GIRL!!!
Katelyn Kiyomi Wong was born on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:00 PM. She weighed 6 pounds, 10.4 ounces and was 19 inches long.
Katelyn's Born!
Now for the birth story...
We arrived at the hospital at 9 AM and checked in. I got situated in the room and changed into my hospital dress I bought off of Amazon - all the nurses LOVED it and said the hospital should start using it! It's so much cuter than the regular hospital gowns and still allows them access for monitors.
They hooked me up to the pitocin and then it was just a "wait and see" game. I started at about 1 cm dilated, 80% effaced, and -1 station.
Gerald ended up leaving to run to the store. During that time, the baby's heart rate dropped dramatically, so they had to pull me off pitocin. After doing that, her heartrate came back up so we waited for an hour before starting the pitocin again.
The second time they started pitocin, the baby was fine so the nurse thought the baby may have been in a funny position that restricted the umblical cord (or possibly grabbed the cord herself) and thus caused the drop in heart rate.
She gradually increased the pitocin every hour. The contractions weren't horrible yet, and I wasn't really progressing much. I tried bouncing on the medicine ball to help progress the contractions (unsuccessfully I might add). Gerald left to get lunch and I continued bouncing on the ball.
I ended up getting back into bed as that was where I was most comfortable. Gerald came back and although he was helping me as much as he could, he was still technically working so he was doing work on his laptop and answering calls in the hospital room. Luckily, I wasn't in horrendous pain so I just sat and watched TV.
The nurse told me I may want to consider getting my epidural soon since I had mentioned I wanted it as the anesthesiologist was going to be in back-to-back C sections at 4:30 PM so I would not be able to get one until after the last C Section. Furthermore, my doctor planned on breaking my water during that time which would increase the pain. I opted to get the epidural around 3:30 PM.
The anesthesiologist (Dr. Hall?) was REALLY good. I remembered the numbing agent to be EXTREMELY painful with Sabrina, but this barely hurt at all. I was feeling really good and was able to just sit and continue watching TV.
The doctor came and broke my water around 4:30 PM. At around 5:30 PM, Gerald's parents came to bring Sabrina to visit us. She was so cute and concerned about me. We showed her the room and where the baby would be placed after he/she was born - she was so excited to find out if she would have a little brother or sister!
During the time that they were visiting us, I started getting some pains in pelvis. About 20 minutes after they left, the pain was excrutiating. It was only on the right side of my pelvis - not my left - but it was so horrible I was in tears. The nurse had to call the anesthesiologist back in. He adjusted the tubing in my back as he believed it was geared more towards my left side, thus not fulling numbing my right side. He also increased the pain meds. Before, I was able to move my legs on my own, though they felt EXTREMELY heavy. Now, with the new pain meds, I was completely paralyzed from the waist down. The good news was the pain was gone - but on the other hand, I could not feel anything in my legs. The nurse would come and move my legs into a bent position and to me it still felt my legs were out straight - it was the oddest feeling.
Around 7:30, my whole body started to shake. I couldn't stop it. I told the nurse that I thought I was in transitional labor, the period between 7 cm dilation and 10 cm dilation. She came over to check me and it turned out I was completely dilated, fully effaced, and ready to push! She went to find Dr. Matsuda to let him know.
Unfortunately, Dr. Matsuda had been called into an emergency C-Section, so we would have to wait to push until he finished. The nurse assured me it should be no longer than 20 minutes.
An hour and a half later, Dr. Matsuda finally came in and we began pushing. It took only 7 pushes (15 minutes' worth), and the baby was out! They didn't say "It's a Girl", but instead said "She's here!" to which I replied, "Does that mean it's a girl??"
She was crying - pretty loudly - much unlike her sister who didn't cry at all when she was born. But she was wide-eyed and very pink!! Sabrina was born with very slight jaundice - with Katelyn, the doctor said there is absolutely no concern for jaundice based on how pink she was.We had hoped that our friends and family would have been able to be there when she was born, but due to how late it was, and a work night no less, it was just Gerald and me. Gerald did call his parents to let them know, and texted all of our friends to share the good news..
Katelyn did much better nursing immediately after birth than Sabrina - Sabrina didn't want it at all.
About an hour after she was born, we were taken to our recovery suite in the maternity ward where we would stay until Saturday.
I fully expected the recovery to be every bit as painful with Sabrina, but because I didn't tear at all, once the epidural wore off I felt almost completely normal! The morning after she was born, she had an appointment with the pediatrician. Gerald had to run home to shower, feed Toby, and bring some things back for me, so I walked Katelyn who was in her bassinet all the way down to the doctor in the nursery. She gave Katelyn a clean bill of health! On my way to walk her back to our room, I ran into a new dad who told me I needed to visit his wife so she could see that other moms were out walking around! I guess he was frustrated that she refused to get out of bed. I'm guessing it was their first child - there's no way I would have walked Sabrina to the nursery wih the amount of pain I was in then!
Gerald's parents, Nicole, Kenji, Sean, Gina and Felicity all came to visit us that day and at the same time. Nicole and Gina were so sweet and brought us all lunch!
Sabrina and Felicity had fun playing together and of course, Sabrina just doted over her new baby sister. Below is a video of her meeting Katelyn for the first time:
Sabrina Meets Her Sisterr
And here she is holding her baby sister for the first time:
Sabrina Holds Katelyn
And here she is singing to her baby sister:
Sabrina Sings "Twinkle Twinkle"
Tim and Sandy came to visit Friday night and took Gerald out to dinner.
By Saturday morning, we were ready to check out and get back home to start our lives as a family of four. :)
