WELCOME KAYLEN!!

Kaylen Charisse Majewski was born May 19th at 9:30am!!!!

On Monday, May 19th, I woke up with a small leak of fluid. At the time I wasn't sure if it was amniotic fluid or not. So I went to school and taught all day. After school I called the doctor. She suggested I go into the birthing center to have the fluid checked. Chad and I arrived at the hospital around 5:00pm. The nurses put me in triage and checked the fluid...turns out my water had broke and been leaking all day! I was 2 cm dilated. So, we were staying to have our baby.

They admitted me immediately and started some IV fluids and a slow stream of pitocin to get things rolling. Contractions slowly started to pick up after that. My doctor arrived at 7:20 to check me. There was a small bag of fluid still in tact, so she broke that...OUCH! Around 8:20pm the contractions were getting pretty intense.

11:35 pm they started a bag of antibiotics since my water had been broken all day they were worried about infection for me or baby. 12:00 midnight I had progressed to 4 cm dilated and 75-80% thinned out. By 1:20am the pain was getting unbearable. I had an epidural started at 1:50am. After an hour of more labor, I was dilated to 6-7cm.

Unfortunately, the epidural didn't work well on my left side so I was still having strong pains in my left side, hip and lower back. The anesthesiologist came back in around 3:25am and adjusted the epidural to help cover those spots. I was still having a lot of pressure so sleeping was out of the question. Chad managed to get about an hour of sleep Monday night.

4:05am the nurse checked me and found me to be 8-9cm...we were getting closer! At 5:20 I was 9 cm. Finally, at 6:20am I was 10cm and fully effaced...which meant time to start pushing. The nurse on duty called me a "good pusher" and said I'd probably have the baby by 7:30. Boy, was she wrong!

My doctor arrived around 7:30 to check on my progress. I was slowly moving the baby down the birth canal, but she wasn't moving very fast. I continued to push and around 8:45 I was having a hard time finding the energy and motivation to keep pushing. With the help of my wonderful husband and the awesome nurses, I kept on going.

After 3 1/2 hours of pushing, the baby finally was born. They laid the baby on my stomach and we heard the doctor tell us "it's a girl!!!". We heard music to our ears as she let out a big yelp and started her hour long crying marathon.

It turned out that Kaylen was face up instead of face down during birth so she had a difficult time getting past my pelvic bone. My doctor told me a face up baby is the hardest way to deliver. Because of her being face up, her head and nose were pretty badly bruised and swollen. When her head came out, the doctor said she had the cord wrapped around her neck and she had to unwrap it. She had also swallowed a lot of junk on her way out and had to be suctioned for quite awhile. But, they told us she was going to be just fine.

Kaylen is 19.4 inches long and weighs 7 pounds 11 ounces. She has a full head of brown hair and dark blue eyes. She is just perfect! Chad and I fell instantly in love with her.

Our stay in the hospital was great. The nurses and doctors were all amazing to the 3 of us. I was pretty sore the first two days, and tired since we hadn't slept since Sunday night. By the time we came home on Thursday afternoon, we had settled in to a comfortable pattern of feeding and sleeping. She's a good eater and sleeper so far! She has about 2 hours every day where she's awake and alert just looking around listening to us talk. Those are the best hours of the day. Well, that and those 2am feedings where she falls asleep in our arms.

Kaylen had low blood sugar levels at birth, but managed to pump those up after her first couple of feedings. She also had a small heart murmur that the doctor heard, but she said that's pretty typical with newborns and it should go away by her 1 week appointment. Last, she became jaundice by Wednesday night so we're watching that too. We have to take her back to the doctor today (Saturday) to recheck her jaundice levels.

I will post her first pictures as soon as I can find the camera cords to connect it to the computer!!