Our Dottie Lou, Our Baby Dot

On Ben's 34th birthday, I made him quit drinking the free beer at our favorite birthday bar because I started having contractions. At 5:45 pm on Wednesday, March 13.

I went to bed crampy, freshly showered, with the remaining items for my hospital bag stacked neatly on my dresser and an outfit laid out on my bathroom counter.

Ben, Harry, and I were all excited and had trouble thinking about anything but our potential Pi Day baby. I woke up at 2:40 am on Thursday, March 14 with regular contractions.

 I used the breathing up technique from HypnoBirthing and stayed in bed as limp and relaxed as possible until 6, when I jumped up to do my hair, put on my makeup, and encourage my parents to cancel their workdays and drive 4 hours to be at our house before the kids got out for early dismissal.

(Ben was up with a too-excited-to-sleep Harry from 4:50 on).

And then my contractions stopped.

Ben and I spent the morning bitching at each other about who's fault it was that my parents were en route and how totally screwed we were bound to be when the baby did actually arrive, sometime next week. We also bundled the kids up and took them on a walk.

Thanks to a stint on the elliptical, labor picked up again at 2:48 pm, about 12 hours since I woke up to contractions.  I again did the side-lying/HypnoBirthing breathing from 2:48-6:30, where I had contractions about 5-7 minutes apart that lasted for around a minute.  When they got closer to 4-6 minutes apart, we went to the hospital.

You know you have too many kids when you want to take your iconic on the way in photo from the last few times.

In triage, we found that after laboring on and off since 6pm the previous day-- more than 24 hours-- I was only 4 centimeters.  WTF?

I thought seriously about an epidural because I was so, so tired (and starving-- all I ate yesterday was greek yogurt and string cheese), and I could not deal with the thought of working hard for hours to come.

Ben said I should skip it, and I took his advice.  We spent an hour or so walking the floor, and I drank a huge apple juice, which helped the hunger.

Then we spent an hour lying quietly in our ginormous birth suite-- Ben on the couch with an iTunes movie and headphones, me side lying and breathing up, so relaxed I dozed between contractions.

Even after all that, I was only 5 cm at my next check at 10.

I paced awhile, swayed, even bounced on the birth ball for a few contractions, and then my awesome nurse suggested I get in the tub.

I am not someone who would ever even think about bathing at a hotel, but I wasted precisely no time getting naked and jumping under the jets, where I stayed for 3 hours.  At midnight, the resident donned a shoulder-length vet glove to check my cervix and said 7.5, but I didn't even care because I felt almost no pain and was sleeping between contractions.  Between the hot water, whirlpool jets, and HypnoBirth breathing, I was in heaven.

Until 1 am, whe transition happened, and all the relaxation in the world couldn't stop that horrible pain.

At 1:48, the OB on call told me I was 9, and I said "Are you fucking kidding me?"

I had 3 contractions back-to-back, one on the birth ball, with Ben pushing on my back, one standing up, panicked and holding onto Ben, and one on my hands and knees on the bed saying fuck over and over again.

At 2, it was time to push.  Pushing is the WORST.

But, at 2:18, there she was, Dorothy Tallulah, born bright-eyed and ready to eat.

She stayed on my stomach/at my breast/ in my arms for over and hour before we found she was 6 pounds 10 ounces and 20 inches long.

She definitely looks like big brothers.

And she is already an over achiever: 9 hours old, and she has met her wet and dirty count for today! 

Now, we sleep.

Well, first we eat a huge deli sub from room service.  THEN we sleep.