Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Andersen McCall Stringer

Andersen McCall Stringer
January 16, 2016 @ 11:30am
7 lb .03oz
20.5 inches long

On Saturday, January 16th, my water broke at 8am while I was laying in bed with my husband and kids as we were slow to rise that morning. I jumped out of bed in order to avoid soaking the bed. TMI? I rushed to the bathroom to make sure that my water actually did break. And, it did. Excitedly, we got the kids dress and ready to go to a friends house. I quickly texted our families and close friends. I scarfed down a bowl of cereal and drank a couple bottles of water. I took one more bump picture in the bathroom mirror while Bryce buckled the kids in the car. I was having contractions but they were only about 5 minutes apart and not painful at all. 

We dropped the kids off and headed to the hospital. We arrived at the ER a little after 9 am. I wasn't preregisted so I had to sign paper work. This is when my contractions really started to pick up but they weren't that painful. 

They sent me up to the triage room to evaluate me. I was dilated to a 5.5. I got settled into a room where they hooked me up to all of the monitors and put in my IV. I did NOT want the IV this go around because of how horrible my experience was with Calum. It took 8 tries with him for them to finally get the IV in. This time, it took only 3 tries. Ha! It was still horrible. 

The doctor came in again and checked me at around 10:15am. I was dilated to a 7 but he realized my water hadn't completely broken and that is why I wasn't progressing very fast. Once he broke the rest of my water, things progressed very quickly. Early on in my pregnancy, I planned for a drug free delivery (Same as Calum's) but this time, I wanted to be able to walk around and use the exercise ball. Weirdly enough, when I was in labor, I did NOT want to leave that bed. The only way I wanted to be was sitting up in the bed and leaning forward to get the pressure off of my back. My sweet husband..he used a roller ball to rub my lower back and applied Deep Relief essential oil which was a LIFESAVER!!!!! I wish I would have had that stuff when I delivered Calum!! 

A little after 11am, I felt lots of pressure and needed to push. The doctor came in and checked me and I was complete. He got his stuff ready and then I pushed for 3 minutes and delivered sweet Andersen. We didn't know the gender this time around so we were so excited to see what we were having. I was so so sure we were having a boy. And my husband was too. So when he said "its a girl!", we were SO shocked but SO over the moon excited!!!