Abigail Dawn Swanson was born on Sunday, July 1st at 12:00 PM at 1 week overdue. 9 lbs, 9 oz, 21 inches long. We’re all doing great! Caleb is excited about his new baby sister Abby and enjoying some time with Grandma Cindy while we recuperate in the hospital. We're hoping to be able to go home this evening if everything continues to look good for recovery.
We're so thankful for a great birth team - for our roommate Sara's support, for our midwife & nurse's experience and knowledge, for Mark and Sarah taking Caleb during the night and day, and for a great hospital to give birth in just in case of complications.
And for those of you interested in the birth story, here's some more details below the pictures. If you're not interested, that's ok too. :)
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Stephanie started feeling contractions at about 8PM on Saturday night. This had been happening all week, so it wasn't surprising but was a little more intense than earlier in the week. We started timing them around 10 PM and decided to go to bed to see what would happen. Stephanie woke up Eric at 1AM to tell him that this was different and we needed to pay attention. By 2:30AM, Mark was at our house to watch Caleb (Thanks Mark!!) and we headed to the hospital to get checked out.
When we arrived, Stephanie was already dilated to 5cm and progressing quickly. This was GREAT news for us because with Caleb she hadn't dilated past a 4 naturally before having to be on Pitocin. We got checked in and got to see our midwife, Katie, right away. Sara (our roommate) came and joined us at the hospital and we continued with natural labor for several hours and continued to dilate but baby's head didn't move down. Katie suggested that we break the water to make things progress more quickly sometime around 9AM, which we decided to go ahead and proceed with. After that things got a little easier right away, then much more intense as we moved from "Active" labor into "Transitional" labor. Sara and Eric were incredible birth partners in their emotional encouragement and physical support (Eric spent much of the day supporting Stephanie's weight in different laboring positions).
At around 10 AM Stephanie was checked and the baby had not only not descended, she had turned her head sideways and probably wasn't going to progress very quickly. At this point we decided that an epidural was needed, and good thing! As soon as the epidural kicked in and Stephanie was able to relax between contractions, things started progressing much more quickly. We had the same anesthesiologist as we had with Caleb. He did a great job balancing pain management with necessary feeling - too often epidurals end up taking away all of the feeling so it is difficult to know which muscles to push with. Within 30 minutes, it was time to push.
Katie and the nurse (Pam) did an incredible job with the delivery. 5 other babies were born yesterday on the floor, one only 20 minutes after Abigail. After a challenging and a little scary bit of time where she was stuck and turning blue, Katie was able to deliver her successfully with no trauma to baby or mom. Also incredibly, they still allowed her to be immediately placed on Stephanie's chest to regain her color naturally and start crying, which she did very quickly.
She's big, healthy, and we love her! :)
