Our sweet little girl, Lilian Beth Griffin, was born on December 6th at 7:31 AM. I was three days past my due date, but I expected to be longer so when I started having contractions on Sunday evening (Dec. 4th) I was pretty surprised. I did a few things to try and help it along, but have no idea if they jump started my labor or not. That evening I made Luke go jogging around the block with me twice, ate almost a whole pineapple, and made some disgusting ginger cookies and ate about 4 of them before I felt like I was going to throw up. I didn't really expect any of these things to work but I was just sitting around so I figured I might as well try. Who knows what actually helped though!
So I started having contractions Sunday evening. They did not really hurt but were just uncomfortable and were about 10-12 minutes apart for a few hours. When I went to bed that night they started to get closer together and a little stronger. Sleeping was already really hard for me and had been for awhile during my pregnancy so getting woken up every couple of minutes was just irritating so I got up and decided to do some things around the house. I tried to go to sleep a few more times but ended up just getting frustrated with the fact that I couldn't sleep. So...I watched some movies, took a shower, and folded some laundry. My contractions were getting stronger and around 6 am they were about 4 to 6 minutes apart, so I thought maybe I should go to the hospital, but wasn't really sure. They didn't feel good, but weren't super painful either. They tell you to go to the hospital when your contractions are consistently 5 minutes apart, so when Luke got up that morning for work I asked him if he thought we should go to the hospital. He didn't know either. A girl in my ward who had a baby a couple of months ago waited too long and ended up having her baby in her car on the way to the hospital, so after remembering that and talking to my mom, I decided we should probably go. At the hospital they decided to watch me for an hour and see how fast I was progressing....I wasn't progressing very fast so after an hour I was sent home with a percocet and told to go get some sleep. My contractions were still about 5 minutes apart and the doctor said that when I woke up from my nap they would either have gone away or gotten stronger/closer. The nurse told me to come back when they were 2-3 minutes apart and hurt so bad that I couldnt stand up. We said okay and went home. I tried to sleep for a couple of hours and then finally gave up after not really getting any sleep at all. At this point my contractions had gotten farther apart, about 6-8 minutes so I thought maybe they would just stop eventually....but they didn't. They were consistent all day, getting a lot more painful, but staying about 6-8 minutes apart. That night around 9 pm I was so frustrated and mentally exhausted. I called the on-call doctor who had sent me home that morning and told him how I had just kind of plateaued and wasn't changing. He said that was weird and that by now normally there would be a change one way or another, and that it couldn't keep going on like that forever so to just tough it out and talk to my doctor at my appointment the next day about it. I was super frustrated to say that least! My contractions finally started getting closer together around 11 and were 2-3 minutes apart at 12:30 am and pretty painful. I woke Luke up and told him I wanted to go to the hospital again...he seemed skeptical but said okay and off we went. When we got to the hospital I was only dilated to a 4 (are you kidding me?!). They admitted me to the hospital around 2 am, I got an epidural and the doctor broke my water around 3 am.
SO happy that things were finally progressing and that I couldn't feel the contractions anymore!
Things finally started to go a little quicker and at 6 am the nurse told me I was fully dilated, but they were doing shift change so unless I felt like I HAD to push, I would wait until the next shift came on. The new nurse came around 6:30 and I was anxiously waiting to start pushing! But...she told me that the on-call doctor was changing at 7 and conveniently the doctor coming on was my actual doctor. So we decided to wait until he got there, and of course he was running late:) I started pushing with the nurse at 7. I pushed for about ten minutes and was told we should stop and wait for the doctor. When he got there our beautiful baby girl was finally born on the first round of pushes. She weighed 7 lbs 11 oz and was 19 inches long.
Luke was so awesome and helpful through the whole process. He was in such awe of our little girl that he didn't take any pictures until my doctor reminded him to take some:)
Luke seriously deserves the Best Dad award. He loves Lilian so much and has a hard time putting her down. He is the best at calming her down when she is crying and does little dances with her to put her to sleep. She has been a really fussy baby and has a really hard time staying asleep unless we are holding her, so Luke has stayed up holding her all night multiple times. She is just starting to do a little better sleeping in her bed but still will only sleep for about 1.5 hours (if we are lucky) if she's not being held.
First day at home!
Daddy reading her books after bath time:)
My Mom came to help and it was so awesome having her here! Lilian loved her and is missing her a lot already!
We are all pretty sleep deprived but are doing great. We are loving Lilian so much and can't imagine life without her. We are so happy she is finally here and her sweet little personality already brings so much happiness into our home.
