John, Kami and Zoey: Zoey Hannah Budge

Ok, I know I'm behind, but it's hard with a new baby. I wanted to write a big long thing about her birth, but I don't know how long she'll let me write, so we'll see. She's here! She decided she did not want to wait until November 17th to come.

So after John and I stayed up until midnight playing with Legos on Halloween night, I woke up to my water breaking at 1:30 am November 1st.I wasn't entirely sure if my water had broken or not because I'd been on my way to the bathroom feeling like I really had to go. After changing my pants I went back to bed and noticed that my contractions which usually were not bothersome, were feeling a little more painful, like menstrual cramps. And they seemed pretty regular. So I started timing them. They were very consistently 4 min apart. I went out to the living room to keep timing them because I didn't want to wake up John. I figured at least one of us should get a little more sleep. So after an hour and a half of timing my very steady contractions, John woke up and wondered where I was and came to find me. I told him that I thought I was in labor and I'm pretty sure my water broke, so I guessed we should finish packing for the hospital and head over. I tried to direct him to the things we still needed to pack. I had been planning to wash all the baby stuff that very week, but she decided to come early, so we grabbed some of her unwashed clothes and figured we'd have to do that later. I was helping pack and knew I should eat something because you can't eat at the hospital but I was feeling slightly nauseous. I ended up rushing to the bathroom and getting sick, which made my slow leaking water gush out some more. I was like, ok we should probably get to the hospital soon. So I changed my pants again and we gathered everything up to head out. My contracting were getting slightly more painful and were about 3 min apart. The drive seemed to take awhile and the bumps didn't feel good. We arrived at the hospital about 5am and the contractions were getting more intense. I hadn't yet preregistered at the hospital so we had to do it there. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate to give them the info they needed. Also, we had not yet picked a pediatrician which they ask about that. So they said it was ok, they had ones they used and we could keep later or switch to our own.

We got into our room and after they checked me I was only 1 cm dilated and 80-90% thinned. So they said it might be awhile. I thought I would wait a bit for the epidural. My doctor told them to start the pitocin around 8 so the nurse told me contractions would get stronger and if I wanted the epidural than probably sooner rather than later would be better, so I said let's do it. At that point the contractions were harder to think through. I think we were watching I Robot, but I couldn't concentrate on it. John gave me my book to read but I couldn't really read through the contractions either. So around 8 they came in to give me the epidural and it wasn't bad at all. I only felt the needle they use to numb your back and after that nothing. It was nice once it kicked in and I didn't feel the pain from the contractions. I'd been getting really tired, so it was great to be able to doze. My doctor came at around 9:30 to check on me and I was at 3 cm and 95% thinned. He said maybe by the afternoon we'd have a baby, like 4. I was thinking that sounded pretty good. He said he'd call about 11 to see how things were and we'd go from there. He did say he had a meeting at like noon but it was close if he needed to come. So at 11:15 the nurse came to check me and was like, hmm you're done, 100% thinned. I was like done, like fully dilated? I asked when they came back in a little bit later and they said yes. I was like, wow, that was faster than I thought. They said we'd wait until like 12:30 to start pushing. I think John and I were playing Fluxx.

I was still feeling good with the epidural, but I did feel a lot of pressure on the contractions. Around 12:45 the nurse came in and she held one leg and had John hold the other leg and we started pushing to get the baby down. We thought John would just stay at my head the whole time, didn't know he'd be holding my leg. At one point the nurse asked if I wanted a mirror because I could probably see the baby's head. I was like, um, no thanks, I'll see her when she's out. We probably pushed like 10-15 min and then had a really good one and she's like, ok I'm gonna go page the doctor so he gets here because you're ready. So paged him but he actually walked in as his page was going off. So good timing Dr. Steele! We pushed for another maybe 10 min and out came her head at 1:21 pm! They suctioned her airways and then slid her out, wiped her off a little and immediately put her on my chest. She had been screaming, but as soon as they laid her on me she was quiet and content :)

I was so happy to see her, with her dark little hair. Oh yeah, they'd asked John if he wanted to cut the cord and he was like, no that's ok. So the doctor did that. John got the camera to take some pictures. It was so surreal that it was all over and I had my little baby in my arms. They just did everything around me cleaning up and stuff and let Zoey stay on me for awhile. She did cry a little from the flash of the camera but quieted down quickly. They took her and weighed her in the room. She was 6 lbs 10 oz and 20 inches long. Then they brought her back to have me nurse her right away. She was a little pro from the start. She's just an amazing little baby. They got me ready to move me to the postpartum room and they let John hold her finally. He looked so proud and in love with his little girl already.

We got a good picture of him. I was still a little numb but was able to get into the wheelchair. And we were moved to our small room. The delivery rooms are huge, but the postpartum rooms were small.

Our first family picture. Someone should have told me to fix my hair :)

At some point during all this we made phone calls to people. Marcia actually called us like 5 min after she was born, so John answered and she was the first to hear about our new little one. Everyone was so excited to hear about her. We decided to stick with the name we had picked out. We decided it seemed to fit her. So Zoey Hannah Budge is here.