Well, I have been a mother for six whole weeks and what a crazy six weeks it has been. I'm currently typing as fast as I possibly can hoping that I can finish this post before Peyton wakes up which could be any second since I just heard her sneeze. Fair warning this will be scatterbrained and probably wont make a lot of sense to most of you. Also, please excuse any typos and improper grammar because "aint nobody got time fo dat!" I feel horrible that I haven't been very good at documenting this huge change in my life. I had high hopes of posting lots of pictures, writing in my journal every day, and remembering every detail of everything but that didn't happen. So I'm going to start from the beginning and hopefully while I write it will help me remember some details that I probably forgot. Here we go!
Irony: As I wrote that my sweet baby had the biggest blow out that she has ever had. So, after many wipes, a hurried bath, and changes of clothes for both of us, let me try this again.
Friday, September 11, 2015
I had my final doctors appointment to schedule my induction because I was almost a week overdue. From what the other doctors had told us, we were probably looking at being induced on Monday since they usually don't like to do it over the weekend because doctors like to have the weekend off... Well I wanted my baby to not be a week overdue so... Anyway at my appointment everything looked good. I hadn't dilated any more (I had been at 2ish centimeters for a couple weeks) so the doctor said they would induce me. I was expecting him to say that we would have to wait until Monday but he was just like "So, when would you like to go in? You can wait until Monday or you could go in tomorrow, or" and that was all I heard. I had just told Scoty that I wished they would just let me go the next day so that I wouldn't have to wait around anymore. Scoty pretty much stopped him right there too and told him tomorrow would be great! He left us to go call the hospital to make sure that was ok and get a time for us to go in. Scoty and I just looked at each other, wide-eyed and realized that this was really happening. The doc came back and said we were all set for 6am the next morning and sent us on our way. I was feeling great because I had been so anxious just waiting around and now my baby was finally coming!
Scoty and I decided that for our last night as a childless couple we should go out to dinner. We went to Romano's Macaroni Grill since that was the place we went the night before we got married and we figured it would be a fun thing to do. As I was getting ready to go I started feeling some pains in my stomach and I thought I was having contractions. Through dinner, I kept timing them and they seemed pretty regular for a while but then they went away so who knows what was happening. We filled up on way too many carbs and decided to go hang out with a few of our friends and family to finish the night. I knew we had an early morning and I wasn't finished packing for the hospital but I just wanted one last night of normalcy before this baby came.
Saturday, September 12, 2015
After maybe two hours of sleep, we got up and finished packing the last few things and headed out! I had hopes of doing my hair in a cool way or putting on make up but I figured I was going to be a mess when this was all over anyway so it didn't matter.
Signing in at the hospital
My go to "I don't know what to do in this picture so I'll just give a thumbs up" pose.
We got all settled in our room and the nurse came in to hook me up to all of the monitors and things. I was nervous about the IV since I have awful veins and it usually takes a good five or six tries to get it working. I told the nurse about my past struggles and luckily she got it in on the first try. Seriously, huge blessing. Then she asked me what I wanted to do about pain management and if I wanted an epidural right then. I didn't really have a birth plan but I her that my two main goals were to get the baby out safely the best way her and the doctor thought and for me to be in as little pain as possible. I have always had a really low pain tolerance so I knew that I wanted to get an epidural as soon as they would let me. She said she just needed to go grab the anesthesiologist and he could get it going.
At this point, they had already started me on pitocin to get my contractions going but I didn't really feel them yet. Our nurse came back in and said there were two anesthesiologists there at the time because one was about to get off and one had just started his shift. She wasn't sure which one we were going to get but she told us about one of them to kind of give us a heads up. She said "If you get Dr. so-and-so (I forgot his name) I just want to warn you. He's very... hands on. Like he's going to pick you up and move you to where he wants you to be and he can be a little rough. But he's great!" That made me a little nervous and it didn't help that when the doctor came in. He was this old man with crazy hair and smiley face suspenders. I thought, "Great... I got the one she warned me about." But I am so grateful I got him! He was a crazy old man, but he was so nice and after he left the nurse told me he was the best one but she wasn't going to tell me that if I got the other guy. I was also grateful she had warned me about him being hands on because sure enough he pretty much threw me around like a rag doll. The nurse told Scoty he should probably sit down if he was going to watch me get the epidural because this was the part that spouses usually got woozy. Scoty is crazy and likes to watch everything happen. He watches when he gets IV's and things which I cannot do. I don't want to see anything.
Anyway, there I was, curled up about to get stabbed in my spine by a crazy man. He had a huge cart of contraptions to get the epidural going. Scoty later told me that he was like a mad scientist, mixing all these different things together in the syringe and squirting it to get the air bubbles out like in the movies. I was so nervous but he ended up being very gentle (which I wouldn't have guessed by the way he got me into position) and I hardly felt a pinch when he put the epidural in. Next thing I knew my toes were tingling and I was on my way to no pain for the rest of the day.
This is where it gets pretty boring... I pretty much just sat there for 5 hours waiting for something to happen. I don't remember what I did to keep myself busy. I think at one point I tried to take a nap but I don't think I did. Scoty and I tried to watch a show but I'm not sure if we did... Like I said, I regret not writing this sooner because I don't remember the little things. My mom and oldest sister Sarah came at some point to hang out and wait with us too.
