Well I think it is time to announce the arrival of the next Miss America... wait, no... Lets not tell her about that yet :) Laelynn Vivian Kenealy was born Tuesday July 20th at 8:46 pm. She was 7lbs 2oz and was 20 1/2 inches long. Her toes make up about 5 inches of the total count :) She is perfect in every way (at least we think so). Here is her birth story, and I promise to leave out the totally gruesome parts :).
As I headed to my 38 week appointment I thought to myself... "I should ACTUALLY be heading to my one week old's doctors appointment, NOT my doctors appointment!" Exactly a week before, doc told me that I would be having this little bundle of joy within 24 hours. She told us to go home, eat dinner and take a long walk. Then when the contractions were "uncomfortable" to come in to the hospital. They would already be notified that I would be coming. Well, for those who know me...I can "make" those contractions "uncomfortable" in my head. So off we went to the hospital around 9 pm. After no improvement the nurses told me to take a "brisk" walk around the Labor and Delivery floor for an hour to see if that will move things along. Not going to lie, that was one of the most fun hours with my husband I have had. To make things fun, he decided to download the Rocky song to play as we started off on our walk. If only laughing made me progress, I would have had that baby on the floor with all of Dodge Street egging me on. He then decided to find some mind games to play well we walked our marathon. We had a blast... only to find out that she wasn't having it and wasn't going to come out that night. As we stumbled down the walk of shame past the ER nurses we were a little sad. SO, now a week later I was a bit bitter.
I sat in the waiting room thinking of what I was going to say to doc to make her feel bad enough for me and she would just induce me. All I could come up with was... "That is the longest 24 hours of my life!" After I said that she laughed... and said if you are anything above 4 cm dilated I will break your water. DEAL!!! "Don't be afraid to exaggerate," I told her... :) Well, turned out I was a 5 so off I went to get our suitcase, make phone calls and prepare.
Turns out when we arrived at the hospital, she was coming whether we wanted her to or not because I was at 6 cm the first time they checked me! HERE WE GO! Now, I do want to say... To all you nurses out there... A labor and delivery nurse pretty much makes or breaks the experience of birth. With Layne, we had the BEST nurse (of course I don't remember her name)! She was so nice and personable... we loved it! This time, she said maybe 15 words to us. Steve and I looked at each other and thought crap... Well, turnover time was at 7 so in the next 3 hours maybe she will loosen up. The doctor came in and broke my water at 4:45 and got the epidural at 6ish. It is the weirdest feeling looking at your legs and feeling just a big blob of dead weight. But thats ok (Or at least I thought). When the contractions got bad, I had the pocket of pain in my lower right side. I could feel EVERY FLIPPING 100% CONTRACTION. Hands down the worse pain I have ever been in. Though, when it was time to push. I didn't feel a thing. SO, good and bad came with that. I pushed through 3 contractions and there she was, my little angel from heaven 4 hours later. She had her own time schedule, I guess I better get use to that!
