Welcome Ella Dawn!

Get comfy with eggnog or hot chocolate....this is not a short story!  This is mostly a family journal entry, so it has lots of details that nobody but me will care about.  Feel free to skim; it won't hurt my feelings.

     We'd like to introduce our newest little addition, Ella Dawn Woolley, who was born at 11:04 pm on November 25th at 6 pounds, 15 ounces (practically 7#, which sounds bigger) and 19.5" long.  She is our 4th child and third daughter and our smallest baby at birth by a pound (behind our always petite Chloe). Tomorrow she is 4 weeks old, and on Christmas, she'll be a full month old, so I want to document her birth story before the details get fuzzy.

     My labor with her started around 4 pm the afternoon of the 25th, but the contractions were weak.  Ryan got home from work around 5, and then I lay down to try to take a nap so I'd have as much energy as possible if this actually turned into labor.  The contractions, which had been about 5-8 minutes apart before, spread out to about 12 minutes apart during my hour "nap".  I wasn't able to sleep, but I was able to rest a bit.  After an hour, I gave up and went downstairs to make dinner.  After dinner, Ryan put the kids to bed. By then I was a little grumpy because the contractions were annoying and uncomfortable enough to be a little mentally taxing, but I've also labored naturally enough times to know that these contractions weren't doing jack squat to dilate me.  

      My friend Stacy had volunteered to stay the night at my house whenever I went into labor, so I let her know how things were puttering along, and she pushed me to go with her for a walk.  By 8 pm I was getting impatient, so by around 8:15, she picked me up, and we went down to the Castaic Sports Complex.  We walked for an hour and fifteen minutes around the basketball/skateboarding courts, the parking lot, and then the dirt track to the Aquatic Center, which we followed around the side to the road and back down the street to the Sports Complex.  We walked the loop and then again and then again. By the third loop, the contractions which had been 6 minutes apart and which I'd been able to easily walk through when we got there were now less than 2 minutes apart and required me to slow to a crawl during each contraction.  When I realized how much they'd picked up, we cut our third loop short and headed home.  I knew it was game on, and the walk had done its work.  

    When Stacy dropped me off, I told her I'd probably call her within the hour to come over, and she laughed and said it would be sooner.  I went inside and told Ryan we should pack up and head to the hospital, and he asked if I was sure (we'd been really uncertain about when to head to the hospital when I was laboring with Phebe because the contractions were weak but close and I'd had a history of fast labors). I told him to watch me through one contraction, and he'd know it was time.  He's been with me through all of those natural labors, and he knows what I look like in early labor and what I look like in active labor and transition.  Sure enough, one contraction later, he was packing up the car and I was texting Stacy to head on over.  Stacy arrived, and as quickly as we could, we loaded the car and headed to the hospital.  Ryan called his mom Zonda to let her know we were having a baby, since she had agreed to come down to watch the kids while we were in the hospital.  She arrived early the next morning to relieve Stacy from babysitting duty and even got there early enough to get him off to school, so the kids were not disrupted from their routines at all!  She rocks!

    Laboring in the car is usually the worst part of labor for me because every bump, curve, and acceleration is excruciating, but this timing worked out nicely.  It was painful enough that I knew we were making the right call by going to the hospital but not so painful that I was worried about having the baby on the side of the road.

     It was about 10:20 pm when we pulled up to the emergency room parking lot at Henry Mayo Hospital (you have to enter through the emergency room if you come at night).  A contraction in the car as we parked and a contraction in front of the door as we walked in, and we were finally at the hospital.

     Let me back up a second to say there are a few things that I did not like about my labor at Henry Mayo last time with Phebe, and I was determined not to repeat those things.  I was armed with my birth plan, a husband who knew how stubborn I planned on being about it, and a doctor and maternity charge nurse who were also aware of how stubborn I planned on being about it.  These things may sound silly to some people, but they were important to me and my ability to feel in control of my environment (which is a necessity for naturally laboring women).

1.  I was NOT getting into that stinking wheelchair from the ER to the maternity ward - or from the delivery room to the recovery room - or from the recovery room out of the hospital - or EVER.  I'm not sick, I'm not hurt, I'm in labor and walking is good for me.  

2.  I didn't wanna wear a hospital gown.  I don't like it.  It makes me feel like a patient.

3.  I didn't want an IV or even a HepLock, if at all humanly possible.  I'm not getting pain meds; I don't need it.  Stab me with a needle if something goes wrong but not before.

4.  I'm not gonna let you monitor me 30 minutes of every hour, which forces me to pace a 3' space next to the bed.  That's boring and restrictive and I wanna move the way my body tells me to move.

(I was informed that hospital policy takes a backseat to my right to my own body.  They can't force me into that wheelchair, no matter how much they might try to make me think they can.)

     When I had gone into the hospital with Phebe, I didn't know where to go and they told me they wouldn't take me to the maternity ward unless I got in the wheelchair, so this time, I had gone to visit the hospital a few weeks before and figured out the circuitous route from the ER to the maternity ward on my own.  I even took a picture of the map on the wall.  So when we walked into the ER, I walked right past reception (I was pre-registered anyways) to the door (which was locked, grr, foiled).  The lady asked why I was there (duh!) and then headed to get a wheelchair, but Ryan stepped in and told her "You're not getting her into that wheelchair.  It's just not going to happen."  I think because it came from him and not a woman who they assumed was speaking out of pain, she said ok and opened the door.  

