Steele Livin' Y'All: from A to Z: Annie Lynn Steele

My due date was April 7th. At my appointment on the 3rd, Dr. Nash told me I should have my baby the afternoon of the 8th since she would be on call that day. I didn't have any pelvic exams this time, because Nash makes them optional unless you are going to induce, and I will always opt out of having someone poke around my cervix. I did learn this appointment I had indeed been having braxton hicks contractions. Dr. Nash asked if I was having any, I said no, and she happened to be feeling my stomach and she said "umm, you are having one right now". Apparently that wasn't the baby moving. So the morning of the 8th, a Tuesday, I got up, made my bed and started doing chores around the house. Alice was home that day- we played outside that morning. I had been noticing my braxton hicks more often, but they weren't painful, just noticable. As I was putting Alice down for a nap around noon, I started to get stomach cramps. Within the hour they were pretty painful, albeit not really timeable. Around 1:30 or so I thought they started getting closer together so I timed them- they were 8 minutes apart. I called Jenny and told her to be on call. Let me be clear here- when I told her to be on call I fully expected I'd be calling her at like 11pm to come over. However I had also called my mom and told her to head this way- she had to drop Evan off and finish packing (I hadn't had any labor signs before today), thinking she'd have lots of time to get here.

At 3pm my contractions were 4 minutes apart and I could barely move. They hurt. I called the doctor and was told to head in. So I packed my bag- my how different the second one is, and Zack called Jenny to ask her to head this way now. By the time Jenny got here at 4 or 4:30 I could barely talk and stand the contractions were so damn bad- cramps and the worst pain ever in my back. The dreaded back labor had found me this time.

Thanks for the picture Jenny, and for the HUGE help

of watching Alice and Max.

And then we hit traffic and I thought I might die. But I didn't, turns out most people don't die from contractions. I don't remember exact times, this was a month ago at this point, but I do remember every nurse we talked to asking me if I was ok. Probably because we had to stop 42 times on the way to my room for me to attempt to breath through another contraction. We check in, get to the room and the nurses are being so slow. I need pain medicine NOW. It's like 5ish at this time. What feels like an eternity later, I'm in the bed and Dr. Nash is there to check me. I'm terrified they are going to tell me I'm not in real labor and I have to go home. I would not have been able to. Seriously. I was prepared to wait and labor things out until late night, middle of the morning. Based on my experience with Alice. Lucky for me I was 5 1/2 cm dilated. Umm, what?!?!? The baby was going to come today, and soon. And she was sunny side up, hence the horrendous back pain. And the best part- Dr. Nash said I better get that epidural now or I won't have time. Seriously, what is going on?!?!? Am I really in labor and going to have a baby? Hello, reality.

Things got really real when 1. Nash told me I needed to stand and kneel over the bed to get the baby to flip and 2. the nurses said it would take at least an hour to get the epidural. Something about blood work nonsense- I told them I could not wait that long. So they gave me a pain med in the IV to take the edge off, it did, barely, and then they did something amazing. They came back like 10 minutes later with the anestheologist, who asked me some questions about my health and pregnancy and then miraculously gave me the epidural because he wasn't worried about my blood work. I lucked out again- he's very experienced and willing to bend the rules. I love him and if I had my wits about me would have proposed.

So some time passes and Dr. Nash comes to check me again and barely touches me and my water breaks. I'm at a 9.5. It's 7pm. Oh and the baby had flipped- yay! She said we could get ready to push now if I wanted to. I didn't see a reason to wait. I can't remember for sure if I pushed or not at this point- I think maybe I did. But then she got paged to a more urgent delivery, so I had to wait. It was just us and this one nurse then, who told me approximately 432 times not to push and she really hopes I don't have the urge (my heroic nurses of the epidural times had gone off shift). This did not inspire confidence in me, but I didn't feel the need to push, only a lot of pressure. I don't remember feeling that much pressure with Alice- it wasn't really pain but it wasn't painless. That makes no sense, I'm aware. At some point Nash comes back, I push for like 15 minutes- it was hard, and SO DIFFERENT than with Alice. I'm not talking about what I felt, but how I was treated too, like I'd done this before and should be a pro. Dr. Nash picked up on my "what the eff" face and started to guide me through things. Whew. So yeah, like 15 minutes later, at 8:08 PM I had a baby. And that baby was not crying. And that was not cool. No one was telling me anything, not even Zack but I looked and saw she had the cord nice and tight around her neck. At the point Dr. Nash told had unraveled it mostly and told her to stop crying to show me she was alright- she did. That all happened in like 15 seconds or something but it felt like eternity. Then the doctor and 2 nurses were like "oh she's so big"! And they kept saying that as the handed me this bloody, puffy yet perfect little baby. We did not instantly click. Well, I bet that was one sided. I was so overwhelmed and in shock and holy shit this is my daughter but it's not Alice and it was confusing and exhausting and not magical. I should feel bad saying that but it's the truth. It wasn't until around 2am that morning, when we were in our room, alone and quiet that I really fell in love with her.

Anyways they weighed my giant baby (8 pounds 11 oz and 20.5 inches!), and then I nursed her. They sewed me up- uncomfortable, yikes, and we just hung out for a while- it wasn't until like 2 hours later that they took her to the nursery for whatever they do there. Of course Zack went with them. And then Jenny and Kari appeared! And Blair in spirit, something lame about being out of town for work or something. ;)

And they brought us food (little did they know that would be our dinner, midnight snack and breakfast the next day, since the hospital forgot to feed us). We hung out while Annie and Zack were doing there thing and I got cleaned up. They are my family, it's cool. Oh and obviously my mom got here and took over Alice duty by this point.

So yeah, at midnight or so we got our room- a tiny one, not normal but they were very busy. I didn't care. And we settled in for the night. The next morning Dr. Nash checked in on me before leaving- I told her I was pretty uncomfortable still (more so than I remember from last time), but that's not surprising since I just had a giant baby. And that was that. We stayed in the hospital- our friends visited, my mom brought Alice by to meet Annie and that was emotional and overwhelming so I took my first shower. Annie passed her hearing test, we changed rooms to a normal room, Guinn saved my life by surprising us with breakfast tacos, Blair finally came back into town and made up for it by visiting with us for like, half a day, some other stuff happened in a blur and then we were home. A family of 4. With a big dog and thank the rainbows and unicorns a Nina to help us navigate the next week.

That's how Annie Lynn Steele completed our family (Lynn is my sister's middle name btw).

And that is all I feel like typing for now.