Baby Chloe Rose

Wow, life has been crazy since little Chloe arrived. We were able to move into our house before Chloe was born. She weighed 7 lb 11 oz and was 20 inches. She was born at 12:11 am March 9th, 2010. As I have no internet and Chloe isn't allowed out of the house for a couple more weeks I won't be able to update very much, good thing I'm one of the few people who reads this! So I figure I'll write her little birth story for posterity and anyone else who may be interested.

So Chloe's due date came and went, and then 2 more weeks past. I was induced on March 8th at 7 am. Contractions started around 9 ish and I progressed slowly until I reached a 4 and got stuck there for a while so they broke my water. After that, lets just say it like it is, awful experience I decided to get my epidural. I napped and talked and played free cell. Chloe wasn't a big fan of the whole labor process and started having decels with contractions so they gave me some oxygen, and she did fine as long as I lay on my right side. Once I got to a 9 things got even more interesting. My midwife had me do a "practice push" and baby's heart rate dropped super low and stayed down for a while. They called in Dr. Allen and everyone started hinting that a C-section was looking more and more probable. I was pretty upset and cried myself to sleep while we waited for me to get to a 10 so some real decisions could be made.

When I woke up I was a 10 so they had me start pushing again. Her heart rate stayed up enough that the Dr. let me continue pushing, the only problem was she wasn't coming down normally. She was turned slightly and was still really high up for how far along I was. The midwife told me I was going to have to push her down myself because my contractions weren't moving her along (they had turned off the pitocin after her heart rate had been dropping when I was around a 6). After about 45 minutes of pushing Dr. Allen said he was satisfied with how far down she had gotten and wanted to try forceps to get her out quicker. Her "weird" presentation didn't allow him to use forceps so a vacuum was used instead. 2 sets of 3 pushes and her little head came out. Her body was a little stuck so after some fancy maneuvering from the nurses and 3 more sets of pushes she was out!! I was so happy not to have a C section and hear her little cry!! Because of the stressful labor they wisked her away to the nursery followed closely by Nate. They ended up keeping her in the NICU the whole time we were in the hospital for "observation" but she came home with us on Thursday morning! So all in all it was an "epic" delivery as my midwife called it but Baby is good, I'm feeling good and we are loving having Chloe in our lives!

Here are some more pictures from Chloe's 3 weeks of life...

I love the one of her in green because it shows off her little round head!

The closest thing to a smile that we have on camera so far

Chloe Rose and her daddy taking a nap. Nate comes home and falls asleep on the couch with the baby. He is so helpful and a wonderful daddy to Chloe.