I had three contractions from the ER to the maternity ward, and when I got to the labor/delivery room, I asked them to check me.  "We will after we ask you a couple of questions."  It was like everyone was draped in molasses - they asked me all sorts of questions and wanted my driver's license and insurance card and wanted me to put on the hospital gown (I just went in the bathroom and put on my own gown; they asked if it opened in the back, and I told them they could cut it open if they wanted.  That hushed them up.) 

I had to have Ryan come help me through each contraction (his face is my focal point), which is when you know I'm about done with this whole dilating thing.  From the bathroom, I said, "Seriously, you need to check me now."  The registration lady finally conceded and went and got a nurse.  After two nurses checked me (first one couldn't believe her results), they decided I was 9 1/2 cm dilated and completely effaced, though my water still hadn't broken.  

    "The doctor is on her way," they told me.  "So she'll be here in a minute?" I said.  "Yes, she's on her way to the hospital." "She's not IN the hospital!?!?" "She's on her way.  She lives close.  Try not to push."  I think it should be illegal for a nurse to tell a naturally laboring woman to not push.  

     Now, when I'd visited the hospital a few weeks before and talked to the charge nurse, she told me that natural childbirth was so rare nowadays that some nurses had no experience with it.  I think it might freak them out because a woman who has an epidural lies in bed and they can come in and do their evaluations and it's a very controlled environment.  A naturally laboring woman is going to be up and moving and in goodness knows what position, and it is anything but a controlled environment for the nurse.  The laboring woman is in control because she has to be to stay on top of the pain.

     My point is that I soon noticed (in a vague "I'll realize this when I look back on things" sort of way) that my nurse had gotten the charge nurse to come in, and that nurse was clearly much more comfortable with med-free labor.  She said, "Try not to push, but if the baby comes, we are here and it will be fine.  We can do this without the doctor if we need to, but just relax through the contractions and try not to push."  So I didn't push, but I'm telling you, that baby did not need me to.  The contractions moved her down without me actively doing anything.  

    When  Dr. Ardalan came in, she washed and gowned up, sat down, and my water promptly broke and out came baby Ella!  They said she would've come earlier if my water had broken earlier.  Meaning, if my water had broken during my walk, I probably would have had a baby in the park.  As it was, when my water broke, they said, "you can push now", I started pushing, and before I'd finished a single push, her head was out. Another little push, the shoulders were out, and I was holding my baby girl.  She was a little pipsqueak (helped with the speedy delivery, I'm sure.), with short, thin legs and long fingers, toes, and torso.  I hardly tore (a nice change), and recovery has been a piece of cake.  

    The fatigue and sleeplessness are not a piece of cake, however, but thanks to tons of meals from my friends and visits from my mom, mother-in-law, and other family, we have been holding up pretty well.  Zonda stayed the whole time we were in the hospital (only 1 1/2 days, thankfully), and the day we came home, a bunch of other family arrived for Thanksgiving!  (Yes, we 'hosted' Thanksgiving, which basically meant they used our house and made all the food and I was able to rest with Ella while the cousins entertained my other kids! Perfect!)  A week after they left, my mom Carol came for ten days, and we all had a blast with her. We were sad to say good-bye to her!  

     Ella Dawn Woolley - If you say her first and middle name really fast, it sounds like eladon, which totally sounds like the name of a dinosaur!!  We started calling her our little dinosaur as soon as we settled on her name.  We think it's cute.  Dawn is after me, as it's my middle name.  Ella is the name of Ryan's great-grandmother (Ryan's dad's dad's mom), so her name is partly after her and partly because it's just so stinkin' sweet.  

     Ella may have been born small (though she was bigger than I was at 6#10oz), but she's been a good eater.  She only lost two ounces off her birth weight and was back to her birth weight by five days old.  At four weeks (tomorrow) she is well over 9 lbs. She's not our best sleeper (that honor belongs to Phebe, who started giving us five hour chunks at one week old), but she's not our worst (ahem, Jeremy).  She only cries when she's got a tummy-ache or mayyybe if her diaper is too wet, and even then, she hardly cries for long.  She stops as soon as you pick her up and cuddle her.  She has hiccups constantly, and that bugs her greatly.  She does grunt a lot, so we often call her grunty-bunt or grunts-a-bunch.  She's got Ryan's coloring, and people have told me she looks like Phebe or Chloe or Jeremy or Ryan or me - so that's helpful.  She's alert and holds very still when I talk to her.  She has no problem sleeping during the day even with three other kids screaming right next to her or if she's with Mommy in the first row behind the orchestra at a choir dress rehearsal.  She smells like heaven, and Ryan's impressions of her are that she'll be mellow, patient, less extroverted than the others, and artistic.  He expounded that by 'mellow' he does not mean that she won't require attention or will be low-maintenance, only that she'll be reasonable about her requirements.  He's usually right about these things.  

After having Christmas morning here at home (in THREE days!!!), we leave for Visalia for a week to see all of Ryan's family, and we sure are excited to see family again so soon!!   Here are pictures from Ella's first few days.  I'll post more later, but I've been at this computer for over three hours, and I fear I might petrify, a wooden statue stuck to this chair.

Minutes old

 Golden hour

 Covered in gunk

 All clean

 Mama finally lets daddy have a turn.

 In recovery room

Kids come to meet Ella

 Phebe gives Ella the first of many kisses

Chloe tries to 'holg' her for the 1st of 9000 times

Leaving hospital

 When we got home, Jeremy came over by himself and just stared at her mesmerized.