You and Me and...: Birth Story (finally)

I've been meaning to write 'Little Miss' birth story for quite some time. Here it is in bulleted form.

December 11, 2012:my due date I went to Dr. Gosser's office and he assured me that only 4% of women were still pregnant at 42 weeks pregnant so within the next 2 weeks she would come (2 centimeters dilated)

12/18/12: 41 weeks, Dr. Gosser began to discuss possible induction because 42 weeks would be Christmas day (4 centimeters dilated)
We prayed, consulted with friends (thanks Rachelle), and decided to schedule induction for 12/21/12 hoping that she would come before then on her own

12/20/12 (Thursday): Dave took me out to a nice dinner at Favazza's and I had about 4 contractions while there. I hoped that they would become more steady, they didn't.

12/21/12 (Friday): we woke up at 4am to arrive at St. Anthony's by 5am for scheduled induction
Nurse Kim checked me, began my IV, and was wonderful. (4 centimeters) Then at 7am her shift was over
My next nurse was Felicia, she was a worrier, who wanted me on the monitor ALL the time, but the problem was she and 3 day shift nurses couldn't figure out how to use the mobile monitoring system.

Around 7:30am Dr. Gosser came to check on me just before they were working to get the mobile monitoring set-up. When he returned at about 9am I was still on the regular monitor that basically kept me confined to bed. Being confined to the bed made it difficult to move during the contractions and made me very uncomfortable. He said I only needed to be on the monitor about 15 minutes out of every hour which Felicia interpreted as 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off. She was great about timing the off the monitor time but stretched the time on the monitor closer to 40 minutes.

By around 1pm I was 7 centimeters dilated and slowly creeped to 8 centimeters around 3:30pm. At 4:30pm I was still 8 centimeters and experiencing extreme back labor. I asked Felicia what pain relief options I had besides an epidural and she said "typically we don't give anything by IV after 6-7 centimeters, but I could ask your doctor." Dr. Gosser approved a dose of Morphine. It provided me with some short term pain relief to rest. Around 5:30 Dr. Gosser also broke my water to help me progress the last bit. And just about that time, when I wasn't sure I could take much more pain (Morphine was wearing off and Nurse Felicia had me tied to monitors), Nurse Kim returned to her night shift early and took over my care.

She helped to get into different positions (hands and knees, birthing ball, etc.) to relieve pressure off my lower back and I progressed to 10 centimeters and began pushing around 6:15-6:30ish. And at 8:02pm, my beautiful baby girl Hannah Josephine was born!