Brynne's Arrival

We are pleased to introduce Brynne Adrienne DeHart, who made her grand entrance to the world at 7:01 p.m. on January 5 wieghing in a 5 lbs. 11 oz. and 19.5" long. Coincidently, I was also induced (but arrived in a much quicker fashion) and weight 5 lb. 12 oz. and was 20" when I was born - four weeks early.

Her arrival was quite the ordeal; I was beginning to think our girl was going to have some serious attitude, doing things on her own timetable until we determined what the holdup was. In what should have taken 12-16 hours, we got accomplished in 47.

We got the call to head to L&D around 5 on Jan. 3 for the beginning of the induction processs, and introducing of cervadil. After 12 hours, pitocin would be started to trigger the contractions. Done and done. Contractions going strong, but I wasn't dilating like I should. At 7 p.m. Sunday, they stopped pitocin so I could eat and get some rest to try the process again on Monday with another round of cervadil starting Sunday night. Had she not been concerned about my platelet level, Dr. Kodner likely would have sent me home, but felt like we had to proceed since the platelets were above where they needed to be for an epidural.

If the combination of medicines did not work by 5 on Monday, Dr. Kodner would perform a c-section. After removing the cervadil, I hadn't dilated any more than the night before. At about 2:45, they checked again and there was a little bit of progress but not much.

A few years ago, I had some abnormal cells that had to be frozen off the cervix, which apparently created some pretty thick scar tissue. They decided to try to break up the scar tissue a bit to see if that would help speed the process ... and did it ever. It was like opening the flood gates - literally.

From 3:35 to 4:00 the strength of my contractions had gone from about 60 on to 94 and the epidural team was on its way! By 6:05, I was at 9 cm and almost fully effaced and Dr. Kodner was walking in the door. After four or five rounds of pushes, a healthy Brynne emerged with just a few little crys at 7:01 p.m. much to the relief of everyone.

Had it not been for the scar tissue, she probably would have shared her birthday with Jackie A ... but apparently Brynne's not too big on sharing early on :).