Birth Day

The story of Kaitlyn Raegan's Birth Day.

June 28th, 2009

6:30am - Phone rings. It's Christiana Hospital. It's time to go in to be induced. Shaun and I got up took showers, I ate my one piece of toast and headed in to the hospital. I was being induced because I was dilated 4.5 centimeters for 3 weeks.

We had to wait a bit once we got there due to a shift change, but we were in a room and I was hooked up to my IV by 8am. Pitocin was pumping and the ball was rolling. Not too much happened other then laying in the bed and watching Kaitlyn's heart beat monitor and the contraction monitor. Dr. McCoullough came in and broke my water at 11:30am. Then I could really feel the contractions which quickly got me to 6.5 - 7 centimeters. Becca arrived to keep us entertained around 1pm. My epidural was the scary part. Shaun was awesome, he held my hands and didn't look at any needles! Other then the shaking (to be described later) this was the worst part.

After the epidural I did dilate to 8 centimeters by about 5pm but then everything stalled. I started to feel more pain and my epidural was upped, I stopped dilating and the baby wasn't moving any further down. Dr. McCoullough literally grabbed my by my pelvis bone and shook me to demonstrate that the baby wasn't moving down. Becca and I later discussed that you could see me literally moving up towards the head of the bed and then down towards the foot when she was shaking me. Such a weird feeling! The doctor also told me that my pelvis is not round so that the baby might have a hard time moving further down but she wanted to give me more time to see what would happen. About this time my mom came up to visit, and see what was going on.

By 6:30pm when Dr. McCoullough came back to see nothing had changed and it was decided that we would go for the C-section. Which is oddly what I had asked for in the beginning because I would be able to prepare for it and it wouldn't be a guessing game. So we handed off all of our stuff to my Mom and Becca and they went down to the waiting room to wait. They were told it would take about an hour. Shaun got into his scrubs and we waited while they changed the epidural medicine and got everything ready. We didn't leave the room for another 30 to 45 mins. The weirdest feeling ever is laying on your back and watching ceiling tiles roll past knowing you are going to surgery.

Everything was pretty fast once we went to the operating room. I was prepped while Shaun waited in the hallway, the big blue curtain went up and I have no idea what else they were doing. They brought Shaun in and gave him his little stool next to me. I heard them say incision which meant they were starting, everything was okay some pressure etc. I heard them say they were having a hard time getting ahold of her head at which time I heard someone say fundal pressure and two people started pushing the belly to move her. Dr. McCoullough told Shaun to look over the curtain and he tried to protest but he did look, he said all the he saw was baby butt and feet. They pulled her out feet first!!!! I had no idea they did this until we talked about it later! It makes sense though because I remember them saying she was crying before she was even all the way out.

Kaitlyn Raegan Gines was born at 8:12pm on June 28th, 2009. 7 lbs, 10 oz. 20 1/2 inches long.

Even covered in gook and still blue and screaming she was beautiful. She was taken to the nurses to be checked out and warmed up. Shaun did get to cut the cord, which was cool. Of course I was crying and this that Shaun shed a tear or two. The nurses were great and were giving him plenty of opportunity to take pictures and taking pictures for us. Shaun brought her over so I could see her and we got to sit together and just stare at her and take it all in. He looked at me and asked "Do you believe that we made this? She is ours." To which I replied "Do you believe they are going to let up take her home!"

As they were putting me back together the shaking started, which is normal because your body thinks it's cold even though it's not. I was shaking so hard and my teeth were chattering. It was hard to talk and my jaw hurt from trying not to chatter, I really thought that I was going to chip a tooth or bite my tongue. Honestly this was the worst part of everything! We moved quickly to the recovery room, we were there by 9pm.

Shaun asked if anyone had told our family yet and they said no so we called Becca and gave her the details. Shuan went down and started to bring them up in 3's to see Kaitlyn and me after the first hour. Kaitlyn's first visitors were Grams (Alice), Pops (Ken) and Uncle Ross, then Mommom Pat, Poppop Jay and Becca, and last but not least Neeno (Carol), Poppy (Rob) and Poppop (Scotty). The visitors were all gone by midnight and we settled in until 2am to wait to go to a real room.

We moved to a real room at 2am, got into bed and quickly realized that I was going to be attached to the bed for the night so poor Shaun had to change all the diapers and deal with all the crying. He is the best hubby and Daddy ever!

Happy Birthday Baby Kaitlyn and welcome to the world!