The Story.

Macie is 10 days old today. I have been meaning to tell the story of her grand entrance, but somehow I am a little swamped. What, with naps and nursing and nursing and eating and nursing and all.

I am a little exhausted. I am trying something new tonight and putting her in a different room. I need some sleep and her constant "eh eh eh" noises keep me awake. And then Chloe ends up in our bed too. So by 6 AM I am ready to kill the rest of the Mortensen clan. I DO NOT want a communal bed.

That being said, now I can continue on. Oh wait. Macie is crying.

Sigh.

I'll be back.

Well I took a long break.

So the different room thing didn't work. I tried, but exhaustion won and she ended up in my bed again.

Dangit.

Okay. Well NOW here is the story.

February 4th (Friday) was just an ordinary day. I watched my friend's daughter in the morning and then my friend Robyn came and paid me a visit. I was excited to see Robyn, she lives in Flagstaff and I hardly ever to get to see her. She brought me some headbands for the baby, just like she did last time for Chloe.

So Robyn and I were chatting, and in the midst of it, I sat down and suddenly felt like I had peed my pants.

My first thought was, dang. Now I have no bladder control.

Well it kept happening. And I became more and more confused.

After Robyn left I called my Dad to get his advice. He told me that my water might have broke.

I asked, so if it did, what does that mean?

And he told me, well they would admit you to the hospital and induce labor.
I was shocked.

It hadn't occurred to me until then that I could be having my baby very soon. I became really excited, although I tried not to get too excited because I didn't want to get my hopes up, after all. I was not sure yet if my water had broke.

I called Don and told him I needed him to come home and that we might be having the baby soon. He was shocked as well. "But we aren't ready! We are supposed to have a couple weeks still!"

He came home and we packed our bags just in case. I had my Dad come and pick Chloe up and then we all headed over to the hospital which is literally 2 minutes away from my house.

By the time I got to the hospital there was no doubt my water broke and I knew I was having this baby.

But here was the catch. I had to have all my blood thinning medication out of my body before I could get an epidural. And that was not going to happen until 11:00 AM the next morning. I was admitted to the hospital at 6:00 PM, so I was very nervous that I would go into labor before 11:00 AM and I could not get an epidural.

Well I was put in a delivery room and hooked up to all the monitors and the plan was to just wait it out and see what happened. In the meantime they were pumping me full of fluids and giving me the strep B stuff (penicillin) through the IV. Oh news flash, that stuff burns! I felt like I broke my arm.

I had a hard time sleeping. I was excited and anxious, and I had to get up and pee every hour, which was like a 20 minute process.

I got through the night and no signs of impending labor. Maybe a tiny cramp here or there but that was it.

As the clock got closer and closer to 11:00 AM my anxiety level started to decrease.

At noon I was induced. And boy, that was fast acting. A half hour into it I was feeling it. The contractions were consistently 3 minutes apart, and they got heavier and heavier fast. I asked for my epidural before it got too bad because I knew it would take some time to actually get the epidural. By the time I got it, 2 PM, I was getting desperate. And then my Knight in shining armor came in and stuck my back with a needle and suddenly life had meaning again.

After that is was smooth sailing. I was happy as a clam and was able to actually get some rest. My right leg was a tree stump while my left leg had a little more feeling. My right leg fell off my bed once and after several failed attempts, I had to call in my nurse to put it back on my bed.

At about 5:30 PM my doctor came in and checked me and I got the news-I was ready to push! I thought, well this is all going way too smoothly!

And so, I started to push. I could tell by the looks of the 50 billion people in the room that I was not making too much progress. But they kept trying to encourage me.

After about an hour and a half, my Doctor said to me, "You know, I think you need a c-section. The baby's head is not straight and she is stuck she can't get out. You can keep pushing, but my honest opinion is that you need a c-section."

Well I was pretty upset. I had not gone through all this work to end up with a c-section. And the thought of having to recovery from both kinds of delivery made me really depressed.

I asked if everyone could leave for a few minutes so I could be alone with Don and decide what course of action I should take.

The first thing I did when we were alone was to tell Don to call his parents and tell them to start praying. Within minutes we had his parents and siblings praying for us.

My Dad came in the room and asked if I wanted a second opinion. He was already dressed in his scrubs because he had been at the hospital doing a c-section.

At first I said no. It sounded really awkward. But then Don convinced me to do it.

So my Dad looked and told me that he thought I could do it, and that I should keep pushing. By this time my epidural was wearing off and the feeling was coming back. I was not in pain, but I could feel that urge to push that I have never felt before. And so with my Dad and Don in the room, I pushed. It was a really cool experience to have my Dad being involved with the process, I would have never planned it that way, but just so happened that it worked out that way and it as an experience I will never forget.

My Dad left the room to go get my Doctor and the rest of the crew, and when they came in they were all surprised by the progress I had made.

My Doctor said, "We should leave the room more often. Guess your prayer worked."

So we resumed our positions and after about 5 sequences of pushing, little Macie entered the world at 7:44 PM, weighing 7 pounds 11 ounces.

I felt like the stars had aligned for me that day and that all had worked out in my favor, and I was blessed with an unforgettable experience. I was on cloud 9 for days.
And I still am...well more like cloud 5. I'm a little tired.

Thanks for reading.