Caroline's Arrival

I recently documented Brady's arrival on our blog for a number of reasons.  One of them being that as time went by, I didn't want to confuse the details of our children's births.  As it turns out, I didn't need to worry about that.  They could not have been more different.

As I mentioned in the post about Brady's birth, he was due just a few days after Father's Day.  I had hoped he'd arrive on Father's Day, but he missed it by 25 hours.  When I found out I was due with our baby girl on May 26th, the idea of her arriving on Mother's Day didn't cross my mind as that meant she would have to be 2 weeks early.  At my 35 week doctor's appointment I learned that it might actually be possible.  The Dr. discovered I was already dilating.  He recommended that I take it easy for the next 2 weeks so that I didn't go into labor before 37 weeks.  As eager as I was for the pregnancy to be over, I wanted her to stay in as long as possible to make sure she was as healthy as possible.  I made it to 38 weeks plus a few hours.

At 2:30 Mother's Day morning I woke up and went to the bathroom feeling totally normal.  About 15 minutes later, just as I was starting to fall back to sleep, I suddenly felt a sharp pain.  I didn't think much of it until I felt more of the same a few minutes later.  I wasn't sure if it was the start of labor, but it was definitely different than the Braxton Hicks contractions I was so familiar with.  This continued for about 15 minutes so I decided to tell Dan what was going on.  He started timing the contractions.  Since we never had to time contractions during labor with Brady, we had to Google how to do it.  Once I felt confident that I was in labor, I called my cousin.  She was nice enough to agree to take care of Brady while I was in the hospital. I told her to drive safely, but hurry as the pain was getting intense.  By the time she arrived I was in agony.  The contractions had me doubled over, unable to move and were only about 1 minute apart.  We left for the hospital shortly after she arrived.

We arrived at the hospital at about 5:30.  It must have been obvious that I was in serious pain because we were rushed into a room and had 4 people taking care of me.  They quickly discovered that I was 8-9 cm dilated.  My reaction...NOOOOOOO!!!  I was sure this meant they would deny me an epidural. I assumed I had hours of labor and pushing ahead of me and I couldn't stand the pain any longer.  I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't pretty.  Thankfully, they said I could still have an epidural.  But first I needed an IV.  That took 3 attempts.  They also had a hard time getting a blood pressure because I was shaking uncontrollably.  After several tries on my arm, they moved to my leg.  I didn't even know they could do that.  The anesthesiologist arrived and had my epidural going unbelievably fast.  Once I felt it's full effect, I regained my composure and insisted that we pick baby girl's name before she arrived.  We had the list narrowed down to Madelyn, Courtney and Caroline for the first name.  Caroline was a name off my list that Dan was willing to give me if we used the name Kinley, off his list, for one of her middle names.  We had already agreed on Margaret as her other middle name.  Margaret is in memory of my mom, Margaret Ann, and my sister, Eileen Margaret.  We quickly agreed on Caroline.  A few minutes later the Dr. came in to check me.  I was ready to push!  Caroline Margaret Kinley Whitaker entered the world at 6:15, after about 5 pushes.  She weighed 6 pounds, 4 ounces and measured 18 inches long.  She was tiny, but perfect.  We instantly fell in love.  It was the best Mother's Day ever and not just because I got breakfast in bed;)