Amy Elizabeth is born! Technically it’s been almost a month, but I haven’t blogged in a bit, so better late than never. She was born July 9th 7lbs 5.5 oz 20 inches. So here’s some background on that night and my feelings so far.
Sunday July 8th was starting to feel like do or die time. My schedule was essentially changed to take that next week off. Dorothy’s mom had been here for 10 days already and in her own words “Family is a little like fish, after too many days they both start to stink.” We were past her due date and Ruth was born on the due date so we had been expecting a little before her due date. That and her very, very dilated cervix. Dorothy had been having contractions for weeks, but nothing to “write home about”. So Sunday we decided to try to help things along a little. Prayer at church, check. Nipple stim- check. I even ran out to the store and got real Raspberry Leaf Tea. She had few cups of that. Then in the evening after dinner we went for a short walk down our lane, Ruthie in the carrier on my back.
Our “neighbors”…
[..side note that we took to calling them our “neighbors” because originally we were calling them “the Mexicans” and we decided that it just seemed too racist for some reason. I mean they are all latinos in the little run down house that’s the only house on our road, we have yet (see below) to have any of them speak English to us. It’s a little unclear how many live there actually, but they have always been friendly in the form of waves….]
…were outside cooking food which smelled great. We all waved at each other. I’d say there were 7-8 men, which is more than is typical. We walked about .5 mile up the road and came back, waving again. As we got about halfway from our neighbors house to our house a car pulled up next to us. The driver said “Here’s some carne asada. When we see a pregnant woman walk past we give her carne asada.” He hands us a plate with two pounds of meat covered by a paper towel. The smell was amazing. We had already eaten dinner but ate half the plate on the walk home.
So..walk- check, .carne asada- check. We went to bed really hoping to have the baby the next day so I didn’t have to go to work on Tuesday. We went to bed about 10:30. About 1:05 AM Dorothy wakes me and says “Josh, I think we need to go to the hospital.” I’m like “Ok, how many contractions have you had?” “Four”.
“Four?!?!?” “No I’m serious these are really strong.” She had one at 12:30, one at 12:45, one at 12:55 and one at 1 AM and felt it was time. I was skeptical. Then she started having them every two minutes and needing to kneel on the ground with them, then she says “I think I need to poop.” to which I responded “Get in the car”. The drive to the hospital was punctuated by rupture of membranes and by a brief pause for her to try to puke out of the open passenger side door.
We got to the hospital about 1:40 AM and had Amy at 2:12 AM. I actually called the OB nurse cell phone on the way because of that body language that anyone that does OB knows as “this lady is going to have a baby soon.”
So first labor with Ruthie started at 11 PM and ended at 7:30 AM with two hours of pushing and was 6 pounds. Amy was 1:40 from first hard contraction to delivery with about 3 pushes at 7lbs 5.5 oz. What a difference! It’s interesting that the fast labor was sort of making Dorothy freak out about having to push. She didn’t have time emotionally to get ready for that last pain. Right before pushing she was saying “I’m freaking out, I can’t do this, I’m not ready.” Of course it was coming so fast it was pretty well out of her hands.
My feelings toward baby #2 are very different also, I’ll plan on posting those thoughts soon.
Mortal's Coil 