Carlie Isabella Scholl entered the world on May 2nd at 4:36am weighing 7lb. 5oz. & measuring 20.75" long!
And without further ado...here's a recap of little Carlie's birth story!
I
went to the doctor's at 9AM on Tuesday, May 1st. I was still 4cm
dilated (for the 2nd week in a row), so I had the doctor (Dr. Pellini)
strip my membranes. He is known in the practice as being the
'professional membrane stripper', so I had high hopes that things would
happen - he said he almost always sees results within 24 hours! He also
said that he was the doctor on call the next evening, so maybe he would
see me then (I was happy about this since he is one of my 2 favorite
doctors at the practice - there are about 10 doctors total at the
practice).
Around dinner-time on Tuesday (we were at Gregg's
parents' house), I started having some contractions, but nothing with
any real regularity. We went home and put Haddy to bed as
usual. I was having a TON of back pain & sat at my computer on the
exercise ball with a heating pad on my back. My contractions were still
not regular at this point. We both went up to bed around 9:30, but I
continued having contractions - Gregg got to sleep for about an hour and
a half when I woke him up and told him that I thought we should call
the doctor. The contractions were between 7-10m apart at the time. I called &
was SO excited to get the call back from the doctor on call &
discover that it was the same doctor who had delivered Hadley (Dr.
Black). She was amazing during Hadley's labor and delivery, sitting on my bed for 4
hours because she had no other patients at the time. She confirmed
that we should come in, so Gregg's mom came over to stay with Hadley
while Gregg and I made our way to the hospital. We had to wait in
triage for quite a while (an hour or so), but at least I was being monitored & the
nurse confirmed that they would most likely be admitting me, based on my
contraction pattern. I finally saw a doctor who checked me and said
that I was 5cm - this was around 1AM.
They moved me to a regular
room & checked me again around 2:30am and I was 7cm, so a doctor
(not my doctor) broke my water. The contractions were starting to get
really strong and the pain was so much more intense and painful than I
had with Hadley. The doctor said that she would come check me again in
two hours...After about an hour, I was feeling lots of pressure and I
told the nurse that I thought I needed to be checked again, but much to
my dismay, I was still only 7cm. By this point, I was writhing on the
table & seriously crawling out of my skin from the pain in my back
(now I understand all the stories about back labor - it was awful).
Knowing that the dr. thought I would still be laboring for another
couple of hours, I broke down and got the epidural around 4AM (I didn't
need one with Hadley so I was hoping to avoid it with Carlie, as well).
However,
I stumped the anesthesiologist because I felt absolutely no numbing
from the epi. He put a cold towel (and later, an ice cube) on my face, legs, stomach, & feet
& I could feel them all absolutely the same. However, it did take
the pain away in my back & allowed me to relax a little bit (I was
having a hard time breathing through the contractions because of the pain and
tensing up against it).
Lo & behold, about 10 minutes after I got the
epidural, I was telling everyone in the room that I felt the urge to
push - the nurse was telling me not to bear down, because she assumed
that I was still 7cm, but the doctor must have known better (she had
come in not long before, straight from a c-section) because she told me
that it was ok to push...which is a good thing because I wasn't even
pushing - my body was doing it involuntarily - it was the strangest
feeling since I never had a strong urge to push with Hadley at all. I
pushed through maybe 5 contractions and Carlie Isabella was born at 4:36am, 7lb 5oz,
20.75"!
Because I had some meconium in my amniotic fluid when they
broke my water, the NICU team had to be present and take her right away
to examine her...she remained in the room with us, but they had to
suction & assess her to make sure she hadn't ingested any of the
meconium, so I didn't get to hold her for a few minutes & Gregg
didn't get to cut the cord, but she was healthy & had a good set of
lungs, so all was well.
We had a great stay in the hospital - after how rushed it seemed last time (because of the time of day that Hadley was born), it was nice to really get our two full days in the hospital, even though we missed Hadley like crazy!
From the very start, Carlie has been an amazing sleeper!!! After our
experience with Hadley basically never sleeping, I always kept feeling like it was ME and that I
was doing something wrong, but the two girls could not be more
different when it comes to sleep...in fact, I have had to wake Carlie up at night to feed her
& the nurses at the hospital would tell me that Carlie had a rough
night because all the cranky babies in the nursery were keeping her up
(LOL - we actually were told that Hadley was the cranky baby keeping the
other babies up when she was born!) - and they would say "I waited to
bring her to you as long as I could - she was just sleeping so
peacefully!"
