BIRTH!

In the interest of completeness I'm including the Facebook note I posted on Thursday October 22, 2009, just 3 days after Ana was born.

________________________________________________

Hello all!

Thank you all so much for your lovely notes and best wishes. A quick version of our birth story which I hope to expand when my brain starts functioning again. These details are coming from my foggy postpartum/postoperative brain so I reserve the right to revise them in the future :)

I was in labour for many hours much of it back labour (translation - much more painful than regular labour). I made it to about 5cm dilation at about the 24 hour mark. I was exhausted and starting to feel like I wanted to push which is bad when you're not fully dilated to 10 cm. So we decided it was time to head into the hospital, get me an epidural, with a plan to get some rest and dilate pain free then push out a baby. After the longest 1.5 hours of my life I got the epidural and returned to the world (Mark actually said "welcome back"). Then little Ana's heart rate started to do some funny things and we decided the best thing was to get her out quickly. She was born shortly after midnight by c-section with meconium found in the waters (this is baby's first bowel movement and has a consistency very similar to tar). Fortunately the meconium stayed well above her lungs. Regular procedure is to get an x-ray of baby's lungs and some other tests and so off Ana and daddy went to the neonatal intensive care unit. While she was being tested and observed her breathing got really fast and so she had to stay in the NICU for 48 hours for observation. She is now totally well (her breathing is normal and there were no complications from the presence of meconium in the waters). I was admitted for 48 hours as well because of my c-section.

We are totally ecstatic with our lovely healthy daughter. Mark has truly been nothing short of amazing. He's been taking great care of both me and Ana. I'm really sore from the surgery and working on getting breastfeeding well established. I'll probably be MIA for the next little while as I'm feeling pretty exhausted but please know how much I appreciate all your support!

Sam