Ally Evans is here!

We just got home from the hospital. Ben and Ally are both snoozing, and I have about 30 minutes before the next feeding, so I will update my blog with the newest excitement to hit the Evans household: Ally's arrival!

Ally was born early Monday morning (May 4th) at 4:59am, weighing 7 lbs 11 oz and measuring 20.5 inches long. She has a full head of black hair (which she gets primarily from my Italian side of the family) and dark blue eyes (we'll have to wait a while to see if she's going to be brown-eyed like her daddy, green-eyed like her mommy, or maybe blue-eyed, as there are blue-eyed people on both sides of the family). Here is her birth story.

So per my previous post, we went to UNC Women's Hospital at 7am on Sunday morning for a scheduled induction, since she was 1 week late. We checked in, settled into our labor/delivery room, and I got all situated in a gown and hooked up to the IV for the Pitocin drip and a bag of fluids for hydration, as well as the belt monitors to measure my contractions and Ally's heart rate. All this happened by about 8:30am. When I wrote the previous post, it was early afternoon, and Ben and I were both still in pretty good spirits. We had been watching TV and playing computer games and my contractions were not bothering me at all.

At about 4pm, things got a little more serious. This may have been around the time when my water broke; I can't really remember because I had started leaking a bit, then the doctor came in and broke my water for me, and a bit later, I really started gushing. But anyways, this was the time when my contractions got noticably stronger and more intense, and I was using several of the different techniques we learned in childbirth class, like sitting on the birthing ball, stading up by the bed and leaning on it to take pressure off my back, and standing while using Ben as my support. Even though the contractions were quite intense, they were still only about 45-60 seconds long with and my contractions were say around 3 minutes apart, and I could get relief in between. This is probably the part where one would say I was in active labor.

However, by about 8:30 pm (so 12-ish hours into the whole ordeal), I was in a HELL of a lot of pain. Every contraction was like the worst pain I had ever experienced in my entire life, and it was like every pain receptor in my entire midsection (front and back) was firing at full blast. I was getting really tired, like I wanted to fall asleep, but I couldn't. I was also thinking that if I was this tired now, I'd be even more tired when it came time to push, and I didn't want to go into that situation with nothing to give. Nothing that I could do was really working to alleviate the pain, and it was at this point that I told Ben, "I think I'd like to explore my pain management options now." It had been my goal all along to go as long as I could without pain meds, but I was keeping and open mind, and I am SOOOOO glad that I did. So we got the anesthesiologist in the room and he gave me an epidural, and it was AMAZING!!! Finally, we could both get a bit of rest.

So things were pretty quiet from about 9pm-ish when I got my epidural until 2am when it was time to push. I will say that I was hooked up to a bunch of monitors and wires by this point: 2 IV lines in my left arm, the epidural line in my back, a Foley catheter (they don't want you getting up to go to the bathroom while you have the epidural), a pulse oximeter on my right index finger (to measure my heart rate), the belt monitors around my midsection, a fetal scalp monitor (Ally kept moving around so they couldn't get her heart rate very well on the belt monitor), and an oxygen mask. I'm sure it was quite a sght! So anyway, as I was saying, at 2am, I was completely dilated and effaced, and so it was time to start pushing. By this time, they had turned off the Pitocin drip, and I really couldn't feel my contractions anymore, and they weren't coming very regularly either, so pushing was kind of intermittant. It was a very subdued and relaxed atmosphere, as it was the middle of the night, we had the lights mostly turned off in the room, and it was me, Ben, the nurse, the attending OB, and the resident OB. In between pushing, while waiting for the next contraction, we kind of just hung out and chatted. But as the end drew near, we all got very focused, and Ally finally popped out at 4:59am, after 3 hours of pushing. She weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and measured 20.5 inches long. Welcome to the world, Ally!

Ater Ally popped out, she got all cleaned up, checked out and weighed, and then they brought her over to me for some skin to skin contact while I got cleaned up myself. I did have a small tear during delivery, so I had to get stitched up, which took a few minutes, but that was fine because it gave me and Ally a chance to bond and try some early latching. After I got all disconnected from the gazillion tubes and wires I was connected to, we spent some extra time in labor and delivery while I got some more IV fluids and waiting for my post-partum room to be ready. We got transfered up to post-partum, Ally was taken to the nursery for a bath, which was nice becasue that gave me and Ben a chance to have some much needed rest.

So the last few days have been a blur, but we're now home from the hospital getting all settled in. It is nice to be in familiar surroundings again, but now we have an extra person with us!

I will post a couple pics here. I have to get the rest off the camera. There will definitely be more to come!

Ally right out of the oven, getting checked over by the pediatrics team.

Ally and me post-partum.

Ally and Ben post-partum.