Welcome Home little one!

Sice my sister's blog has turned out so well for her and the rest of us with keeping ourselves updated in her life, I decided it was time to start one of my own. With the arrival of our daughter Chloe, I figured this would be an excellent time to start it.

We welcomed Chloe into the world in the best of moods. My labor was unbelievably easy. I have been told not to talk about it, but I can't help it. Labor lasted 7 hours start to finish. I went to the hospital at 9:00 pm already 6-7 cm dialated and 85% efaced and with lower back "discomfort" (not really pain, but an achey feeling every few minutes). Sure enough I was in labor. When I got to my room an hour later, I still wasn't in any real pain, but I asked for an epidural because I knew from the begining that I did not want to feel the pain of childbirth. 1/2 an hour later they gave me an epidural (still not really in pain. Pain level was about a 1.5). Since my water had not yet broken, my doctor broke it for me so my labor could progress even more.

This event caused me to have heavier contractions which I kept calling cramps, because that is exactly what they felt like. Still my pain was about a level 3 at most. So here it is at 1:00 am and half of the spectators (Brett's parents and sister in law) decided that they were going to go home, I mean my labor could go on for a while. So we said our goodbyes and they left for the night. within 30 minutes I was complete and ready to push.

(side note: at this point in time I thought that labor was nothing, so far very little pain, and I was progressing so fast. I knew that all I had ahead of me was to push....figuring this shouldn't take long. I had it in my head that I was going to have my daughter out by 2:30. a 30 minute goal for me, but I had to have something to shoot for.)

So I started pushing at 2:00 am and by 2:40 she was born. Within this time frame I had mentioned to my doctor what my goal was (having her out by 2:30) and he politely told me that most first time moms usually push for 2-3 hours before they deliver. I took that with a grain of salt and decided to stay on my target. I probably could have pushed her out by 2:30 but someone made a comment that made all of us laugh and that totally threw off my concentration and I lost the use of a valuable contraction. I did not let that stand in the way of my goal and I made up for it in the end. I was able to push her out without the help of a contraction, just wanting to get it over with gave me enough energy and strength to get her out.

At 2:41 am we welcomed Chloe Elizabeth Schweizer into the world. She was perfect! 8 lb 2 oz and 20 inches long. Like I said before, labor and delivery was pretty darn easy.

The rest of the day and the following day were somewhat of a blurr for me with the lack of sleep.

The nurses actually let me rest with very little room visits, which was very nice to have. I enjoyed seeing all of the visitors, but really wish that I could have slept more. But that was something I could to at home. (yes yes go ahead and chuckle at this comment).