A Play by Play

• Wednesday Night
• 11/2/05 11pm. Slight water leakage, Jaime says "I think my water just broke"
• Thursday Morning
• 11/3/05 12am. Larger water leakage, Jaime says "My water just broke"
• 12:15am. Contractions 4-5 minutes apart, although they are not painful. Called Dr. Steinberg (OB/GYN), their office gave us the go ahead to go to the hospital and get evaluated.
• 1:30am. Checked into Stevens Hospital, got a room assigned (#711). Jaime got "gowned" and had her vitals taken. She was hooked up to a monitor for her and the baby. Contractions 3-4 minutes apart, still not painful. Tried to sleep a little.
• 3:00am. Contractions starting to hurt, still 3-4 minutes apart.
• 4:30am. Contractions hurting A LOT. 2-3 minutes apart
• 6:45am. epidural installed and Jaime is examined. 5 cm dilated & 75% effaced.
• 8:00am. An adjustment to the epidural placement (it was only working on her left side). Got a little rest, not sleep necessarily, just peaceful napping.
• 9:40am. Catheter installed. Jaime doesn't seem to be in too much pain, looks like the epidural adjustment worked.
• 9:55am. Examined, 8-9 cm dilated. 95% effaced. Dr. Siscoe's (the on call delivery doctor) guess is that we'll be holding our new baby around noon!
• 10:42am. Examined, 9-10 cm dilated "Anterior Rim" (Whatever that means). Our nurse Amber said our baby has a "cute head". :)
• 11:28am. Examined, 10 cm dilated. "Ready to Go". We'll start pushing as soon as the anesthesiologist gives her more medicine, it's starting to hurt more.
• 11:40am. More epi. medicine and they gave Jaime some oxygen in preparation for pushing.
• 11:55am. Starting pushing with the contractions.
• 12:37pm. Still pushing, nurse said our baby's hair is dark brown or black.
• 1:00pm. Still pushing, Jaime is in a lot of pain. The baby is in the correct head down position and her head is turned correctly, but her shoulders are turned so that they are hitting Jaime inside and won't come through easily.
• 1:30pm. Jaime headbutts Mark because I'm invading her space while trying to comfort her. (More to follow from Jaime's point of view)
• 3:00pm. We've got a beautiful baby girl! Welcome to the world McKenna Gwen Beadnell!
• Lots of tests and exams and waiting and talking ensue. (All normal for the baby, Jaime still has trouble with her calf muscle on one of her legs from the epidural, and lots of pain)
• Friday Afternoon
• 11/4/05 4:00pm. Discharged and head for home to begin our new life as a family! Where do we pick up the Instructional Handbook...?

So if you're counting that's:

• 16 hours of labor after her first water breakage \or
• 12 hours of labor after it started to hurt \or
• 3 hours 5 min of intense pushing

Everyone at Stevens was very nice and helpful. Although we would of loved to have Dr. Steinberg deliver our little one, we were left in very capable and gentle hands with Dr. Siscoe. All of the nurses throughout our 37-1/2 hr stay were great. At times we had up to 6 attending to us at the same time! So, thank you very much Stevens and staff! We very much appreciate it.