I have a baby

Where to begin? Tessa is 5 weeks old now and I still have to write the birth story! So...I guess I'll start there!

Tessa's due date was April 12th and I was more than willing to be done being pregnant as soon as possible.  At 37 weeks my doctor told me "any day now," which in my opinion is the worst possible thing you could say to a pregnant woman (not really, but it was for me). I obsessed over every little contraction and was so convinced she would come early just because I wanted her to. So basically I was tired of waiting. On April 9th I had people at work constantly asking why I haven't had this baby yet, it was every conversation I had. I got home that night so exhausted and so tired of wondering when Tessa would arrive and of being pregnant I pretty much cried myself to sleep.

The next morning on April 10th, I woke up to some pretty painful contractions around 9am. But like I said, I was already a pro at obsessing over these things and thinking "this is it!" when it very much was never "it".  So my hopes were not up and I was just trying to ignore them. They were coming about 10 minutes apart and I couldn't go back to sleep so I got up, did some laundry, took a shower and started getting ready for the day. They started getting more and more painful and when I felt one coming on I would go lay on the bed and try to breathe through it and then I just kept going with my morning. By 10:30am I remember thinking "okay, if I have one more really painful one that lasts about 1 minute I'll call the on-call midwife."

At first she told me to wait until the contractions were consistently 3 minutes apart before coming in to the hospital. By the end of our conversation I had a contraction and she said, "Actually, it sounds like you really have to work through those. Call your husband, have him come home and then come in." I called Mitch crying, I was scared and excited and nervous, already tired from the contractions, and in pain. I could tell he was really freaking out but trying not to :)

I started getting the last minute items for the hospital bag together while I waited for him. He came home, gave me a big hug, and we were off. The hospital I delivered at was about 20 minutes away and my contractions got so much worse. I remember Mitch having to stop on the freeway and I almost freaked out, I was so mad we weren't moving. When we finally got there I was not in the talking mood, Mitch answered all the nurse's questions for me while I tried to not crawl out of my skin. Seriously, I didn't know what I was expecting labor to be like but I thought I was going to die.

When they checked me I was at a 5 and I was admitted by noon. By the time I got into a room the contractions were 2 minutes apart. They started working on getting me an epidural and I was practically begging for the drugs. I honestly have no idea how it's done naturally, apparently I have the lowest pain tolerance of all time and of all women. Anyway, I had the epidural by 1pm and life was great. It was just Mitch, myself, the wonderful midwife and the nurse in the delivery room. Everyone was super nice and I was feeling so dang calm. They checked me again at 1:30 and I was at 7cm. They decided to break my water at which point we found out there was meconium in the fluid. The midwife told me we would be having a few additional people in the delivery room just in case she had trouble breathing. A few times Tessa's heart rate was dropping during contractions so they gave me oxygen.

The epidural was great, we hung out and I tried unsuccessfully to take a nap. I was told we might have her before midnight but it could take as long as the next day. So when the midwife checked me again at 3:30 and said "Let's have this baby! Do you want to start pushing?" I almost said no. It completely surprised me and I was a little bit terrified I was really going to have her.

After I had been pushing for a while I could tell the midwife was getting nervous, she said Tessa's heart rate kept dropping and we needed to get her out asap. They gave me oxygen again and I was asked if they could do an episiotomy to help her come out faster. I said sure, they cut, I pushed, and at 4: 19pm out plopped Tessa Mayley Vest! She was 6 lbs 15 oz, 18 inches long. She had a huge lump on her head, but she was still absolutely adorable.

It took her a minute to start crying and I think my heart literally stopped beating until she did. All I could think was "why isn't she crying? why isn't she crying?" They whisked her away to clean out her lungs and then we did skin to skin and I tried to nurse while they sewed me up. Tessa was not happy, and our first attempts at nursing were not successful. I was unfortunate enough to experience a 4th degree tear. Obviously I didn't feel the effects of that until after the epidural wore off, so we'll talk about that experience later.

After that everything was a blur, I remember throwing up a few times, feeling really dizzy and light-headed, and SO PUFFY. I got so swollen right after delivery it was hard to open my eyes, like I had been sobbing for hours or something.

I was told my placenta had calcified some, and because of the meconium, my midwife thinks we were off on her due date and Tessa was actually late. All I can say is, I'm glad I was totally unaware. I would have gone insane, can you imagine?! She was 2 days early and I already thought every day she was still in me was the worst day ever. (I'm being just a little dramatic, and we know exactly where Tessa gets it from).

The next few days at the hospital were actually pretty great. All I did was stare at my baby, they kept me on pain meds, brought me delicious food whenever I wanted it, and took Tessa to the nursery whenever I wanted a nap, although I didn't get very much sleep at all. Nursing, however, was not very fun, and I talked to a lactation consultant who unfortunately was not very helpful.

When it came time to leave I was kind of sad (mostly because I felt like life in the hospital was so easy and everything was going to get horribly hard when we try to do this parenting thing on our own), really excited, nervous and totally overwhelmed. Tess was a real doll and slept the entire car ride and for the first 6 hours at home. Our neighbors came over and brought us dinner. Mitch and I got some good cuddle time with her and I got to sleep. Our first day home was awesome. My mom wasn't going to arrive until the next day so we got some really sweet family time. I remember we got stressed about how long she was sleeping and were concerned she should wake up to eat. I don't even remember if we let her sleep for longer or if we woke her up, but she's still alive today so whatever we did, it worked out.

The first things we noticed are that Tessa has Mitch's ears, and the little wrinkle between the eyes. He has a genetic thing going on where on one ear the side is flat, she has it on both ears and on one it's in two different spots so the inside curves into a little point and it's a little elf-ish. I LOVE it. I'll post a picture of it some time. She has my eyes, nose, chin, and hair (Mitch was totally bald, I was totally not). She has a birth mark on her right eye lid, which they say will probably go away by age 2. And she makes the cutest noises ever. Her most common ones are a machine gun sound (or goat, or chewbacca...it's all the same) and a Teradactyl noise.

Her first name we just loved, and her middle name Mitch picked out. In Chinese MaeLi (pronounced may-LEE) means beautiful. We tweaked it a bit by pronouncing it MAY-lee and spelling it Mayley. I love her name :)

Even though some things happened we definitely weren't expecting, I'm still pretty fond of the day Tessa arrived. Healing from giving birth is HARD, but it makes it so much more bearable just by looking at her. Other than Mitch, she is the best part of my life. I'm so in love with our little family.