Jake signing in here to update the world on the newest addition. Laura can add the real story later, but I'll chip in my two cents from the cheap seats. The short version on the birth: pain and woe, repeat over and over, then out comes a beautiful baby girl.
Laura started contractions on Feb 17th at around 9:30pm, although they were still minor enough that we were monitoring them and going to sleep at around 11pm (or at least I did). Laura continued to track the contractions which increased in frequency and intensity to the point that she tapped me at midnight to announce that we probably needed to head to the hospital. I was excited until I saw the clock and realized I in fact hadn't gotten a good night's sleep and that we were apparently going to do this thing in the middle of the night again (repeat from babies past!) Off we went, with Laura being excited and handling things extremely well.
Got to the hospital around 12:45am and went from triage to birthing room over the course of tne next hour. Laura continued to act like the model pregnant lady, while I was groggily (sp?) flipping through "Garden & Gun" magazine, wondering (a) who in the world is the target of such a magazine, (b) how do those two concepts go together, and (c) how am I going to provide any assistance to this birthing process in my tired and grumpy state. I hope no one really noticed - and hopefully Laura doesn't really remember that part.
At around 1:45am we finally get to the birthing room and start the fluids and, most importantly, the antibiotics to prevent what I call the "staph B infection" from spreading to the baby from mommy at birth. This is actually called "group B strep" but somehow I repeatedly mix this up, thus continually branding me as an uninformed idiot in the discussions with various nurses and doctors. Laura, of course, always gets it right!
Laura is still breathing well and handling things like an old pro as the contractions get closer and closer together. Dialation was a little over a centimeter when we entered the hospital and needs to get to around four centimeters before we can reach for the golden chalice of modern birthing pain management - the epidural. (Note that at one point in the pregnancy, Laura had read enough about going natural that she was ready to do it, to realize the high that many said they experience after and through birth. That desire faded as we got closer to the actual birth!)
By 3:30am, the labor had very much intensified. Laura was still handling things so well it seemed (to me) like she was almost faking it, but asked to have the nurse go through the very painful process of checking her cervix (Laura's cervix checks have seemed to have typically been more painful than average). This time around, the cervix was five centimeters, prompting Laura to immediately call for the anesthesiologist. We get the usual, "he's on his way", but of course that guy never seems to come soon enough. At this point Laura is in a lot of pain and letting those of us in the room know about it, but still making good progress - too good, in fact.
Within the next half hour, a Doctor Noelle Clark comes in to check Laura out. She will deliver the baby, and Laura had given me the early warning that she looks very young - we always speculate that we want the doctor to be young enough to know the latest technology, but old enough to have good experience. Doctor Clark has the young part down, and ultimately seems to put on a good front, at least, regarding the experience part. She definitely has a very authoritative air, which at that point, given my (and the nurse's) weak and somewhat ignorant directives to Laura on breathing and relaxing, was very much needed. I think that authoritative bit is something the med schools drill into you somehow, which sometimes irks me but at times like these is pretty comforting. Doctor Clark takes over and both tells Laura firmly how to breath and checks her out. Laura has quickly progressed to over 9.5-10 centimeters and little time between contractions. Uh-oh. Laura realizes, as do I, that it's going to be unlikely she's going to get the epidural in time, i.e. she goes natural without having really intended to from the outset. At this point, I think Laura is going to flip out, but she seems remarkably non-plussed about getting on with the pushing.
Laura is clearly in a lot of pain. She's yelling and shedding a few tears, but, with the coaching/orders from Doctor Clark, she is getting through it. Her legs go up in the stirrups, and they show her how she really needs to push (note we went epidural with the other girls, so this whole intense pain at this stage is entirely new to us). Over the course of what seemed to be about three or four contractions, Laura sucked in a deep breath, put her chin down to her chest and blew out and pushed as hard as she could through the searing pain. On about the fourth try, out slips the baby's head and with a little additional push, out slips the rest of baby! A baby girl! I found I really wasn't fazed at all by this announcement of the sex, because I had never believed this might be a boy and Laura was so focused on the pain and getting this over with that she really didn't care at that point.
The baby "team" took the newlly named "Anna McKuin" over for inspection while Doctor Clark sewed things up with Laura. Laura had done incredibly well through this whole thing and I am extremely proud of her. However, she will be more than happy to counsel anyone on the benefits of epidural over what she went through and claims very adamantly that she will never do that again (in any manner, shape or form)!
GREAT JOB MOMMY and GREAT JOB BABY ANNA!!!
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