Elleana Eden Gons
Posted by Phil Gons in Birthday, Family, Pictures on 06. Nov, 2009 | 9 Comments
Our little girl is here! Elleana Eden Gons arrived at 2:30 PM (PST) on Saturday October 31, 2009. She weighed 6 lbs. 13 oz., measured 19 3/4 inches, and had a full head of dark hair. If you’re looking for pictures and videos, jump straight to the bottom. If you’re here for all the details, read on.
Elleana Eden Gons
Getting Close
According to our doctor, Shanna’s “due date” was November 7. In our birthing class, we learned to think in terms of a “due month” instead, so October 24 through November 21 was when our baby girl could arrive. We also learned that most first-time moms are up to a week late. So we knew that our baby could come before or after the due date, but we’d been thinking all along that she’d probably arrive somewhere between November 7 and 14. (We’d also been hoping that she’d be on time or a little late, since Phil was in charge of launching a big project at work that he’s been overseeing for several months. Logos 4 was scheduled to ship on Monday November 2.)
On Friday October 16, when we went in for Shanna’s weekly checkup, we found out that she was already dilated to 2 cm and 50% effaced. Her doctor told us that she was pretty sure Shanna wasn’t going to be late. We were a bit surprised at how far along she was, so that weekend we started nervously packing and preparing, thinking that we could have the baby at any time. We read in some of the literature from our birthing class that being dilated to 2 cm typically means that you’re in early labor, which can last up to 12 hours or more. So we thought we’d probably have the baby that weekend! After a little more research, we realized that probably wasn’t the case. But at least we were pretty much packed and ready to go!
At Shanna’s next appointment the following Friday, October 23, not much had changed. She was still dilated to 2 cm and 50% effaced. The next Wednesday, October 28, we had what would turn out to be the final checkup. Shanna was dilated to 3 cm, but the doctor gave no indication that it would be very soon. Shanna’s mom, however, was convinced otherwise. Little did we know, just two days later we’d be heading to the hospital.
It’s Time!
On Friday October 30 around 9:30 PM, Shanna’s water broke when she was walking on the treadmill at our community center. She hurried back to our condo and let me know. She was surprisingly very calm, and I was almost in shock. (I was planning a full day of work on Saturday, and then an 18 hour day on Monday, the launch day for Logos 4.) We called the after-hours line for our doctor, but couldn’t get through. We Googled “my water just broke,” and the consensus was that it was time to go to the hospital. A few minutes later, we heard from the doctor on call, and she told us to be making our way to the hospital soon.
We went through all of our checklists and packed up everything we thought we might need. (Apparently we brought too much. The nurses were laughing at us. :)) We left for the hospital around 11:30 PM and arrived in our room around midnight. Shanna was dilated to 5 cm and having regular contractions, but they weren’t painful. Since Shanna had tested positive for Group B Strep, they put her on penicillin to reduce baby’s chance of picking up the infection as she passed through the birth canal. That meant that Shanna would spend most of labor on her back, which caused things to progress slowly. After a few hours had passed, Shanna had dilated to 6 cm. We tried to get some sleep as her contractions continued.
Around 5 AM the doctor said that Shanna hadn’t progressed as much as they would like, so she recommended giving her some pitocin to speed up and strengthen her contractions. We decided that since Shanna wanted to get an epidural, we’d go ahead and have that done first. Getting the epidural was much more painful than it was supposed to be. The anesthesiologist assured Shanna that she wouldn’t feel a thing except for the stinging sensation from the lidocaine used to numb the area. However, Shanna felt the entire thing even after repeated attempts to numb the area.
After the pitocin kicked in, the contractions become stronger and more frequent. However, after several hours, Shanna had progressed only to 6 1/2 or 7 cm. The doctor was concerned that things weren’t moving fast enough, especially since Shanna’s water had broken more than 12 hours earlier and baby’s safe environment was quickly becoming susceptible to germs from the outside world. In order to speed things up, they wanted to turn up the pitocin levels. But in order to do so safely, they wanted to evaluate the strength of the current contractions, which required the insertion of an intrauterine catheter tube. But after several failed attempts, the doctor decided to proceed with an increase in pitocin and just monitor Shanna and the baby closely.
Contractions started to get even more intense to the point that Shanna was now having to breathe through them for the first time. This went on for a couple of hours until shortly after noon when Shanna was fully dilated and baby was pretty low. It was 12:45 when the doctor told Shanna she could start pushing with her contractions, and this is where things got very difficult. Shanna’s epidural had numbed her stomach, but she had complete feeling below her waist. The last 15–20 minutes of pushing was the worst of it.
