Hadley's here!

It seemed like forever waiting for her arrival, but miss Hadley Rose Del Valle was born Saturday, 8-14-10! Here's the labor and deliver details....I started having intense contractions, 5 min. apart at about 4am. We were leaving for the hospital by 5:45am and right about the time we started to leave, the contractions got to 2 minutes apart. I wasn't sure what to expect with contractions, but let me tell you, they HURT. Bad. I was also starting to worry on the way to the hospital that she might come really fast since the contractions had sped up so soon.

Once we got to our labor & delivery room, they checked to see how dilated I was and I was already at 6cm! All I wanted at this point was the epidural, but they said they'd have to give me an IV first and let a bag a fluids get in my system before they could administer the epidural. I know I sound like a big wimp, but that IV was pretty painful...much worse than getting the epidural. They had to try two different times to put in the IV because the first vein they tried rolled. This was really not fun and having intense contractions while they were doing it was not helping. I FINALLY got the epidural around 7:30. Haaaalelujah! I started feeling its effects pretty quickly which was a big relief.

Then I started feeling woozy and nauseaus and a couple nurse rushed in and told me that the epidural had made my blood pressure drop really low. They gave me some medicine in my IV and then had to give me a shot in my leg to get it under control. I had to wear an oxygen mask for an hour or two to make sure that Hadley was getting enough oxygen but after things had been stable for awhile, they let me take it off. After that craziness, it was pretty much smooth sailing. They told me it was time to start pushing and I was preparing myself to possibly push for a very long time, but I somehow pushed her out in 25 minutes! I guess I just started pushing the right way from the start so they told me to just keep doing what I was doing and out she came. She was born at 1:06pm. So from the time I got to the hospital to the time she was born, it took about 7 hours.

They pulled her out and I started hearing them say that she was big...probably 8 or 9lbs! I couldn't believe it since the doctors had been telling me the whole time that I was measuring average and that she'd probably be around 7-1/2 lbs. Boy, were they wrong....she ended up weighing 9lbs., 6oz. and she is 20.5" long. And she's a cutie! She had a full head of dark hair and cute chubby cheeks! I still am not totally sure what color her eyes are even though she looks at us alot. They just aren't a real distinct color yet. I'm sure they'll be either blue or brown but we'll have to wait and see.