Rachel's Birth Story

Submitted by ChildFun Mama Donna
January 19, 1993

We tried for over a year to get pregnant and finally, it happened! The first trimester, I worried about everything, like most first time mothers do.

Was I eating enough? Was I throwing up too much? Is my baby ok? A song that I learned as a young girl in Sunday School came to me and I believe it was from God to remind me that He was taking care of my baby. Whenever I started to worry, I would rub my tummy and sing the song. The song went:

Two weeks before my due date, my husband and I were still deciding on a girl name and he was looking through the baby name book (again!) and came to the R chapter. He said, "What about Rachel?" I said it was a very pretty name....what did it mean? He said "little lamb". Tears filled my eyes as I knew that was the perfect name.

My due date came and went and I had no contractions, no Braxton-Hicks and hardly any dilation. Because I am short and my baby was big, my doctor wanted to induce labor. I went in to the hospital on Sunday, January 17. The nurse hooked me up to the fetal monitor and almost immediately said "Did you feel that? You just had a contraction!". I was having contractions I couldn't even feel and they were accomplishing nothing. The doctor gave me prostaglandin on a diaphragm to ripen my cervix. Two hours later, my water broke and I started having moderate contractions which lasted all night. In the morning, they hooked me up to the pitocin and the contractions got harder, but I was dilating so slowly. By six o'clock that evening, I was dilated to five and my contractions were two minutes apart. It was the worst pain I had ever felt and I was tired of it all. I wished I had a knife so I could cut the baby out myself! LOL! I begged the nurse for a c-section and she suggest! ed an epidural. I didn't have to think twice and the relief from the pain was so wonderful! With the epidural, the nurses were able to crank the pitocin way up and finally things started happening. I fell asleep while I was dilated to eight...can you believe it? Finally, around midnight the nurse said I was fully dilated - that woke me up! They cut back on the pitocin so I could feel enough to push. I pushed for about an hour with one foot against my husband and my other foot against the nurse. My dh told me later he was soooo tired from standing up for so long...poor baby!! Finally, at 1:09 am on January 19, 1993, my daughter Rachel Marie came in the world.

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