Kate's Birth Story

After 2 weeks, it's hard to believe that little Kate is here and doing so well! My goal this year is to make sure to blog at least once a week, so let's kick start with two blogs for today!

Kate's birth, like Abby's, didn't go exactly how I planned but was perfect in it's own way.

On Wednesday, December 15th, at 4 pm we checked into Christ Hospital ready to get started with Cervadil. With Abby, the doctor induced me right away with pitocin and I'm convinced that is what made my labor so long and so tough. This one... not so long!

Cervadil is basically given to you to try to "jumpstart" labor - it was applied at 6 pm (after I convinced the dr to let me have a quick dinner!) and then you rest to see what happens! Well, with the exception of having to get up and down to get rid of all of the fluids I was hooked up to all night, not too much happened (or so we thought). Kevin went to Mom and Dad Kroner's house to sleep so he'd be only a few miles away if he needed to head back to the hospital, while I tried to get some sleep, knowing that the next day would bring for a full day of laboring... or so we thought!

At 6:30 am the next morning, the nurse removed the cervadil and checked for progress. At this point, I had moved to 30% effaced and 1 cm dilated - so light progress. They let me get up, take a shower, eat a light breakfast and then around 7:45 am, they started the pitocin. Around 8:45 am, the contractions had started but were still pretty light so the dr came in and broke my water.

After about 2 hours of pretty consistent contractions, I was starting to feel pretty strong pain so I asked for the epidural. At this point, I had progressed to about 3 cm dilated and 50% effaced. We were convinced that we were in for at least a few more hours of labor but I wanted to make sure that the epidural worked this time - that was the only thing I was worried about during this whole pregnancy! After having Abby's unplanned natural (and very painful!) delivery, I wanted the drugs and I wanted them to work!

Well, evidently God wants me to be a "Granola" birther.

At 10:53 am, Kevin sent a text similar to below to his boss at work.

"She is starting to feel some pain and asked for the epidural, but we've got a long ways to go. I'll keep you updated."

Within the next 17 minutes....

- I screamed bloody murder for my epidural to kick in
- I suddenly started feeling the need to push and as my nurses said "It's not time yet", I keep screaming "Well, CLEARLY IT IS"
- The nurses finally decided to call the doctor... after checking me to realize I had progressed to 9 cm in 10 mins.
- The doctor ran in
- My epidural hadn't processed so the doctor gave me some localized anethesia (BTW - Please tell the folks at my last hospital about this. Made all the difference in the world. I didn't feel half the pain I did with Abby)
- I pushed for about 2 minutes
- Kathryn Olivia Kroner was born at 11:10 am!

The next morning, my doctor told me that if we were to get pregnant again to make sure to get the epidural when I arrive at the hospital.

I told her that I'm planning on getting when I get pregnant if there is a next time.

And it was all TOTALLY worth it.