10 Minutes

That was how long from when my nurse called my OB to tell her I was completely dilated to when baby was born!!

It’s a GIRL!!!

Josephine Helene was born at 11:40 AM. She is 19″ long and weighed 7 lbs 11 oz.  She has a head full of very dark brown hair.
We spent the night at the hospital and the pitocin was started at 6 AM. I was 2.5-3 cm dilated at that point. At about 7:30 when my OB came in to check on me, I was 3 cm dilated and baby was not engaged, baby was just floating high up so they could not break my bag of water. So, we waited.

I got an epidural around 9.  My OB came to the room and broke my water at 10:20 and at that point I was still only 3-4 cm dilated. In my head I thought quietly that this day might be long if things didn’t pick up pace. I continued praying for things to go smoothly and safely.

I tried to rest around 10:40 for a few minutes. Around 11:10 I told Jerry that I was feeling much more intense pressure with each contraction. They had gone from every 3 minutes to every 2 minutes also. Tony was very interested in watching the monitors. My nurse came in around 11:25 and wanted to put the oxygen on me because baby was having some deep heart decellerations with each contraction. When I mentioned the extreme pressure she decided to check me first. I had been praying for God to help my body progress to bring this baby out!  I was hoping I was maybe a 5-6 at least. To my complete surprise, she said, “well, that is why you have pressure, you are complete!  Now, don’t push!”.

You see, when my OB (who has delivered all 5 of our other children) came in to break my water, she shared that she has a c-section scheduled to start around 11:30/12:00 so if I needed to push while she was in surgery that would be no good!  I assured her that I would work around that.   So, the nurse made the call at 11:30 to tell her I was complete. Then she called in help to get the bed and me all prepped for delivery. Everything went well and 2 contractions, about 1 minute between them, and maybe 6 total pushes and Josephine, our sweet baby Josie, was born at 11:40!!  She is perfect and has all 10 long little fingers with long little fingernails and 10 precious and also long little toes.

My OB let Tony announce “It’s a Girl!”. Then she offered to let him cut the cord. Well, that brought about a very quick and clear “NO!” response. . When things calmed down we asked him about it and he said he was just really surprised right then about how very little she was!  He watched the whole delivery and was in awe of how easily she came out!

So, we have lots of pictures, but the camera cord is at home…sorry!  So, I have shared the only ones on my phone.

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