Keziah's Birth Story

Wow, I still can't believe our baby is finally here. And I'm still trying to get accustomed to the idea of having a daughter! I thought I'd take the chance to let you know how Keziah made her way into the world!

We went into the hospital on Wednesday morning for the induction. By the time they inserted the cervadil it was about 10:45 am. I slowly started getting more frequent contractions but they were very mild. I did a LOT of walking, sitting on the birthing ball and hanging out in the shower - Erik left a couple of times to run errands or pick up something to eat. It was a bit of a boring afternoon and I kept waiting for the pain to increase. Around supper-time, the contractions started to pick up. They still weren't really that painful, but they came right on top of each other. The nurses decided to hook me up to the monitors and discovered very quickly that my uterus was hardly resting at all and that baby's heartrate was dipping really low. It was a bit scary for a minute - they pulled out the cervadil, hooked me up to oxygen and IV and rolled me into different positions until the heartrate started to pick up. At this point thoughts of emergency c-sections were going through my head, but they were able to stabilize the heartrate and with the cervadil out, my contractions spaced out quite a bit. They checked my cervix and I was still only 1-2 cm dilated! So the whole day of contractions had been pretty much useless! I was pretty discouraged and thought we were in for a much longer haul yet. They decided to call in the doctor to check me out since baby's heartrate was still fluctuating a bit. She came in shortly after and decided to break my water. That was about 8:00 pm and I noticed my contractions were a little more painful right away. The doctor told the nurse she planned to stay which surprised me because I figured we had several hours to go yet. But within half an hour I had to close my eyes and breathe through the contractions and after another 15 minutes or so the contractions became quite unbearable and I started feeling the urge to push. The doctor checked me and I was about 5 cm. I didn't know how I was going to resist the pushing urge when I was only half-way there. But a few more contractions and I was fully dilated! I started pushing shortly after 9:00 pm. Apparently Keziah's heartrate was dipping again at this point and they told me I needed to push really hard - talk about incentive to get that baby out! Erik said once the head came out, the doctor grabbed her by the neck with both hands, put one foot on the edge of the bed and twisted her out like a corkscrew! All together, the pushing was about 8 minutes. The whole thing was pretty fast and furious if you ask me! When she came out, nobody announced whether it was a boy or a girl, so I was trying to peer through all the hands as she was being passed around and dried off and when I got a peek I said, incredulously, "Is it a girl?!?" And she was!

Erik was able to call my parents in Manitoba shortly after, as well as his whole family who came to visit yet that night. Even Micah got to wake up and come to the hospital in his pyjamas.  Here's a few pictures from our first couple of days with Keziah:

Micah gets introduced to his baby sister at the hospital.

Our family of 4!

Proud Aunties, Uncles, Grandpa, Grandma & Big Brother...











Micah's first time holding Keziah all on his own - he liked counting her fingers!

I am LOVING all this pink!

Wet smooches from Micah.

Brother-Sister bonding time.

Our little princess...

Some of you have asked about where we came up with her name. The middle name, Katherine, is after my mom (and was also her mom's name) and the name Keziah comes from the Bible. In the last chapter of Job, when Job's wealth is restored to him, the Lord blesses him with three beautiful daughters - one of which is named Keziah. Erik's dad also looked up the name yesterday and found it to mean "cinnamon". So, I guess our little girl really is made of 'sugar and spice'!

Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers along the way. All four of us will be together for the next few days and then Erik will head back to work on Monday - the thought scares me a little bit, but we'll take it one day at a time and hopefully we'll be OK!