Introducing our sweet little girl!! Katelyn Alice Gentile. She was born Monday April 8, 2013 at 3:10am, 7 pounds 14 ounces and 20 1/4 inches long.
Her due date was April 7th and I had this hunch that she wasn't going to be arriving anytime soon. People always have said every pregnancy is different and not to expect what happened with your first will happen with the second. But I'm convinced my body would hold a baby for 42+ weeks which I just didn't want to happen. I had a super cool midwife schedule an induction on miss Katelyn's due date April 7th. We were scheduled to arrive at 5:30 am for the induction (same time we went in for Luke's induction). I was so excited and anxious that night it was hard to sleep. When my alarm woke me up I saw a missed call from the hospital saying they've had one emergency after another and to call back in a few hours to see if they had a bed available. Well every two hours since 5:30 am I would call the hospital to see if they had any beds available and their answer was always no, try calling in a couple of hours. So, 4:30 pm rolls by and I call the hospital again, by this point they know me and they tell me I can come in! Dave and I rush and get our things and hurry to the hospital.
We get there and fill out paperwork and are quickly taken to our room where they begin setting me up with IV fluids and pitocin. I had the same experience with Luke except, with Luke, I was curious to know what real labor pains/contractions felt like so I held off on getting the epidural until after they broke my water. I felt that pain and it was excruciating. I decided this time around I didn't want to feel ANY pain so I planned to get my epidural before they broke my water.
Right before they broke my water the anesthesiologist arrives and sets up my epidural. My nurse goes over possible reactions/side-effects to the epidural but I quickly ignore since I figured I was a veteran and had no reactions with Luke. After the doc put my epidural in and seconds after he left my nurse and Dave are talking over me and all of a sudden I slowly am unable to hear them, my eyesight becomes blurred to almost nothing and I have this overwhelming nausea come over me. I, in slow motion tell them I can't see or hear and feel nausea's and the nurse quickly adds ephedrine to my IV. Almost immediately I come too and can hear and see again. I looked at Dave and he looked worried. They said my heart rate dropped and my blood pressure dropped to 70/43. Dave said I almost went into --- shock. Well this continued on for the next 45 minutes and finally Dave said, can we just turn the epidural off?! {I feel I should mention during this time of my blood pressure and heart rate dropping, strong Kate remained unscathed by the side-effects
The anesthesiologist came back in and suggested the same thing. Once they turned the epidural off I felt great and it had already kicked in enough for my lower body to go numb so I wasn't feeling any contractions. They suggested it remain off until I feel pain again and then they can come back in and add another bollis. I felt good for a couple of hours without pain and then I started to feel a level 3 pain on a scale of 1-10. I told my nurse and she called the anesthesiologist. He of course, was in the OR at the time and said it would take 30 minutes to get to me. When she got off the phone with him my pain immediately went from a 3 to an 8! I started to feel every intense contraction and it was incredibly painful. The contractions were 2 minutes apart but would last for 45 seconds so I would have a little over a minute to recover from it, my body was shaking they were so intense.
Finally the anesthesiologist's PA came in and gave me a dose of the epidural. He said it would take 15 minutes to kick in. I was thinking to myself, there is no way I even have 15 minutes! I felt like Kate was coming at any moment. My nurse checked me and said I was 7 centimeters and fully effaced. Fifteen minutes later I still feel all the pain and I begin to feel pressure. My nurse checks and tells me I can start pushing. I start crying at this point because I've realized that I'm going to have to deliver and feel all the pain! The epidural still didn't kick in and for some reason my body wasn't reacting to it. I give my first push, which actually gives me some relief, after the pushing itself was excruciatingly painful. My nurse checks me and then has the nerve to tell me I have to stop pushing. She said Kate was crowning and we had to wait for the midwife to come back. Nurses aren't allowed to catch babies! I was thinking to myself you've got to be kidding me!? So, while gasping for air I tell her okay when in my mind I think, heck no, I won't stop pushing! When I feel my next contraction come on I start pushing {discretely}. Well I must not have been too discrete because my nurse looks over and says, you have to stop pushing! So, I'm yelling, I can't it hurts too much and look at Dave and beg him to just catch her if she comes out. Finally my midwife arrives and I can start pushing again. I push 8 more times and she's almost there when I let out a scream because at this point I felt like I was going to explode down there. My midwife shoots the surrounding area with lidocaine which was SO painful and then I push again and out comes Kate! All the pain subsides immediately and I see our beautiful girl with a full thick head of hair {explains my chronic heart burn for 9 months}. She was beautiful and thankfully only 7 pounds 14 ounces. I can't imagine the pain if she was any larger!
Hear she is with us in the hospital. Despite my epidural not working we had a great experience. Her big brother Luke came to visit the next day along with so many of our friends and family. Mommy was so proud of how well he did at the hospital.
