The time leading up to Allison's birth was definitely an adventure. I'll start at the beginning. The Friday before Allison was born Charles and I went to our bi-weekly doctor's appointment where we learned I had gained ANOTHER 10 lbs in a week. Dr. Garant told us she was concerned that I may be developing preeclampsia but with no protein in my urine sample, a high-blood pressure alone wasn't enough to get the ball rolling. Instead I was put on modified bed rest. We relaxed the rest of the weekend, I went to work part-time Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. When I got home Wednesday around noon, I took my blood pressure as I had been doing. My blood pressure was 145/100. After calling Dr. Garant's office they told me to go to Labor & Delivery to be monitored. I got hooked up to all of the blood pressure machines and fetal monitors and waited, and waited some more. Charles finally got there around 7PM and when we learned that my blood pressures were high enough that they wanted to perform a 24-hour urine collection to test for protein. So our first night in the hospital began with my peeing in a gallon sized jug about a million times. The next evening after my 24 hours were up, we started packing up our stuff and waited to be discharged. Oh how I missed my bed. Around 8PM or we asked a nurse when we were going to be discharged and she told us we weren't going anywhere that we were going to start the induction process tonight because of elevated protein levels in my urine. Great. This wouldn't have been a huge deal but we were only 36 weeks, 1 week pre-term, and 4 weeks before our due date. We were pretty nervous that our precious baby would end up in the NICU (infant ICU).
The induction started around midnight and since I couldn't sleep they gave me some sleeping pill that knocked me on my ass. It. Was. Awesome. That was the best I'd slept the entire pregnancy. They woke me up around 7AM Friday morning to tell me Dr. Garant would be by at around 8AM to break my water. 8:30AM, water broken = nastiest feeling ever. Just sayin. Once I finally got the epidural around 11AM I was quite enjoying myself, I even got one last nap in before princess would arrive. Around 1PM, Dr. Garant came to check me and I still had not progressed past 5cm and she was worried that I'd have to have a C-section. We decided to give my body a couple more hours to see if it would respond to the increase in pitocin to get the contractions rolling. By 3:00PM our, awesome nurse Amanda came to check me and I was still only 5cm, she left, came back checked me one more time at 3:15PM and I was a full 10cm. HOLY SHIT. This is it, we were going to meet our princess very soon. After only 45 minutes of pushing, our sweet baby Allison Elizabeth Darby made her appearance into the world on Friday, April 5th, 2013 at 4:08 PM. Weighing in 6lbs 8oz and 18 inches long she was the most perfect being I have ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on. She came into this world, not crying, but instead taking everything in. She was almost 12 hours old before she let out her first cry. That's my girl!
