Surfside Fun

Capturing the Joy at Surfside Beach

Just wanna eat those cheeks. 

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Pictures from the Delivery Room

holding daddy's finger :)

proud Grandad

proud mama

kirk and dr. Hulme

Sabrina's Birth Story

i was waiting to get some more pictures before i posted the birth story, but i figured that i can always post those later. i need to write this down before i forget the details!

i had been dilating about .5 cm per week in the month of April, and i was very effaced during that month too (about 80%). so my doctor kept saying that it looked like the baby could come at any day. my cervix was super favorable and sydney had come at 37 weeks...basically we were all holding our breaths, just so darn sure that this baby was going to come early.

i had my last doctor's check (i was 39 weeks) on april 30th, and i was 4.5 cm dilated and 90% effaced. these were all good stats because my induction date had been set for that coming wednesday, may 2nd. it looked like i was good to go...the baby just wasn't quite yet!

so i got the call the night before i was set to be induced: be at the hospital at 5 am (gross) and don't eat anything after midnight.  kirk and i worried we wouldn't get any sleep the night before, but we did. thank goodness. a friend had told me to wake up right before midnight to get some food in my stomach, because you never knew when you could eat again! i had some pizza and a pb&j.

we had had our hospital bags packed for a month (like i said, we were expecting this baby to come so much earlier), and sydney was already at grandma hill's house, so all i had to do that morning was take a shower with the hospital's fancy sponge that possessed magical cleaning powers. i personally thought this was silly...i was going to get dirty pretty quick. but i was obedient to the doctor's orders. :)

Birthing Machine!

Pumped and ready to go and get induced!

we were told that we were numero dos on the list, so i was thinking, "great! we'll be in super fast." not so. apparently may 2nd was a great day for women to spontaneously go into labor. when we got to the hospital, the nurse told us that all the rooms were full, but a few women had delivered their babies so hopefully we would get a room soon. we waited in the waiting room until about eleven am. thank goodness the couches were comfy! kirk and i napped a bit, and i watched a few episodes of my Korean drama, Secret Garden, on my mom's ipad. kirk encouraged me to watch shows instead of reading my book club book, Cutting for Stone, because apparently i got a little whiny about being hungry when i was not completely occupied. i mean we were forced to wait in a room with vending machines. how cruel is that for someone who isn't supposed to eat or drink??

well we finally got into our room about 11ish. we were assigned a super nice nurse, Sue, who had been at the hospital since 1980 (i found this out after the birthing). i gave her my birth plan, detailing that i wanted as much of an unmedicated delivery as possible, and stating what i wanted done if i had a c-section. she was super sympathetic about my first birthing experience and said she was determined to help me have a vbac if possible. yay!

they got me hooked up on the pitocin pretty fast (after doing the enema of course...that is always fun). i only had one good contraction on the pitocin though. what really got  me going was when Dr. Hulme came in and broke my water at around 12:30 pm. at that point i was at 5, and my contractions started coming hard and fast. 

holy cow. so. much. pain. the best way that i could cope with it was by bending over the hospital bed, face smooshed into the birthing ball set on top of the bed, and swaying back and forth...my booty sticking out of the hospital gown for the world to see. at some point i did use kirk as a prop, holding onto his shoulders and swaying. but i think his body heat made me too hot or something. it didn't help as much as the birthing ball. plus the bending over seemed to help with the back labor that was definitely happening.

i had taken some hypnobirthing classes with a friend in the ward, so kirk offered a few times to give me my ipod that had my hypnobirthing relaxation exercises on it. but the thought of doing anything but swaying and moaning and breathing through each contraction was just too much. in hindsight it probably would have helped, but the contractions were just coming way too close together for me to really act on anything but getting through that next contraction.

my mom was in the room with me, and i am so so glad. she had me focus on her eyes and kept telling me "it's just a wave. just get to the crest of the wave and it will come back down and be over. you can do this. just focus on my eyes. don't look away." she was such a help! between her coaching me when i got panicky and kirk lightly massaging my neck and pounding on my lower back, i knew i was taken care of. Sue of course was awesome as well.

i got to 10 cm with no epidural. i even pushed for a bit. the pushing was bliss compared to trying to ride the wave by just rocking back and forth. my body really was working with the contractions when i was pushing, and that felt great! but sabrina was definitely going to take a while to come out. i asked for an epidural, and was in heaven when they gave it to me.  my number one priority was to have a vbac, and if having an epidural helped me with that i was just fine. 

there was no clock in the room so i am not 100% sure when i had the epidural, but kirk and i figured out it was probably around 3ish that afternoon. the doctor came in to see how sabrina was doing, and that was when he told me she was turned sideways. so her position + my small pelvic outlet = very slow progress down the birth canal. when he reached in to turn the baby, the epidural had not completely kicked in. i definitely cried out when he did it. once the epidural had completely set in he actually was able to turn her. even with that though, she just wasn't coming out. she wasn't as stuck as sydney had been, but we would need extra help getting sabrina out.

so Dr. Hulme explained to me the potential reprucussions of using forceps to get the baby out. it could possibly damage my pelvic floor, but that often happened in normal birthing anyway. i was exhausted and eager to have my baby girl out. it sounded like a good idea to me, since she wasn't coming out any other way. 

so, after all the preparations were made, he waited until the next contraction and pulled our sabrina marie out at 5:46 pm. the feelings of ecstasy and relief just overcame me. they put her on my chest, all gooified and purple, and i was in love. i'll admit that was something that i wasn't super excited about, because seeing pics of other moms with their freshly-born baby on their chest just looked gross. but when it's your baby, it's so not gross. i was so happy! my baby was here AND i had done a vbac--something i had been eagerly praying for every since i saw that positive  pregnancy test. 


i did tear a little bit, so the doctor did the "repair" while they were cleaning sabrina off. kirk did lots of video taping (of the baby, of course) during this time, and then my mom took over while he held sabrina. i loved seeing kirk's reaction to sabrina's birth. both when they put her on my chest, and when he first held her, he definitely was tearing up. so adorable. i just grinned the whole time, and was reveling in the fact that i was so present and aware at this baby's birth. i remember with sydney's birth i was just so out of it with the morphine. i was happy but my senses and emotions were dulled. it was nice to be so awake this time. 

so that's my story and i'm stickin' to it. good job if you made it to the end! 

Then and Now...She's Gotten So Big!

Easter 2011--10 months old

Easter 2012--22 months old

Sydney looks SO different! I can't believe how fast they grow up. Birth story to come.