Reagan's Birth

Our baby has finally arrived! Reagan Lane Brunson was born at 2:32 pm on Tuesday, June 21st. She weighed in at 7 lbs 4 oz and was 20 inches long. We could not be more happy with her- she is such a perfect little angel. And totally healthy!

I want to remember everything about her birth experience, so I'm going to share it on here, even though it will probably be too detailed for most people.

First of all, I was soo disappointed that she wasn't born on Fathers Day, especially since I had been having very frequent contractions all weekend (luckily they weren't painful). But I got over it and was able to run some errands on Monday with my mom. Monday night my contractions started getting more intense, and around 1 am they became very painful and were about 8-10 minutes apart. Lance and I realized that we weren't going to be getting any sleep that night, so we watched Arrested Development until around 3:30, when we decided the contractions were close enough to go to hospital. We checked to the hospital around 4 am, and I was in a lot of pain at this point. Unfortunately, the hospital has a policy of waiting an hour to admit first time mothers to make sure they are really in labor. So even though they checked me and I was dilated to a 5, I wasn't actually admitted to the hospital until after 5:30 and the epidural didn't take effect until almost 7. By that point, I though I was going to die. I usually don't handle pain very well, and the contractions were so frequent. I can't imagine going through this experience without the drugs. I have a lot of respect for women who can, but it's definitely not for me. However, once the epidural kicked in and everything below my hips started to go numb, I felt great.
In fact, Lance and I both both dozed off and on all morning, with the nurses coming in periodically to check me. By 10:30 I was only dilated to a 6+, so they decided to give me some pitocin to speed things up. Half and hour later, I was dilated to a 9! By noon I was completely dilated, but the doctor decided to have me wait an hour and a half to start pushing. Apparently this is a technique known as 'rest and descend', and I was a big fan. Basically, the contractions did the same thing in terms of moving the baby down that pushing would have. At 1:30, the doctor had me start pushing. (On a side note, apparently my doctor was out of town this week. I was a little irritated that he hadn't mentioned that he would be gone the week I was due, and I had to find out at the hospital that someone I never met would be delivering my baby. But the other doctor was great). By the time I started pushing, the baby was far enough down that they could already see her head! I had no idea that pushing would be so exhausting. It wasn't really painful, because I couldn't feel anything but pressure, but it was so tiring because you have to tense pretty much every muscle in your body. I can't imagine having to push for any longer than I did, and I'm sooo glad I got the epidural so that I wasn't completely dead from the pain at this point. I pushed for an hour- and then out popped daughter! She was a posterior baby, so even though her head was down like it should be, her face was the wrong direction. The doctor was really impressed that I was able to push her out that quickly! It was the strangest sensation when she was born, and when they held her up and showed her to me I couldn't stop crying. She was so little! And she had the biggest cone head ever! Seriously. Luckily that went way down in a couple hours.
Apparently she had pooped sometime while I was pushing, so they had to call some extra nurses in quick to clean her off before she swallowed any. But she had great color and volume and the nurses rated her a 9! I tore just a little bit during the delivery, so the doctor had to stitch me up. I just couldn't believe my little baby was here, and I got to hold her on my chest for a little while and cuddle her and even try to nurse a little bit.
I was so sad when they took her (and Lance) away for a bit to do some tests. After they cleaned me up and moved me from Labor and Delivery to Mother/Baby, they brought her back. I don't remember too much about the rest of that day except that I was so happy to be with my baby, and that I was in a lot of pain. I had no idea that such a little baby could pretty much destroy your whole body. I literally felt like I had been hit by a truck, and my whole body was sore and achy. I could barely move, and going to the bathroom was quite a (frequent) chore. Thank goodness for pain medication! The 48 hours in the hospital after the birth are were kind of blur. We tried to sleep as much as we could, but baby had to be fed a lot, and nurses were coming in all the time to check on us. My mom came to visit a lot, and Reagan loves her Grandma!
On the morning of the second day, we realized that Reagan was not feeding well at all, and in fact she hadn't eaten anything for like 9 hours. She had a hard time nursing at first because she sucked on her tongue, and then she kind of gave up because it was too hard. Her blood sugar dropped really low, and the nurses were going to put a feeding tube in her. We were really worried, but we said a prayer and, after an hour and a half of trying, she started nursing in earnest! We were so relieved and grateful.
She has been nursing pretty good since then, with the biggest challenge being keeping her awake long enough for her t0 get full. It was nice to be in the hospital for a couple days with so much support staff, and the hospital food was so good! But by Thursday afternoon, I was definitely ready to be home with my baby. Oh also, Lance was basically the best daddy ever in the hospital. He changed every single diaper (and even got pooped and peed on once!) and held he whenever she was being fussy so I could sleep. I'm so grateful I have such a good baby daddy!