molly's birth

Hey everyone! Little Miss Molly is such a sweet baby - we are just loving every minute with her.

Here is the general birth story in case anyone wants details...
A disclaimer: after 8 birthing classes and 9 months of preparing, we're kind of desensitized to the whole thing, but I'll try not to be too gory!

Right about 7pm last Wednesday, April 29, my water broke. I was cooking dinner, was in the kitchen... lovely! haha. JC was about 5 minutes from home, thank goodness. :) Most doctors induce pretty immediately if your water breaks without contractions, but we weren't sure what the midwives at the birth center would recommend since they are more naturally-minded. We called and they told us to drive over and get checked out - make sure my water really did break, etc. We packed our last minute things into our bags "just in case" we weren't going to come home. Haha!

When we got there around 8:30 we confirmed that my water did break. The midwife got to the birth center around 9pm, and recommended we induce labor since I wasn't experiencing any contractions. She said that they wanted us to have the baby within 24 hours one way or the other! If we tried natural ways to induce labor it could be the next night we'd have the baby after not sleeping for 36 hours, and chances are we'd need to medically induce anyway. And, the risk of infection goes up the longer you wait to have the baby.

So, we decided to take her advice and take a contraction-inducing drug called Cytotec. We did around 9:20, and it worked quickly!

Contractions were really going by 10:30, and I kind of skipped over the early labor stage. My contractions were about 3-5 minutes apart quickly, and they got hard pretty fast.

JC was the best - helping me breath and being SO encouraging. At one point when I was 7cm dilated, I was like - "most women would've had the epidural by now, RIGHT??" - they assured me that yes, most women would have had the epidural. For some reason that made me feel a lot better.

Next time I was checked I was at 10cm and ready to start pushing! Pushing lasted 58 minutes, according to their record. Not so bad for a first child they told me, but dang it was hard. I couldn't fathom how I was ever going to get that baby out, but in the end it did happen!

It was such a beautiful thing - Molly came screaming her head off at 2:38am! JC caught her and plopped her down on me. After a little bit, we realized we didn't know if she was a girl or boy, so JC turned her over and announced that we had a girl - Hello Miss Molly!!

People who say they don't believe in miracles haven't seen a baby be born! We thank God for this little life. She is such a blessing. It's so overwhelming at this point it's hard to put into words!

Here are some pictures from the birth center afterward - JC gives Molly her first bath and got her dressed for the first time!