Korbyn's arrival



Wow, as much as I hate posting this picture (I look awful!) it's our first family photo :)  There's so much to write about I don't even know where to begin.  I guess I'll start from the beginning.

We left our house Wednesday evening and ate dinner in Bryan before heading to the hospital. I for some reason ordered spicy buffalo tenders then realized that probably wasn’t the best choice, but they were SO good. We get to the hospital around 8 p.m. and check in and they get us to our (brand new) room and our nurse comes in and gets me hooked up to all the monitors and puts in my IV and lets us know kind of what the plan is. She inserted the pill into my cervix and said that she’ll be checking throughout the night how I’m progressing and will be inserting a new one every 3-4 hours. So at about 11 p.m. Colton and I turned off the lights and tried to get some sleep. Surprisingly we both slept pretty well. So throughout the night and early morning the nurse is coming in and checking on me and around 3 or so (all the times are estimates because I really can’t remember all the specifics) she keeps moving the monitor that keeps track of my contractions. She said that I’ve been contracting all night, haven’t I felt them? Then she put her hand on my belly and said, you’re having one right now, don’t you feel it? I kind of paused and said, I’m trying too. She laughed and said, you shouldn’t have to “try” to feel them. I really had no idea what contractions felt like.

Around 5 a.m. the nurse asks how I’m feeling and I tell her that the contractions are just kind of making me uncomfortable where I can’t sleep as well. She said I can have some pain medication through my IV that will only last a few hours if I want. I decided to take some so I could get some much needed rest. It was wonderful! I still could feel the contractions but the medicine just made you feel like you were drunk so even though I could feel them, I didn’t really care and I slept so good after that. I honestly don’t know what time we woke up, but they started my pitocin around 9 a.m. and from then on it became a waiting game.

My parents and Doug and Loranne were there all day, thank goodness, it was so nice to have support and just someone to talk with to help pass the time. So as the time goes by I can definitely feel my contractions getting stronger and more frequent. My dr. comes in I think around 11:30-12 and checks me and I was only at like a 2 or 3 and she said she is going to break my water. Well by this time I’m contracting pretty good and of course while she has that little tool inside of me trying to break my water I have a huge contraction and try my best to hold still. Well this b**** of a nurse (not my normal one) came in for a little while to help out and while I’m contracting and the dr. is trying to break my water says “oh honey it doesn’t hurt that bad, it just feels like an exam.” What the heck kind of exam have you gotten!?!? I could have punched her for saying that to me. So my dr. tells me that since my contractions are already intense and frequent she would suggest I get my epidural now because usually after the water breaks they only get worse. So I go to the bathroom one more time and of course as soon as I get up out of bed my water comes gushing out on the floor! I just stand there like, “uh, can someone toss me a towel?” I have to wheel my IV with me every time I go to the bathroom and I can just remember having a contraction so bad that I thought I was going to break the stand because I was gripping it so hard. By the time I come out of the bathroom the anesthesiologist walks in and gets everything going for the epidural. St. Joseph’s is a teaching hospital and Colton and I agreed that we would let any students be able to come in and observe while we were there. So the anesthesiologist brings along one girl to observe, and from what Colton tells me her eyes got huge when he got that big needle out and she didn’t look very well. So while I’m gripping the pillow that I’m leaned over in tears from another contraction I don’t notice anything that the anesthesiologist is doing, literally didn’t feel a thing! I thought it was really funny though because as my contraction passed I heard him say “…(a name) are you OK?” and I answered with an exhausted “ya” well come to find out he was asking the intern if she was ok because apparently she looked like she was about to pass out! But ya, the pregnant lady in a crap load of pain is just fine thanks for asking!

So after my epidural things pretty much seemed to take FOREVER to progress, but the good news is I was progressing, just very slowly. I can’t remember exactly what time it was but I can remember feeling a lot of pressure down in my pelvic area every time I would contract. So much that I asked the nurse if it was normal and she said it was probably the baby moving farther down into the birth canal but that it shouldn’t be painful, but it was. So she upped my epidural but it never changed anything, in fact I could feel the pressure get more intense with every contraction. So she kept giving me more, but nothing. It had to be around 7:30 or 8 when my epidural was actually running low (it’s in a little plastic container that’s regulated by the IV machine). Colton noticed it and walked to the nurse’s station and told them that it was running low. Of course they knew to keep an eye on it. Well when it went empty and starting beeping Colton was headed for the door to tell them to get in there and put a new one in, now! Thanks babe.

Around 8:30 p.m. the nurse says it’s time to start pushing. So I push through each contraction like it was nothing, in fact I’m chit chatting in between each one. I don’t know what time it was but I remember Colton telling me he could see her head and it seemed like after that someone flipped a switch and I felt EVERYTHING. By this time the dr. comes in and is suiting up and I’m screaming and flailing my arms because I’m in SO much pain. I’m continuing to push and of course I could feel her head start to come out and the nurse tells me to stop pushing and wait for the doctor, I yell (at least it felt like I was yelling) “I can’t stop, I need to push!!!” So the dr. finally gets down there and immediately tells one of the nurses to get some local anesthetic because she can tell I’m in tremendous pain. I can actually feel her give me the shot down there and then she gives me an episiotomy. At this point I just want it to stop, I can remember saying “just get her out of me!” I never imagined I could feel so much physical pain. So little miss Korbyn finally arrives at 9:28 p.m. weighing in at 7 lbs. 9 oz. and 20.5” unfortunately we only got to hold her and be with her for a few minutes because they said they didn’t like the way she was breathing so they took her to the nursery right away and we got to see her again around 11 p.m.

The nurse brought her in and amazingly she latched on and started nursing, thank goodness. The next day the dr. comes in and checks on me and explains that I have stitches and that occasionally the epidural doesn’t work everywhere on everybody. She says that my epidural covered the contractions but everything else it didn’t really work. Well that explains everything! That’s why it was so uncomfortable feeling her move down into the birth canal and that’s why I felt everything giving birth to her. So basically I gave a natural birth, just couldn’t feel the contractions. Really, when I think about it, it almost gives me the chills about how painful it was. I know TONS of women give birth naturally, but going into it thinking I wasn’t going to feel a thing and then having to go through that was awful! Not saying the end result was awful, and I know eventually I’ll forget about it completely, but I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty horrifying. Even my mom, who was in the delivery room with us, said she could tell it was like all of a sudden I was at a point where I couldn’t take it anymore.

We were so ready to go home the minute we were moved into the post partum room. We just wanted to go home with our new baby girl! Of course we had to stay all day Friday and were discharged Saturday around 11:30. I’m about to have to feed her, but I’ll definitely be posting more about our new baby :)

Fresh from the oven :)  This is the only time she looks like me, she is definitely Colton's daughter.

Cousin Hannah came to visit.

She really doesn't even look like this anymore, she's changed so much!



We both got a picture right before we left for home!  I don't know what she was doing when I was holding her lol!  We also had the hospital take some really good pictures.  You can view them on http://www.our365.com/ and search under "Abigail Coates" or "St. Joseph Regional Health Center."  They did an amazing job!