My niece entered this world this morning at 3:05am. She definitely decided to come on her own terms in her own time. I feel the need to document things from my perspective 3.5 hours away from all the action getting updates by text and phone.
So here goes.
First, I think some background is necessary. The first time I ever stayed overnight in a hospital was when Caleb was born. I got stitches once when I was in college (volleyball injury). I claim wisdom teeth extraction as my "major surgery" experience. I broke my wrist when I was about 5 or 6 years old. And I sprained my ankles about 300 times. But these things pale in comparison to what my sister has been through.
She has had actual major surgeries. In addition to her wisdom teeth, she's had her appendix and tonsils removed and she's had two ACL surgeries - one on each knee and each with a 9+ month recovery period. When she was in 2nd grade, she developed a rash on the lower half of her body and had to go through all sorts of blood tests and a biopsy to determine the cause. Oh, and I almost forgot {though I'm sure she'd happily remind me} of that one time when I left her to crash on her roller skates resulting in a near compound fracture of two bones in her arm and requiring the doctors to reset the bones before casting it. She was probably 5 or 6 at the time.
Clearly my sister has always been the one who gets hit with these things while I skate by unscathed.
You may remember reading about my labor and delivery with Caleb. You know, the one that lasted about 3 hours from start to finish. Piece of cake compared to what she went through to bring her daughter into this world. Let's start at the beginning...
On Monday early morning (May 14th), she was awoken by back pain that radiated around to the front of her belly. Contractions were beginning, and I predicted that baby was sunny side up causing the back pain. They were coming every 6 to 10 minutes. This continued all day Monday. She went to the doctor in the evening and was 1cm dilated - same as two weeks prior. After only having gotten a half night of sleep on Sunday night, she started into Monday night with contractions getting closer together and really not sleeping that night either. When I spoke with her on Tuesday morning (May 15th), the contractions were about 6 minutes apart lasting 1 minute each...still back labor. The pain in her back made it painful to sit, so she stood ALL.DAY.LONG. Finally around 5pm or so the contractions were falling under 5 minutes apart. Around 7pm (after about 40 hours of labor), she headed to the hospital. Upon check in she was 5cm, fully effaced. Baby was confirmed to be sunny side up, but she was assured that the baby would flip as she progressed. Around 2am on Wednesday, May 16th I called my mom for an update. She was at 8cm, baby had flipped from sunny side up to anterior positioning. The midwife broke her water and discovered meconium in the fluid. Within an hour I got a call from my brother-in-law saying, "It's a girl!" So, those last two centimeters only took 45 minutes.
If you're counting, that's approximately 48 hours of labor about 45 of which was back labor. Now here's the impressive part. The part that she was clearly being prepared for her entire life. She did this all without any pain medication. She had an amazing coach of a husband who helped her through all of that, so I can't forget to give a giant high five to my brother-in-law Matt. But really, sister was amazing and she's officially my hero!
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| Gabrielle Rielyn; 6lbs, 3oz; 19.5inches; 3:05pm; May 16, 2012 |
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| Can you tell they are related? Gabi on the left, Caleb on the right. I think they look pretty darn similar. |
