Rebecca Jean Rex

Welcome to our lives, our home, our hearts Rebecca Jean, aka Becca!

This pregnancy was by far the hardest for me, with aches, pain and discomfort throughout the 9 months. I have never felt so miserable and so ready to be done being pregnant before!
Amen! (Dale's comments are italicized throughout this post)

36 weeks

My doctor said he wouldn't let me go past my due date this time due to my thyroid, and when I asked him to pin down a date, he suggested 1 week early, the 9th of February (my Dad's birthday), and I gladly accepted. My mom came out on the 8th and I was extremely relieved to not have to worry about coordinating our kids if our baby girl came early.

On the 9th, we woke up at 5:15, showered and headed off to the hospital...

Heading into the hospital

For comparison's sake, here she is heading to the hospital with Kimball...hardly aged at all!

April 14, 2007

The nurses got me hooked up to an IV and started me on misoprostol to soften my cervix and hopefully induce labor (I was 3 cm dilated). It wasn't long before I started having frequent, fairly strong contractions. I could still talk through most of the contractions, and could easily breathe through all of them. I honestly thought that if labor was like this, I could handle it no matter how long it took. I hadn't eaten that morning, because I've always been told not to eat while in labor, and I thought it would go fairly quickly.

4 hours later, they gave me more misoprostol because I had only dilated to 4 cm. I was crushed that 4 hours hadn't been more productive. After 2 hours, the nurse had me get up to walk around and I barely made it past the doors before I turned around and went back to my room because I felt so weak. We told my doctor this, but since I was in labor, he said he couldn't really do anything. The contractions kept coming and Dale was coaching me through each of them. By this point, I was so weak that I was falling asleep during each contraction...I would hear Dale's voice as the contraction started but would pass out before the contraction even peaked. When Dale realized I wasn't just extremely relaxed (I literally stopped coaching her for a few contractions and she was just as passed out, and I thought I had been doing a fantastic coaching job...), he told the nurse that I don't handle fasting well so she tested my blood sugar which was 65. Finally she gave me a soda to drink, and within minutes, I was up and doing laps around the maternity wing.

By 3:00, I had only dilated to a 5. I was sick of this, and Dale was bored...though he didn't take up my offer to trade spots. The nurse texted my doctor to see what she should do and heard nothing from him until he showed up at 5:30 to break my water. Immediately the contractions were intense and it was taking a lot of focus and effort to breathe through them with Dale's coaching. Before long, I felt like I needed to push and all I could do through contractions was moan loudly, which then turned into yelling and eventually screaming.

My entire upper body started tingling, and soon I couldn't move my hands because they had cramped so severely. And by cramped, she means they looked like the claw. I thought she was having a stroke or something. Her face got all slack and her speech was really slurred. The nurses had never seen this before and were trying to massage my hands and had me breathing into a barf bag. Apparently that's what happens when your body runs out of CO2 from exhaling too fast! It's kind of surprising the nurses hadn't seen this before. Medline Plus's article on hyperventilation clearly lists the following symptoms: confusion, muscle spasms in the hands and feet, numbness and tingling in the arms or around the mouth, and weakness. It even lists pregnancy as a cause. 

When it was finally time to push, I couldn't coordinate my arms enough to lift my legs and had a hard time pushing. After pushing a few times, I started screaming "Get her out! Get her out!" and finally her head came out. This went through at least two contractions. At the top of her lungs. My biggest regret of this labor is not videoing these pushes. For posterity, of course. When she was far enough, the doctor offered to let me pull her out, but my hands were still useless, so they brought her up to my chest and all I could say was "oh my goodness". I was enlisted to make sure she didn't drop the baby. She was officially born at 6:36 pm. Because I had been moved to be in the way of everyone seeing the clock, I actually got to declare the time. Yay me! 

6:39:51 pm. Pretty close to birth.

Almost right after Dale cut the umbilical cord, Becca latched on and nursed like a pro. I hemorrhaged again which was awful and took forever, but finally my mom got to bring our 3 older children for a quick peek at their baby sister. Lily didn't seem to know what to think, but the boys knew just what to do and held her proudly. After they left, the nurse took Becca to be weighed and was an impressive 8 lb, 4.8 oz, and 20 inches long! Dale got to give her her first bath and we eventually got to sleep around 1:00 am.

The next day, my mom brought Lily while the boys were at school and she did so well holding baby sister.

Then the boys got to come that night...

Due to Cameron getting Group B Strep, they kept us for observation for 48 hours, but thankfully Becca's jaundice levels didn't warrant staying longer (all of our other children had to be on billi-lights for varying lengths of time). The pediatrician did put her on lights the last day we were there just to be safe...

 On Saturday night we finally got to bring our littlest princess home! Embarrassingly, when I washed the car seat cover, I put the buckles on backwards, so the nurse and I couldn't get the buckles to latch...we were panicking that we'd have to buy a new car seat until the nurse tried latching it backwards, which worked.

I'm always in awe of how much love my heart suddenly has for our newest little baby and am so very grateful that she's here, she's healthy, and she's forever ours!