Bailey’s Birth Story!

I finally had a chance to type up Ms. Bailey’s birth story. I’m pretty sure I’ve spared most of the gory details, but read at your own risk! LOL I’m also post­ing a few pics that I took of her last Wednes­day using some of my new pho­tog­ra­phy skills. I’m SO happy with how they turned out and can’t wait to take some more this week.

We’re doing really well. Her sleep­ing pat­terns have got­ten MUCH bet­ter in the last few days, she even gave me a cou­ple of 4 hour stretches last night!!

I’ve also decided that the Swad­dle Me is the great­est inven­tion in the his­tory of the world. I’m a GOOD swad­dler, but this thing is the BOMB!! I’m seri­ously going to get it for every sin­gle mommy-to-be that I know from now on.

So, enough chit chat, onto her birth story!

I had my last Dr.‘s appoint­ment at 4:15 on Fri­day after­noon. I didn’t see my usual doc­tor because she was out sick, so I saw one of the other OB’s in the prac­tice. He stripped my mem­branes again, which they had done the week prior, but noth­ing resulted other than some cramp­ing.


My mom took Tyson for the night just for fun, so Tony and I decided to go out to din­ner at Jake’s. After din­ner, I went to run some errands at Tar­get and the fab­ric store. So, I did that and got home around 7 pm. Around then, I started hav­ing some con­trac­tions. They were def­i­nitely a bit more intense than the ones I had had ear­lier in the week, but I just chalked it up to what they had done at the Dr.‘s office. So, I just kind of kept my eye on them, they were about 7–8 mins apart. Over the next cou­ple of hours, they got a bit more intense and the feel­ing I had was “oh yes, that’s what this feels like, I remem­ber now” and it all came flood­ing back.


I didn’t want to get overly excited think­ing this may be the real thing, so I men­tioned to Tony how they were feel­ing and they were pick­ing up in inten­sity and fre­quency. He was sup­posed to start work at 9 that night and work until 5 am, so in an effort not to jinx things, I sent him to work. I told him I would call him if things kept up, but not to get too excited. Just be on alert. So, around 10 pm, they were about 4–6 mins apart, some closer than that, and they HURT. So, I called Labor & Deliv­ery and described what was going on and they said it sounded like the real thing and that it was a good idea to head on in to the hos­pi­tal.


I called Tony to come home and fin­ished pack­ing my suit­case for the hos­pi­tal. He got home at about 10 and we headed out to the hos­pi­tal.


We got all checked in at around 10:30 and set­tled into our room. At my appoint­ment ear­lier in the day, I had been about 2.5 cm dilated and 50% effaced, same as the week before. So, the nurse came in and said if I was past a 3, that we’d be able to be admit­ted and have a baby! So, need­less to say, we were very anx­ious to find out what I was at. She checked me, and I was at 3.5 cm!! Yay! So, we called our fam­i­lies and told them that we were going to have a baby tonight and that hope­fully we’d have good news for them by the morn­ing.


My awe­some nurse, Beth, ordered my epidural up since it would take a lit­tle time for the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist to get down to my room and they needed to get me hooked up to the IV. The anes­the­si­ol­o­gist showed up about mid­night and got my epidural started. I could tell some­thing wasn’t quite right with it because it was shoot­ing down my left side and I knew it hadn’t hurt this badly when I had one with Ty. But, I dealt with the pain and assumed it would work.


About an hour later, my whole left side was numb, as it should be, but I could feel every con­trac­tion very intensely in my right side (mind you, I was lay­ing on my right side too). It HURT!! So, we called the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist back and she attempted to adjust my epi. We gave it another hour or so, but still, I could feel every­thing on my right side. At this point I was really afraid that it wasn’t going to work and that I would have no choice but to suf­fer through the pain. Our last hope, was to com­pletely take out the first epi, and redo it all over again. So, since it couldn’t get much worse, that’s what I opted for. We re-did the epidural and this time, thank good­ness, it worked, and things evened out.


At this point it was about 2 am or so and I was already at about 8 cm. All the drama from the epidural had really dis­tracted me from how long it took to progress, which really wasn’t all that long at all com­pared to Ty’s labor.


About 2:30, I was about 9–10 cm and really really wanted to push. I couldn’t yet though because the Dr. hadn’t yet arrived and my body wasn’t quite ready to push. So, I stuck out a few more con­trac­tions and about 3:00 am, Dr. Spence finally arrived. Shortly there­after, I started to push. I was really happy that the epi was work­ing because all I could feel was the pres­sure. With Ty’s deliv­ery, I felt a LOT of pain, so this was a big relief to me. Dur­ing my 2nd push or so, the Dr. said “Where did all this dark hair come from?” There went my hopes of hav­ing a blondie!


I pushed for about 10 min­utes or so and at 3:15 am, Bai­ley Marie Lema­niak was born. She weighed 7 lbs and 1 oz, nearly 2 lbs less than her big brother was. She was 19 ¼” long, so a lit­tle string bean. She looked EXACTLY like Tyson did when he was born. That was the first thing I noticed about her was how much they looked alike. The Dr and nurses all sang Happy Birth­day to her which was so cute and she was able to start nurs­ing right away. She latched on like an old pro and nursed for a good half an hour.


The whole expe­ri­ence couldn’t have gone any bet­ter. I was so happy to have our girl here and to have such an easy labor and deliv­ery. She’s just per­fect and beau­ti­ful and has a full head of dark hair. The only big dif­fer­ence between her and Tyson is that her eyes *might* be blue! Ty’s were dark brown from the get go, but hers are the steely blue color that most babies have.

I got this cool cocoon thing on Etsy.

More From ALemaniak

• Work in Progress — In more ways than one
• Baby Bailey’s Room — Almost done!
• Bailey’s 2nd Birthday!

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