Eva Rose: An unmedicated birth story

Eva Rose Franjesevic born September 15, 2013 at 8:55am 7 lbs 2 oz 19 inches long. 

She came a week early! She knew her daddy how to go out of town for work so she was so obedient to come either on or before her due date, good Girl Eva Rose, good girl!

For starters her name- My great great grandma's name was Eva Rosella and my Grandma's middle name is Rosella. I was doing Genealogy several years ago and when I came across my great great grandma's name I thought, "if I have a girl that's what I would name her." It wasn't the first time I heard her name, but when I saw it written I just thought it was beautiful. I wanted to shorten Rosella to Rose.

Friday at my doc appt I was 3cm and 70% effaced

Saturday I had bloody show at 6am and contracted like crazy all day, but they were irregular and painless. My doc didn't want me to wait for them to get less than 7 min apart even if they were painless because we had a 45 min drive to the hosp and Evan's birth was pretty quick. So I was conflicted because they were anywhere from 4-20 min apart. By 9pm I decided to go to bed. At midnight I woke up with a contraction that was really uncomfortable, so I got up and started timing them and they were about 7 min part and uncomfortable, so we headed to Miami Valley at 1ish. We got here at 2 and was monitored in triage for 20 min then instructed to walk for 2 hours around the hospital. At this time I was a 4-5. after 2 hours of walking the contractions got to the point where they were 2 min apart and I had to stop to breathe through them. So we went back to triage and she checked me and I looked at her face and by the look on her face I thought I hadn't changed at all, so I said, "I haven't changed have I?" and she said, "well quite the opposite, you're an 8 and we need to get you a room like now." She was in there for like 2 min making sure I was an 8 because she was in shock that I wasn't climbing the walls and tearing down curtains...like seriously I would have rated them a 3-4 on a 10 pain scale. 

We get to our room and my pain is pretty much the same. The triage nurse came in to help out and was still surprised that I didn't appear to be dying. She even told her charge nurse to come in and just introduce herself and try and guess how dilated I was haha. The triage nurse checked me again and accidentally broke my water. There was a lot of meconium in the amniotic fluid and I was completely stressed about it. Sometimes, it's hard being a nurse in these situations because I just think of all the things that could go wrong. Thankfully, her heart rate was awesome the whole time. They did call the NICU team in case they needed them.

I became a 9 and the contractions got stronger and I had terrible back labor. They thought that maybe she was coming out face up so they got me on my hands and knees to try and turn her. I don't even know how long I was like that. Greg rubbed my back through every contraction which helped tremendously and as long as I focused on my breathing I was good...aaannnd I may have been biting the mattress...it's better than biting the husband right? My doc walks in during a contraction and I just held up a finger and then when it went away I said, "hey there!" haha Finally, after about an hour I was a 10 and oh my goodness the pressure! I was watching my doc put his shoe covers on and all I could think was- you better hurry up because my body is going to push whether I want it to or not. Finally, I was able to push and they pretty much let me push whenever I felt like I needed to which was awesome because I could feel things! I was able to tell what my body needed me to do. Pushing was such a relief...you literally push through the pain and it makes it so much better. From a 9-10 I thought I was going to die and really wanted an epidural, but all I could think was, "your going to push in such a short time you can do this!" I pushed for a whole 10 min or less I'm not even sure...I just know it couldn't have been more than 5 times. She came out wailing, so NICU nurses just walked away and they let me have her right away which was awesome. After it was all over I said, "Well that wasn't so bad." my doc massaged and squeezed my uterus quite a bit because I bled a lot with Evan and I had warned him about it, so he was being extra cautious. When my doctor was leaving I said, "well Dr. Wood it was a pleasure doing business with you" haha 

So I would say active labor started around 2:30-3am and I had her at 8:55am. Not too shabby right? 5 hours of labor and only an hour of feeling like I was dying :o) 

Right now we are dealing with Jaundice and stuck in the hospital until we get more labs...blah.  Pray for our girl, so we can get out of here!