Odyssey Days: A new baby is born.

This is the story of how our little babe Lilly came into the world.

It all started last Sunday at about 8pm Laura had a Gallbladder attack. After lying around the house wondering what the hell was going on (they didn't sound like labor pains) we finally called the hospital and they said, "Chest pain is a sticky thing, you should probably come in, just to be safe." Since Laura was pregnant it seemed like a good idea. After a fun couple of hours, several tests in the ER, and a doctor telling us 'we'll probably have a C-Section but we'll wait to see what L&D says.' We weren't excited but we were remarkably calm about the whole situation.
So we headed up to Labor and Delivery to monitor baby. We were awake for almost the whole night with various tests, a noisy blood pressure cuff, and the false hope of labor. Our nurse thought Laura's cervix had dilated while we were there but had stopped, this seemed fishy only after I had notified everyone we were probably having a baby. After the Doc came in and confirmed she was dilated at 3cm but was not in baby pushing labor, but rather some other mild form of labor with contractions. On that news we went home for some much needed sleep that whole afternoon. That was Monday.

Thursday we had a few things to do in Champaign, we started off by getting our carseat installation checked out at a place that does it for free. I learned that we picked out a good car seat AND installed it correctly! Apparently something like 70% (or more) of carseats are installed improperly. Later we had a regular baby checkup appointment and baby wasn't really moving on the ultrasound so we scheduled a followup for Friday, just to be sure everything was cool. That afternoon we saw a movie in the luxury theatre with recliners, and went out for lunch, it was a great relaxing afternoon together. That night we had a breastfeeding class and learned a lot of basics.
Friday morning we headed back into the Doc and Laura was again hooked up to a monitor and had another cervical exam, about halfway through it our doctor popped her head up and grinned a giant grin and said, "I'm going to stretch your cervix" After some very uncomfortable wiggling from my wife the doctor said you're going to have your baby soon. She had progressed to 4cm over the week.
We hopped into our car and made the 35 minute drive back home as Laura started having her first uncomfortable contractions. By the time we got home they were already about 5-6 minutes apart. I realized I had to take care of some things at work that I didn't want to describe over the phone so I helped Laura inside where her water broke. Back at work I had a bunch of boxes from an Amazon order that I grabbed quickly and turned back to the house. One item was a back massager I thought was going to be necessary for Labor(it wasn't). Laura and been home for 20 minutes tops when the rest of her water burst out with a gush. Again, we hopped back into the car and drove 25 minutes back into town to the hospital.
We got to the hospital at about 11:00am and at about 12pm she decided her pain was too great to manage on her own, she got an epidural at about 1:30pm. It helped for approximately one contraction. She had a second epidural an hour or so later. The second one alleviated pain greatly, but didn't eliminate it like they supposedly do. After about two hours epidural number two slowly began to fail. It wasn't doing anything by the time she began to push, she was now feeling everything. Apparently out in the nurses station someone quipped 'that poor woman needs an epidural', and when they said she's already had two there was a lot of sympathy pouring over from them.
Laura pushed like a champion for about an hour and a half and Lilly Lynn was born at about 5:53PM on Feb. 27.

The rest of the evening was a blur of pictures, food, walking around, calls, texts, and little baby cries. Altogether we had a great experience from the hospital staff and we are thankful that Laura had a relatively quick labor and Delivery.