting our baby that day! After getting hooked up to the machines and being monitored for an hour, my blood pressure ended up regulating (thank goodness) but I did have some protein in my urine. Because of the high blood pressure at my appointment and high protein in my urine, my doctor was worried about preeclampsia forming and wanted to induce me at 39 weeks to be safe. My mom had preeclampsia and hers also didn’t come on until 38 weeks (crazy!).
We scheduled our induction for Monday, May 31st at 8PM. That was Memorial Day. We spent the next two days getting our house prepared, making sure our hospital bags were all packed, and soaking in those last few moments of just the two of us! On the 31st, we went on a celebratory date to get some dinner at Red Robin, because it was right next to our hospital. We then headed over to the hospital and I’ll never forget how perfect the weather was while we were walking in. It had been chilly and rainy the entire weekend, but as we were walking in, the sun was going down and it was sunny and 70 degrees. We were so excited to meet our baby!
After getting into our room and changing into my gown, we met our nurse Kayla and she was SO sweet. She was really calm our entire delivery (which I absolutely loved). She hooked me up to the monitor and I was contracting on my own every 10 minutes, but they weren’t painful at all yet. They gave me my IV of electrolytes and then they gave me 1/2 a pill of Cytotec to soften my cervix. She said she would check me in 2 hours and then decide if I needed the other half of the pill or if they should just start Pitocin. After about an hour, my contractions started to pick up. They started small and not too painful but quickly became 2 minutes apart and were very intense! She checked me again at 1 am and I was 3 cm and 80-90% effaced. She said I didn’t need the other half of the Cytotec because I was contracting so well on my own. By 2 am, I couldn’t take the contractions anymore. We called for the epidural and my goodness am I grateful for the anesthesiologist. I told him when he was done that I was in love with him and he said he gets that all the time... LOL! I wasn’t feeling anything which was amazing, but quickly started to get shaky and my blood pressure dropped. A few nurses came in and started to flip me to my side. It was a little scary, but they all calmed me down and said it’s just a side effect of the epidural. My nurse then checked me again at 3:30 and I was 5 cm dilated and my water broke right after! Things moved really quick after that. She checked me again an hour later at 4:30am and I was 7cm. After that, she put my bed up really high and I was basically sitting completely up. She said this could help push the baby down and help gravity do its thing. Boy was she right. Within 30 minutes I went from a 7 to a 10 and it’s all thanks to putting my bed up.
It was time to push!!! I was so surprised that it was already that time and I was kind of nervous! I started to do practice pushes with the nurse and I couldn’t really tell if I was pushing... I couldn’t feel much (thank you epidural) but I remember I kept asking my nurse “am I pushing?!” And she kept reassuring me that I was but I needed to push harder. I pushed for 1 hour, and at 6:43am, our beautiful daughter was born. She wasn’t crying right away and instead of putting her right on my chest like I always imagined, Adam had to quickly cut her umbilical cord and they had to rush her over to the warmer to get suctioned out. She had swallowed a lot of amniotic fluid and wasn’t responding right away. It was the scariest moment of my life and as I was hysterically crying, all I kept asking was “is she okay?!” They told me that she was fine and then we finally heard that sweet little cry. The best noise ever and it gave us such a sense of relief! Adam was right there with her as she was getting suctioned out and a few minutes later, they finally brought her over to me and put her on my chest.
Seeing your baby for the first time is so indescribable and completely life changing! I am very grateful for my labor and delivery experience and for the great team of nurses and doctors we had who helped bring our sweet girl into the world!
Below are just a few pictures from our hospital stay. They are completely unfiltered and very very sacred to me.
My first photo with Lucy
2 hours after delivery
10 hours after delivery
36 hours after delivery. Our daughter, Lucy
