Labor & Delivery Details...

Claranna Rose was born at 38 weeks and 6 days. We were all expecting the baby to arrive a little earlier than that as was the case with Ella and James, but Claranna took her own sweet time. After about two weeks of on and off contractions and one false alarm, an induction was scheduled for Monday, April 27th at 7:30 a.m. The primary reason for the induction was because of the concern that I would have a rapid labor since James arrived so quickly.

On Sunday morning, our family went to church, went out for donuts, and took Ella to Toys R Us so she could spend some birthday money. After the kids had their naps, we were considering heading to Sam's Club, but that never happened. I had a few periodic contractions in the morning, but nothing different than what had been happening for much of the past two weeks. By late afternoon, I realized that the mild contractions I was having were starting to come at a regular pattern. I told Mark and we decided I should think about getting ready to go to the hospital. Grandma came and picked up Ella and James and we were off to the hospital. My contractions were about four minutes apart and starting to hurt more. I had to tell Mark to slow down a few times during our drive as he started to see that I was reacting to the contractions.

We arrived at the hospital at about 5:15 pm. By 5:40 I was settled in and when they checked me and I was already dialated to 6 cm, so they told me I would be staying. I was thankful that I had enough time for a spinal block. Once I had pain relief, labor went smoothly and continued quickly. We did have a little scare during delivery as Claranna arrived with the cord around her neck, but it was quickly removed and her color was great. This labor did progress as expected and was even faster than when I had James. Within two hours and 45 minutes of our arrival at the hospital, we welcomed our beautiful baby girl. I guess it was a good thing that we went to the hospital when we did!!


Here are a few pics from Sunday night:

At the hospital--ready to pop! (And, obviously between contractions...)

After getting some great drugs!

Daddy cuts the cord.

Weighing our baby girl.

Daddy meeting his sweet girl.

Claranna checked Daddy out too! Love this pic!

We had great delivery nurses...they took most of these pictures for us! Thank you!

We are now settled at home and I will attempt to get a few more pictures blogged. Claranna is doing really well, but she is suffering from infant jaundice and is pretty yellow. We will be going back in to have her levels checked tomorrow. Her renal ultrasound was normal twelve hours after birth. That's good news so far. When Peds Urology checked Claranna out, we were told it could be a false normal since she was more than likely dehydrated. They will follow up with us after her test for kidney reflux. For now, we are concentrating on eating, sleeping, and changing diapers. : )