Jane Has Arrived!

Jane Susan Ezell made her way into the world on December 30, 2011 at 12:46 in the afternoon. She is 6lbs 15oz and 19.5 inches long! Now here is how I imagined our new baby girl~

As of last night, this is our new reality~

Jane has been in the NICU since late last night for repeatedly turning the color of a blueberry, along with a few other minor irregularities. The Neonatologist discussed with us last night all of the different possibilities for why she might be having these issues and there were quite a few scary possibilities. After a night full of x-rays, blood tests and even a spinal tap (poor baby!) we are waiting on results but it is looking optimistic that her main issue is that she has swallowed a ton of fluid and wasn't in the birth canal long enough to squeeze it all out.

We are hoping and praying that this is the extent of her issues, but she will be here under observation likely until at least Monday. It is definitely not fun to see your new baby with an IV, tons of wires and a tube to her stomach. Poor thing isn't allowed to eat anything right now and even when she is, it will be a few days before she's allowed to nurse.

Anyway, enough scary and serious stuff for you? Well, here is the brief story of Janie's birth for those of you who are interested! I started having contractions at 4:45 in the afternoon on the 29th and after they hung around for an hour I called my OB's after hours line where they suggested that due to my history of fast labors I should head to the hospital immediately.. Woo Hoo!

We arrived here and were set up in a triage room on the L&D floor where I found out that I was only 3cm dilated..... weird for me. I had a lesson in faith here as each contraction was a result of prayer. I knew I needed to be admitted but I also knew that I was borderline from their perspective. Every 5 minutes I prayed that God would grant another contraction strong enough to convince them to admit me. If I didn't pray, I didn't contract. It reminded me of the power of prayer and of my complete dependence on God for every aspect of my life. The doctor decided to admit me after all because of my previous fast labors and because I was group B Strep positive and it takes a minimum of 4 hours to get the antibiotics into my system to protect Jane from the strep (which is nasty stuff.... Google it if you never want to sleep again :P)

In a very un-Abby-in-labor move, I continued to not progress and by the morning I was...... 3 freaking centimeters. ARG. The L&D floor at the hospital where I delivered had every single room full by this time (I had gotten the second to last one) and they were talking about sending me home since I hadn't progressed. Which begged the question, with contractions every 3-5 minutes, when do I come back? Oh, and will there be a room for me then? Well, when the doctor busted in around 8 am (she is another doctor from the practice I go to and she is a force of nature.... kind of overgrown kid mixed with stand up comedian mixed with Tasmanian devil and yet she knows exactly what she's doing and you can tell... make sense? ;-) and the first words out of her mouth were, "Do you want the baby in or out?". The answer was a resounding OUT!

Despite my aversion to interventions, she was breaking my water within about 5.2 seconds of my answer (Tasmanian devil... remember?) and finally we started to get somewhere. I dilated 2 more cm within an hour and 15 minutes or so and continued to make decent (albeit SLOW for me) progress after that. The nurse started me on a small amount of pitocin to get my contractions closer together and at first I was anxious about how it might affect the pain level I was experiencing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the contractions still very much bearable and really not that bad.

Jane continued to take her time even after water breaking and pitocin (two things I was very opposed to previously because of increased c-section rates, but I felt that the water at the very least was necessary in my situation) and I wasn't ready to push until 4.5 hours after my initial intervention. Now, transition contractions (8cm to 10 cm) have always hurt like the dickens in each of my labors, but usually I have 3-4 before I'm ready to push (I was SO spoiled) instead of an hour and a half of them like I had this time.... yowsers. Anyhoo, when it was time to push, Jane finally did one thing typical to my labors and came out FAST! She actually beat her sibs by coming out on the first big push and I was grateful that 20 hours of labor wasn't followed by a long time pushing too!

Wow, did I say brief? Sorry, I've never had this much happen in a labor so it took more than usual to detail it :) We feel incredibly blessed that God allowed me another safe delivery with no c-section and no pain meds. It is only by his grace that these things are possible. Anyhoo, I'm going to cut it off here and just say that we are thrilled with our new little girl and are looking forward to taking her home soon!

Oh yeah, Jane's random holiday was VERY random.... National Bicarbonate of Soda Day. BUT Jane was born on Nate's birthday and our wedding anniversary so it's a pretty special day to us already :)