Eva Kate Bradley: The Birth Story

Our daughter Eva Kate was born on Thursday, September 8th!!! I know most of you have already heard, but I was a little busy giving birth and taking care of a newborn to blog until this evening. Since I'm behind and have so many wonderful pictures to share I decided to break up everything into 3 parts - her birth, the hospital stay, and life at home. Here is Part One: Eva's Birthday.

Ryan in his labor scrubs - the back said COACH, so cute!

On Wednesday afternoon around 4 pm I started having small contractions. They weren't very strong and they started every 3 minutes apart, lasting for about a minute. Since everything I had read and heard said that by 5 minutes apart you should go to the hospital I was pretty confused. They hurt enough to be considered painful but not what I thought regular contractions would feel like. I decided it was probably false labor and just relaxed that afternoon and evening. 10 hours later at 2:30 in the morning I woke up (from the 2 hours that I had finally decided to go to sleep) and was still having the same contractions. I tried to eat a little and try combinations of walking/sitting/lying down to make them go away but nothing changed. After another 2 hours of this Ryan and I tried to decide what to do. Should we wait until 8 am and call the doctor? Put in a call for the doctor on-call and see how long it takes to hear back? Go to the hospital? This was not an easy decision to make in the middle of the night. I had decided to try to go back to bed for a while and hope that everything was good and we could wait until morning. Then I noticed that they were hurting more and at 5 am was up and got to the point where suddenly it hurt to walk through the contractions. We decided to head to the hospital at that point.

6 lbs 10 oz, 19 1/4 " long

We got to the hospital and Ryan dropped me off so I get right to Labor & Delivery while he parked the car. Don't worry, I was walking so slow that by the time I went up the elevator and told the check in lady, "My husband will be right here," he was already walking in the door behind me. It was so weird to just walk up to the desk and tell them that I was in labor. You expect them to have a frazzled, "Okay - lady with baby!" reaction but really they just checked me in and walked me calmly to a room. Luckily the typical triage rooms were full so I got a private room right away. The nurse checked me out and confirmed that I was really in labor and put in a call for my doctor to come by to officially admit me. She said I'd have to wait about an hour for the doctor to see me. Within that hour my contractions definitely increased in strength and pain. I don't want to be the person that scares other people with a birthing story because looking back, it was obviously not so bad that I couldn't take it. Instead I will just say that getting an epidural was the best labor choice I could have made. I know lots of women have natural childbirth and that is so awesome for them. It would not have been awesome for me. So thank you to the nice man that gave me my epidural and made labor much more relaxing and pain free! My husband also did an awesome job while I was in labor. I know it was hard for him to see me like that, but he was a great coach!

Mama and Eva Finally Together

I don't know if you would say that I had a fast labor or not. If you consider that my contractions started at 4pm the day before, I guess not. But the time that I was in "active labor" was only from about 6am - 2pm and things seemed to progress quickly. I was given Pitocin so I'm sure that helped. I was really scared to get Pitocin because I've heard how much it can hurt, but since I was far enough along when I got to the hospital I was able to get the epidural first and never felt the contractions that were caused by Pitocin. At 2pm it was time for me to push the baby out. So I pushed. And pushed. And pushed. Then the doctor finally decided that Eva was too stuck in a crooked position to be delivered that way. We tried a few things to get her to shift and I had the option to try pushing for another 2 hours but it was recommend that I get a c-section for her safety. I cried when my doctor told me that the best, most realistic choice was a c-section. I knew that would automatically make recovery harder. And I felt discouraged that I had already gone through the labor process. But I wanted to make the safest choice for Eva. So I got prepped for surgery. At that point I also started to tell the doctor that I could feel the part of my belly where she was stuck. They tried to up my epidural but it didn't work. Getting a c-section and being able to feel your stomach does not work so the doctors in the OR quickly decided that I needed to be put fully asleep right away. That meant that Ryan couldn't even be in the OR with me and had to wait in a special room right outside so that he could come in as soon as possible after they had her out.

Eva's birth didn't go like I had expected. Labor pains were so different that what I had thought to look for. I didn't plan for a c-section. I didn't get to be awake to hear her first cry or hold her right away. All of these things were out of my control. No decision I could have made would change things. My doctor even said after the surgery that it was difficult to get her out that way and that I definitely wouldn't have been able to deliver her normally.

All that doesn't matter as much though because at 4:56 pm, our beautiful baby was born. She is completely healthy. She is a girl (there was always that chance....). She is ours to take care of and love. We are so blessed!

Proud Daddy

After waking up I had to wait about an hour before I could finally be taken to our room to meet Eva. It was so surreal to finally see and hold and kiss on the little baby that had been in my belly for the past 9 months. We're not sure who she looks like yet. She does have pretty dark hair and dark blue eyes but that could easily change. We are so in love with her.