The Miracle of Birth

Evelyn Marie Hansen was born on September 4th at 12:37 am. She weighed 5 lbs 11 oz and measured 19.25 inches long. She has lots of really dark hair and it looks like her eyes might be brown. Her birth was the most amazing experience I've had. Her pictures are posted here.

I went to a routine doctor's visit on the morning of the 3rd and my blood pressure and everything had finally gotten high enough that they decided to induce me that afternoon. I called James and told him to come home from work. Then I frantically packed because we hadn't even packed our hospital bags yet. When he got home we headed back over to the doctor's office.

They put a catheter in to help widen my cervix and sent me over to the hospital. I started having contractions right away. After about 3 hours they checked and I was dilated to a 4 and having pretty good contractions so the catheter came out and then let the labor progress naturally for a while.

I was hooked up to a fetal monitor, an IV, and a magnesium drip for my blood pressure. It was definitely not how I wanted the labor to go. I wanted so badly to go naturally but I was afraid if they gave me Pitocin it would get unbearably painful. I was glad they hadn't given it to me yet and things were moving along pretty well.

After another few hours of laboring they checked again and I was only 5.5 centimeters dilated so they started me on a little bit of Pitocin to help speed things up. That's when the contractions started getting serious. Luckily James was an awesome coach and helped me breathe through them all.

The best part of the whole labor was the Seahawks football game that started in the evening. Even though I had a hard time paying close attention to it, the game really helped keep my mind off the pain and helped me just get through each contraction. It made time go by so much faster! :)

At about 11:30 the contractions started getting to be too much. It was only a couple of hours after they had told me I was 5.5 so I figured we had a long while to go still to get all the way ready. I was about ready to give up so I asked for an epidural. Unfortunately, that meant I had to endure the most painful contractions sitting up and sitting still while they put the epidural in. It was really hard!

Sitting up for the epidural must have maneuvered Evelyn into the right position because when I laid back down I really felt like pushing. They checked me and I was completely dilated and ready to go so they told me to start pushing. This was at about 12:15. The doctor showed up and 20 minutes later Evelyn was born. Pushing felt so amazing. It felt so much better than the painful contractions and when Evelyn was finally born the relief was incredible.

The epidural didn't even have time to take effect so I consider this a natural birth as far as getting through the pain was concerned. :) I definitely plan on doing the next one naturally as well if circumstances allow. Now I know what the worst feels like and it actually wasn't anywhere near as bad as my nightmares.

It was so amazing to finally see Evelyn for the first time. She looked so perfect right from the beginning. She was so tiny and so beautiful. I couldn't take my eyes off her. I loved her so much from the very beginning. Even now I can't think about her being hurt or being sick. I can't watch movies with kids getting hurt in them or even little baby animals without wanting to cry because I would be so frantically sad if it were Evie. I already love our little girl so much it's incredible. I will write another post about her first week in this world soon. It's been full of so many ups and downs.