Our sweet, wonderful baby girl finally made her debut on July 21, 2016. She was actually 10 days early, so I shouldn't say "finally" but when you wait to meet someone for 10 whole months, it feels like forever!
I had an appointment the day before and my doctor stripped my membranes quite extensively.
The next morning I was laying in bed and I decided I wanted to have my baby that day. I contemplated what I could take or do to induce labor. ...
But first, I had some apricots to go pick. I was scheduled to meet the family at the "warehouse" aprict tree.
I got dressed and ready to go. I walked down stairs, shoes in hand when I stepped off the last stair when I felt a gush of water.
Did my water just break?? Naw..........
So I set to getting my shoes on.
More gush.
so I went to the bathroom and decided that was definitely not just a little tinkle.
To this point I didn't have any contractions and was only gushing small amounts.
Did my water break? Naw..............
After a few more moments I finally decided to alert Luke that my water MAY have broken.
I hesistated to leave to pick apricots, so I waited around the house for awhile. I notifiied my mom that I would need them to come get the kids if I were in fact needing to go to the hospital.
Still no cotractions... but a continuation of random spurts of fluid.
Evenually I decided I needed to go to the hospital so I had Luke come home from work.
We got in to the Castleview hospital, got checked in and in my gown. The nuse performed a little test on my undergarments to determine if it was my water breaking or not. IT WAS!!!
But wait.. I still didnt' have any contractions! It was now about 11:00 am and 2 hours after my water broke. She nurse gave me a few tasks to do to start contractions and they worked! I really didn't want to have Pitocin, so it was fortunate I could start contracting without it.
Things progressed very slowly. Around 4 pm I was in quite a bit of pain. I held out for a few more hours but eventually the pain was intense enough I decided it was time for an epidural.
This epidural was one of the worst experiences of my life. It hurt so much and I was get spasms in my back everytime he would start putting medicine in. It was very very horrible, but Luke was there to hold me (even when my leg reflexed and kicked him in the shin) I was so relieved when the epidural was finally over and starte to work.
After that I progressed quite fast, but I started to feel really sick. I had woken up with a bit of a sore throat. At this point I started to shake and have the chills... I was spiking a fever. It was long enough from the time my water first broke they starte to worry that I had some infection.
The doctor told my sister that if this wasn't my 4th baby, I would have definitely been taken back for a c-section.
At 9:30 pm our sweet Vera was finally born! It has been a long hard day but that wonderful little baby girl came with only about 2 pushes. Unfortunately, she also had a fever at birth. Which makes sense.. she had just come out of a hot tub, with my fever wreaking havoc.
They did not take any chances... immediately she was taken from my arms and equipt with an IV for antibiotics in case it was some sort of infection.
It's heartbreaking to wait so long to meet your baby and then you only get a few seconds before they rush them off because they might be sick.
Holding Daddy's hand when he's with you in the nursery. So grateful he could be with her while she got her IV set up.
Her little IV in her hand was heartbreaking, but she didn't get any sicker and never got a fever after that first temperature test.
Due to her IV she did have to stay an extra day in the hospital. We had a ton of visitors but it still felt like a REALLY long few days. I am always so anxious to get home, but we were relieved it was "boring" at the hospital because she really was doing so fine. So to pass time, we snuggled and loved on sweet baby Vera all that we could... when she wasn't being held and snuggled and loved on by her many visitors.
Starting with her ANXIOUS sisters:
Then Aunt Monica and her boys: Aden, Raleigh and Gauge
Auntie Joy
Grandpa Bert
Grandma Belinda
Even cousin Jayde came
Grandma Bonnie
Great Grandma Lake
Great Grandpa Lake
Then Uncle Chris, and he brought the boys again
Aunt Jana
Harely
Uncle James
Grandpa Neil
She struggled with her biliruban so she had to go spend "quality" time in the light box. That made for some even LONGER boring days at the hospital... at least when we could hold her it made the time pass quickly.
Daddy took the girls out to Wingers to spend some time with them.
The nurses gave her a sweet little peacock-colored bow
Ready to go home... just waiting on the doctor's last exam to make sure she didn't have any sort of infection. Thankfully, all was well and little Vera was finally ready to go home.
