Little Miss Lucy

Our little Lucy Mae Hansen made her appearance into this world on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, at 12:31pm. I was scheduled to be induced that day and we had to be at the hospital at 5:30am. When I got up that morning, I noticed my water had broke sometime during the night and was slowly leaking. We got ready quickly and headed off to the hospital. For the past three weeks at my OB appointments, I had been dilated to 3cm. When we got to the hospital, I was at 5cm. The nurses got me all settled and after hooking up the monitors and getting a bunch of information, the nurse said I was ready to start on pitocin. I told her I would need an epidural as soon as possible. The contractions were manageable at that point, but I knew when the pitocin kicked in, they would get unbearable. (NOTE: I am a wimp, and I am OK with this fact. As long as there are drugs to reduce pain, I will take them.) The anesthesiologist came a little bit later and gave me the epidural around 7:45am. The nurse checked me before starting the pitocin and I was at 6.5cm. From that point, I continued to dilate about 1cm an hour.

The epidural was working well, but most of it seemed to go into my left leg. My right leg was only slightly numb. I could feel lots of pressure with the growing intensity of the contractions, but luckily, no sharp pains. The, uh, delivery area was also numb enough that I could feel pressure, but no pain. Hallelujah! It just became a waiting game while we waited for the cervix to do its thing and dilate fully and get out of the way. I took the opportunity to take a nap. I didn't get much sleep the night before, and I knew I wasn't going to be getting much sleep in the future, either.

Around noon, the nurse came to check on things and determined it was time to start pushing! I pushed for about 25 minutes, and then we had to stop actively pushing and wait for the doctor to get there. The next push or two would deliver the baby, and the nurse was concerned about some scar tissue from Joshua's delivery. The doctor came, the nurse described her concerns and they were both very good at doing everything they could to try and minimize the tearing this time. After the doctor came, I pushed about two more times, and at 12:31pm, Lucy was born.


























Lucy weighed in at 9lb 4oz, and was 20.5 inches long.


























Lucy and I stayed in the hospital Wednesday night and we were able to be discharged Thursday afternoon. Adam and Josh came to get us and our family of four (!) headed home.

We love our little Lucy and are so grateful she can be part of our family.