Abbigail Cadence

She's finally here (and I finally have the energy and time to talk about it) so here are the details. Our daughter, Abbigail Cadence Harrah was born this morning at 2:28 am. She weighs 8 lbs 12 oz. and is 21 1/2 inches long. The story of this little girls birth is somewhat long, so settle in for a good read.

Yesterday around 12:30 am (Sunday) Jenn woke me up to tell me that her water had broken. She cleaned up and then we headed out to the hospital. They admitted us to triage for observation and then around 4 am they took us down to one of the birthing rooms. When Jenn was admitted she was 1/1.5 cm dilated and we figured we had a long day ahead of us.

Once down in the birthing room, they got Jenn on some fluids and waiting until 8 am before giving her anything to move the process along. They wanted to see how she would profess on her own. She didn't. So they gave her some gel to speed things up. They administered the gel twice (again around 12:30). Each time they did this the contractions got a little rougher for Jenn and opened up her cervix a little bit more.

Then around 3:30 or so, they decided to start giving Jenn some Pitocin to induce stronger contractions. It was successful, but it lead to the baby's heart rate becoming very erratic. So they stopped the pitocin, and things slowed down from there. Her body was however, continuing to move along on its own, slowly dilating bit by bit. After hours and hours of contractions, that were quite painful, Jenn decided around 7:30 that she wanted to get the epidural. That was in place and relieving her pain by 8:00. From there Jenn slowly dilated from 6 to 10 cm over the next 5 1/2 hours. They checked her at 1:30 and decided it was time to start pushing.

It took Jenn about 40 minutes of pushing and at 2:28, our little girl was born. Jenn did a great job and both mom and baby are healthy and going strong. jenn is recovering well, and Abbi is getting used to the world. Enjoy!