Labor & Delivery

View from our labor & delivery room
And so it begins....
Luke announcing Ella's birth

Dedicated family hearing the news!

Watching Ella & Daddy in the transition nursery

Ella Grace Carlson

Aunt Katie & Uncle Joe

Aunt Nikki, Uncle Drew & Gamma

Some of the clan after delivery

June 8th was by far the best day of my life. The birth of my first baby was the most magical experience in the world. My last week of pregnancy was difficult. I was huge, uncomfortable, waddling everywhere, tired, and suffering from severe heartburn and acid reflux. Needless to say, I was ready to have her. My doctor (and Hoag Hospital in general) will not induce labor until 41 weeks and I didn't want an elective C-section. In all of my pregnancy books there are all these suggestions for naturally inducing labor (walking, doing squats, sex, and drinking castor oil). Well, I was willing to do almost anything and, needless to say, the castor oil worked for me. I took the castor oil at 11pm, Tuesday night (June 7th). On the bottle it says that it takes approximately 6 hours to work and, right on cue, I started contracting between 5:00am-6:00am the following day. We just kind of assumed it was false labor and that we were having Braxton-Hicks contractions. We were laughing through them and kept saying, "What if this actually works!" After about an hour of consistent contractions we contacted Hoag who connected us directly to our doctor. She was shocked because she had seen me the day before and not much was happening. We asked if we should stay home and try and labor ourselves for a while to make sure we were progressing into true labor before we went to the hospital and our doctor thought that was a good idea. I took a hot bath and started watching my reality t.v. (16 & Pregnant seemed appropriate). Two hours later I was still contracting consistently (3 minutes apart) and now they were really painful and I couldn't talk or laugh anymore during them. Luke was convinced this might actually be real so he started frantically loading all of our stuff into the car. (We had everything ready to go the night before :) I quickly put my face on, brushed my teeth and hair, and made it to the car. We were both beyond excited and hopped on the toll road to Newport. Once we arrived I could barely get out of the car. It was about 9:30am, we pulled up to the valet, and quickly made it to the 5th floor. (The one benefit to going to the hospital at 20 weeks was that we knew right where everything was.) When you first arrive, the receptionist has you fill out paperwork, which seems somewhat inappropriate given the fact you have to stop every 3 minutes to have a contraction. Luke pressured the staff to get me into a room asap and they finally did. Our first nurse was training another nurse so it seemed to take a while to get me hooked up to the machines. Apparently I was pretty calm, because when she finally checked me the nurse said, "Oh wow, you are 3cm dilated and 70% effaced. You really are in labor." They called my doctor (she had the day off) and she instructed them to go ahead and break my water. About 30 minutes later this giant, burly man comes in and breaks my water. It wasn't super painful, but it did not feel good. They started me on a narcotic to reduce the pain. It immediately made me start seeing double and I began throwing up everything I ate (mostly ice chips and popsicles). We called our families and my mom left work immediately and joined us. My dad had flown to Sacramento that morning and was flying back at 2:30pm so I had both my parents in the hospital fairly quickly. The nurses switched shifts and the new nurse, Jodie was the best. She told me that she thought that she would be the one delivering this baby and her shift ended at 7pm. I was super excited to think that I could have the baby that quickly. She encouraged a second dose of the narcotic since I was starting to feel my contractions again and my doctor didn't want me to have an epidural too early because she believes it slows down labor more than the narcotics. They wanted me to get to 5cm so that I was in active labor. An hour later I was in a lot of pain and feeling all of the contractions. The graphs were showing that my contractions had hit the top of the charts so they started prepping the epidural. I was now 5cm and 80% effaced. Luke was able to hold me while I got the epidural and I didn't even feel it because I was in the middle of a contraction when they poked me. Once the epidural kicked in (which was almost immediately) my sister and Joe were able to come and see me. I slept for about 45 minutes but then started to feel sick again so I couldn't relax. It felt like hardly any time had passed when the nurses came in and said, "Okay we are just about there so we are going to start getting you ready to push". All of the equipment started coming in and eveyone left the room except Luke and my mom. I started crying and feeling nervous and super anxious. It was hard to see everyone leave. Once everything was ready to go, the nurse wanted me to do some practice pushes to see what I was capable of. I did one set of 3 pushes, each 10 seconds long, and the nurse says, "Okay, I see the head and the baby has hair. Go ahead and stop because we have to wait for the doctor." I really didn't want to stop because pushing was actually a relief. The doctor took about 30 minutes and we were ready to start again at 6:50pm. At 6:59pm Ella Grace Carlson entered the world :) My mom and I were crying hysterically and Luke had immediately focused on the baby because the cord had wrapped around her neck and she was having trouble breathing. They weighed and measured her (8lbs 12oz and 20.5" long) and then rushed her to the transition nursery with Luke to get her on oxygen. I hated that Luke had to leave but was so relieved that he was by Ella's side. It took them an hour to stitch me up, I tore everywhere possible. Once everything was cleaned, my family was able to enter the room. An hour or so later, they wheeled me up to recovery. I asked to see Ella so they were able to take me in for about 5 minutes or so. Luke was by her side, but it broke my heart so see her hooked up to all the monitors. She was finally able to come back with us to our room around 11:30pm. We stayed up all night learning how to burp and feed her and just hanging out as a family. The nurses come in about every 20-30 minutes throughout the night so it is absolutely impossible to get any sleep. We had a million visitors the next day and finally, on Friday, we were able to go home.

I've been loving my first week as a mom. It's definitely a lot of work, but worth every minute. The night shifts aren't so bad if you prep for them and split them up. Thankfully, my hubby is amazing at helping and is always involved in everything. Little Ella looks different and changes every day. Everyone keeps saying how they can't wait for her talk, crawl and walk but I'm at a point where I just love her as a newborn :)