She's here!!

At 2:31am on Sunday, June 19th, Fathers Day, Emily made her appearance in the world.

Here's the story....

On Friday, June 17th, I went about business as usual. I asked Jim to drive me to my nail appointment as I didn't feel comfortable driving. So, he did. When he picked me up, he asked me if I wanted to get something to eat. I said I just wanted to go home. When I got home, I was hungry. So I made a cheeseburger while we watched a movie.

At around 9pm, I felt a "pop". I thought this was odd. I went to the bathroom and nothing. When I came back, Jim said, Did your water break? I told him I didn't know. It wasn't a huge gush like you hear about or see in the movies.

Then the contractions started. People ask How do you know if they are real? Trust me....you know! There is no mistaking real contractions! I figured we were going to the hospital tonight, so around 10pm I decided to take a shower. Jim wanted to lay down for a bit and try to rest. I did try, but there was no way possible!

I called the doctor's office. The answering service told me they would page the on-call doctor and they would get back to me. After a half an hour....nothing. Now the office rule is wait 15 minutes and call back. So around 1:00am on June 18th, I called the office again. This time Dr. Fernandez called back quickly. He asked me a couple of questions and determined I was in labor.


Now, they are on-call at two hospitals....Morristown Memorial and St. Clares. I was delivering at St. Clares. He said he was in Morristown Memorial and to head to the hospital, he would let them know I was coming. Fine. So we get ready and head to the hospital.

It was around 2:00am when we got there. I was wheeled up to Labor & Delivery. The nurses put me in a room, got me into a gown and hooked up monitors. They also did an internal and I was at 1 centimeter. Then, left the room to call Dr. Fernandez to see what he wanted to do with me and Jim went into the bathroom. That's when it happened.....the nausea. I'll spare the gory details, but we got me & the bed cleaned up and re-sheeted. At this point, I was staying to have a baby!

They then got the IV placed, blood drawn and sat down with a huge binder. It was time to play 20 questions! By the time they were done with everything it was 5:30am on the 18th. I called my parents and Jim called his parents to let them know where we were and what was happening. We told them we'd update them as it progressed.

The contractions were beginning to get really uncomfortable. See I was having one huge contraction with peaks of extra pain. So I was never really able to relax between contractions. The nurse came in and said offered me nubain. I gladly accepted it! Ahh...I was finally able to get some rest.

I dozed off and on between really painful contractions as the nubain was wearing off. At around 12 Noon, Dr. Fernandez stopped into my room to see how I was doing. His shift was ending, but he wanted to check how I was doing. He did an internal and found I was still at 1cm. Not good! He gave the orders for pitocin and an epidural if I wanted. He said that she could be a Father's Day baby!! Seeing as this was noon the day before, I said I hoped not!

So the nurses came in with the pitocin and it was hooked up. After about an hour of that, I was calling for an epidural. It was about 17 hours after labor started and I was still only 1cm, I just wanted some relief. Well, the anesthesiologist was in surgery so it was about an hour before he came in. Jim was requested to leave the room. The anesthesiologist was nice, he explained everything before he did it. Unfortunately, the epidural had to be done twice because I jumped and the needle moved. Overall, it was pretty easy and it was such a relief...I felt no contractions.

Throughout the day nurses came and went. I was checked, checked and re-checked. Around 10pm, I was at 10cm....but the nausea started again. So they got me something to help with that. Finally, around 11pm, I started pushing. Right away the nurse knew something was wrong. She went to go find another nurse to help me through this. They determined that she was "sunny side up", so they tried to get her to turn. They contorted me into all these strange positions. It was not fun!

After 29 hours of labor with 3 hours of pushing, and the aid of a vacuum, Emily Aylish came into the world. She was finally born at 2:31am on June 19th....Father's Day! She weighed in at 8lbs. 4oz. and she was 19 inches long.