After a few hours, I wasn't really progressing so the nurse went to get the doctor to break my water. The OBGYN that I had been going to has about 10 doctors and they just rotate what days they are on call. Luckily I ended up getting Doctor Jacob. I saw him a few times at my appointments and he was great! I liked all the doctors that I had seen except for one so as long as I didn't get him I was fine. Dr Jacob was one of my favorites so I was hoping that the baby would come before his shift was over so he could deliver. It wasn't looking good though since I had only dilated about a centimeter in five hours. So he broke my water and they said they would come check on me in a little bit to see if that would help me progress faster. Having your water broken is the weirdest feeling. I don't even know how to describe it except with sound effects that I don't know how to convey here... maybe like the feeling you get in your gut when there's a deep bass beat in a song... but only once... yeah it makes no sense.
About an hour after they broke my water, I started to feel some pain in my left side. I was faithfully pressing the epidural button every 15 minutes but I could still feel the pain. They told me that my contractions might get so painful that they could be felt through the epidural. Which was not what I wanted at all. So I called the nurse and asked if I could get my epidural checked. The anesthesiologist came back in and said that he would mix me up a little boost so that I wouldn't be able to feel the pain anymore. After that boost, I was feeling fine again but I was extra numb from my waist down. Like to the point that I had no control over my muscles. Weirdest feeling ever. I couldn't turn over or use my stomach or leg muscles at all.
The nurse finally came back to check if I had dilated at all about an hour and a half after they broke my water. She looked at me with a confused face and just said "Nothing." I took that as "Nothing has happened still" and my heart dropped. I figured I was in for the long haul and would be there all night. Turns out "nothing" meant there was nothing there. She couldn't feel my cervix and said I was fully dilated and ready to go! We were all super surprised since I hadn't progressed at all and then all of the sudden I was ready to push! They let me rest for a little bit before the nurse came back in to help me start pushing.
This was right after they told us that I was ready to push. Obviously, Scoty was excited.
Everything started to happen so fast that Sarah kind of got trapped in the room when I started to push. She found a little nook to hide in but we didn't make her stay there the whole time. Originally it was just going to be Scoty and my mom in the room but I was glad that she was there too. I got to be in the room when she had her last baby and I thought it was awesome! Also at that point, everyone had seen my everything so I didn't care anymore. The more the merrier.
No one really tells you about pushing and how weird it is when you can't feel what you're doing. Luckily our nurse was awesome so with every push she kind of gave me this little mantra. Deep breath, chin down, push. Seems pretty simple and I should have been able to remember it every time without her having to say it but I think I would have forgotten if she didn't. Since my body and legs were so numb I didn't feel a thing. I said it felt like I was holding a whale when I had to hold my legs. Yes, a whale. I don't know why but it makes sense to me. Like they were warm and blubbery and heavy. I guess thats what I think a whale feels like. I think I was also getting a little loopy from the drugs and the lack of oxygen from holding my breath to push.
I pushed for about an hour and a half and finally I heard the tiniest, cutest little squeal and I knew our little girl was here!!! After that first little sound she filled her lungs and screamed good and loud! The first thing I noticed about her was that she had good chubby cheeks! I always said I wanted a chubby baby so that I would be able to squish them so I was happy I got one!
The second thing I noticed was how incredibly purple she was. Like grape soda purple. I was worried for a second but they told me if we just rub her she will turn red and sure enough she did!
When they laid her on me thats when it really hit me that this whole thing was real. I had spent the last 9 months growing this tiny human inside me and she was finally here! Even while I was pregnant it didn't really feel real. We finally had our little baby and we were a family of three!!!
The loves of my life
Once everything calmed down a little bit, Scoty and I needed to talk about what we wanted to name her. I didn't want to decide 100% on a name until I actually saw her but we were pretty sure we wanted to name her Peyton almost my whole pregnancy. We had a couple other names that were like back ups if Peyton didn't seem to fit but once she was actually here we both knew that was her name! I wish I could say that it was a family name or something but its not. I heard it on a dumb TV show about 6 years ago and really liked it. Just the name, not the character on the show. Jane was a middle name that we both really liked and it was also my great great grandma's middle name so it worked! Peyton Jane Stobbe!
A few people from Scoty's family came to watch Peyton get her first bath while I rested a little bit in the recovery room.
They put blue and white bows in her hair since there was a BYU game that night. Go Cougs!
I love this picture because I love her squishy cheeks so much!
After everything was over and we were just sitting in the room by ourselves I started thinking about the whole day. I just had a baby... and it didn't feel real. I was thinking about how easy it was and I started to feel a little bad. A lot of my friends had recently had babies and some of them had hard, painful, or scary deliveries. I felt bad that I didn't feel any pain and it went pretty quickly. Then I realized that was dumb and I should be thankful that everything went so smoothly. I had a beautiful baby girl and I was healthy. I guess I was just expecting it to be a lot more dramatic than it was. Becoming a mom was not hard for me and I don't take that for granted. When I think back on that day I feel so incredibly blessed!!!
There is a lot more I could write and I definitely could have written this better and less scatter brained but I just wanted to at least get it written out while I had a little time. I feel like I am so behind on everything but there could be a lot less cute reasons I am so busy. I love my little family.
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