Marlee Ann

Our newest addition, Marlee Ann arrived a few days ago. She was born on Monday, April 30-barely- at 11:20 pm. Our little angel was 6# 12 oz, and was 21 inches long. Pretty dainty considering my GDM. She is just beautiful!

After begging my doctor to get her out, he scheduled me to be induced for May 3rd, today. Monday morning, I reported in for work much to my unhappiness. I agreed to be scheduled only because I was so confident that she would have been born by then. On the way to work, Hayden kept asking me various questions, and I was struggling to answer them because I felt very winded. When I got to the office, the girls and I caught each other up on our weekends, I was angry that I didn't have anything to report other than getting sick at church, totally out of the blue Sunday morning. I continued to feel short of breath as I chatted with my boss. My chest felt very tight and I felt as if I had jogged a few miles (not a real familiar feeling). Finally, I thought maybe one of the nurses on birth center might be able to tell me if I needed to do anything about this, and I figured it would be much easier to pop my head in there than try to get ahold of my doctor, whom I was a little angry at for making me keep going with this pregnancy.
Anyhow, up at birthcenter, the on call OB overheard me chatting with the nurses and said he would really recommend monitoring me for a bit because this sounded a little worrisome. So I was gowned and hooked up to all kinds of stuff. Still winded and having chest tightness, they gave me a nasal cannula, which I strongly detested. My O2 sats were good, my blood pressure was fine, and the baby seemed to be doing great. The monitors did show lots of contractions too.
With no real answers for the way I was feeling, the doctor decided to run a few tests: an EKG, a chest X-ray, and leg ultrasound to rule out DVTs. I was completely freaked out when he said that, however he was very quick to say he fully expected them to all be normal, but better safe than sorry at this point. He also "checked me." I was crushed to find out I was still only dialated to a 2 1/2- same as the last two weeks.

Well, at this point, I decided to let Heath know what was going on. He left work and accompanied me to my oh-so fun tests. Leg ultrasounds are really long for anyone who has not had the pleasure. Well, somewhere along the way, it occured to me that the contractions seemed to be getting more noticeable. Heath, for lack of anything else to do, began timing them. While not terribly uncomfortable, they were happening every 4-7 minutes. When the tests were all done, they took me back to birthcenter and put me in the exam room where the nurse was also noticing that the contractions were quite regular and strong as well. She was starting to speculate that the doctor would probably want to keep me around awhile to monitor the contractions. The breathing had gotten better by this point, still some tightness, but not terrible like in the morning. Around 3 o'clock, we were getting antsy, the contractions were regular, however no one had been in for hours to tell us anything. We hadn't told anyone where i was or what was happening. Heath had gotten many work phone calls taken care of however.

Finally the doctor came in. He said that all the tests were negative, not really sure what was causing the breathing problems. However, somewhere along my journeys of the day, it seems that i had started to labor. He checked me and I was a "good 4." He said that the baby had come down considerably and that things were definately progressing. He was going to admit me and we were going to have this baby. Whooo hoo! Finally.

Well, an epidural, a little pitocin, and in one push, she was out. It was a wonderful labor, quick, easy, painless.

She is amazing-definately love at first sight. Seeing Marlee made the nine miserable months totally worth it.