Mallory Dylan

Its a GIRL! I know that everyone who reads my blog already knows this but I had to make it official. Here's our little girl:



Here's the abbreviated version of the birth story:
7:00 am we arrived at the hospital for my induction
7:45 still waiting and my doctor got there and yelled at them for making me wait too long!
8:00 Got to my room, my doctor came in and broke my water and they started pitocin. I was almost 4 cm when I got there and my doctor was saying she thought I would have the baby by noon and wouldn't need much pitocin
around 10:00 contractions started getting more intense but not horrible, I decided to get the epidural
around 11:00 nurse checked me and I was 5 cm. I was surprised I hadn't made more progress than that since my doctor was so sure it would be so quick
around 1:00: My doctor came in and checked me...still 5 cm. I was dissappointed and started thinking...this is why people don't do inductions, I'm going to end up with a c-section, etc. My doctor said the nurses weren't increasing the pitocin as much as they should have and we just needed them to be stronger. She increased it and told them to keep doing so. I didn't mind because I couldn't feel a thing. I actually could feel the tightening/pressure but not the pain which was nice
2:00 nurse comes in and says "we have a guess that you might be fully dilated because the monitor has shown the baby's heartrate has gone down a little with the contractions and alot of times that means you are re ady to push". She checked me and I was 9.5! I went from 5 to 9.5 in an hour
2:20 my doctor came in the room, checked me and said I was ready to push.
2:30, my doctor, a nurse, and Mark all had to help me hold my legs because they were so numb from the epidural I couldn't even bend them on my own. I kept saying I can't feel if I'm pushing or not and my doctor kept saying to just bear down, visualize it, etc. I honestly could not feel enough to push even though they had turned the epidural off. I did feel the pressure but I just didn't really have enough senstation to feel like I was pushing at all. Before I knew it everyone was saying one more push! I really wanted to see it all happening and they kind of lifted up my head so I could see what was going on. I saw the baby's head and half of the body out while the doctor suctioned her. She kept her like that for a good 20-30 seconds before pulling the rest of her body out so that we could all see that it was a GIRL! It was the most amazing moment ever and I highly recommend to anyone who can do it to not find out the sex until the end. I can't even describe what that was like to not know until I saw her come out of me. It was just crazy. We didn't find out with Max either but this was just more of a shock. She was born at 2:43 pm. Only around 15minutes after I started pushing but I really don't even know because it felt like I didn't even push!

I was amazed at how tiny she looked! I never thought I was going to have a baby under 7 pounds. I think its also that I'm used to seeing a huge toddler so anything else looks tiny. I had a kind of rough first 12-18 hours after delivery, mostly because my epidural took a while to wear off so I needed alot of help doing everything. Mallory is almost 2 days old now and I'm feeling much better. I was able to shower and everything else on my own during the day yesterday and I'm having alot less pain.

Mallory is perfect and started nursing like a champ about 10 minutes after she was born. This whole experience has been so different than our experience with Max. He visited yesterday and was definitley confused. He looked at the baby for a few minutes but other than that, he wasn't very into her. He was more into playing with the buttons on my hospital bed. It will be interesting to see how he does when we get home.

All in all it was a great experience and I'm happy to say I was lucky to have an easy and successful induction. It is so weird to be saying "she" "her" and "daughter" but I am loving it! I can't wait to buy pink stuff. I'm sure there will be lots more pictures of the princess once we get home. We are planning on leaving in a few hours. I'm feeling nervous for this new life to really start but mostly I'm just excited to see Mallory in her all pink coming home outfit!

Thanks to everyone for all the well wishes, phone calls, e-mails, facebook comments and everything else. We can't wait for you to meet Mallory. Thank you Gigi, Poppop, Grandma and Grandpa for being so amazing. I don't know what we would do without you this week or always. Max and Mallory are so lucky to have you.

Finally thank you to Mark for our two beautiful, healthy children. Did we seriously produce a boy AND a girl? I still can't believe it.