tHe sTorY oF LeiGhtoN gaLe pArt 2

okay, so like i told you in part 1,

nurse maggie said it was time to push! she sent the grandparents to the waiting room telling them we would probably see them in about an hour. all day long as the nurses checked on my progress they kept saying that once i started pushing, baby girl was going to come right out since she was sitting so low. sounds like a plan to me. only it didn't quite work out that way.

saturday, january 30, 2010...10:30 pm

because of the epidural, i couldn't really tell what i was doing as i was pushing {which made it a little harder, but much less painful!}. even though i couldn't feel the contractions or the pain, pushing was so hard. i felt so exhausted and was using all my might to try and do what maggie was telling me to. it became old very quickly! pretty early on maggie said she could see her head and she saw lots of hair. clay took one look and decided he should stick to holding my hand and helping me push.

i don't remember how long it had been, but after a while i kept asking why nothing was happening. was all this work even making a difference? she kept reassuring me that i was doing great, but i had my doubts.

sunday, january 31, 2010

before we knew it we said good-bye to saturday and hello to sunday...the day our baby girl would be here. i was still pushing with no success. nurse maggie called the on call doctor and soon dr. carriker was headed into the room along with a couple of other nurses. she took a look and had me push for her and then the doctor and the nurse conversed for awhile about the situation. all i heard was dr. carriker asking how long things had been this way. now i was worried. i was really starting to freak out. i did not want to have a c section. the doctor told me she wanted to try and cut something to give the baby's head a little more room. of course we told her that was fine. once again...very thankful that i could not feel anything. i continued to push with no progress. finally dr. carriker said she needed to help me and help the baby to come out. i was losing a lot of blood every time i pushed and the baby was not making any progress. we told her to do whatever she needed to do. it had been almost two hours of pushing and i was completely exhausted.

12:41 am

with the help of some scissors and some forceps, the doctor had our baby girl out in no time. the baby nurse from the nursery, immediately took our little girl to the table next to me to get her cleaned up while the doctor and the scrub nurse started working on me. clay and i were so overwhelmed with joy at this point and we could not take our eyes off of her. i just could not believe she was finally here. it was honestly the most amazing moment of my life. words can't express that feeling and i still get tears in my eyes thinking about it.

for the past couple of weeks we had been pretty set on a name, so we made it official.

leighton gale fulghum

cone head and all.

the next hour is a complete blur. the nurse continued to clean leighton up and the doctor and scrub nurse went to work on me. i had to have an episiotomy and i had a fourth degree tear. if you don't know what that is...don't ask and pray it doesn't happen to you when you give birth. because of this and the amount of blood i lost, it took a long time to clean me up.

finally, i got to hold and feed leighton. i will be thankful to the Lord forever for this moment.

around this time, we realized that no one had ever gone and updated our parents! they left the room around 10:30 pm and by now it was almost 2 am. oops! clay went to get them and brought them back to meet their granddaughter. they had been really worried since nurse maggie told them at 10:30 we would see them in about an hour, but miss leighton was worth the wait. they were all ecstatic to meet her.

after all the introductions, the grandparents headed home to get some sleep and i was able to rest a little bit while clay went with the nurse to give leighton a bath. clay had been texting with my bestie, annalee throughout the night and of course she called to check in around 2:30 in the morning. they had been waiting up to hear the news. such good friends. 

around 5 am we were switched to another room to get some rest. our fabulous nurse maggie said she didn't have any other patients {seeing as how it was 5 in the morning} and said she would hold leighton at her desk for awhile if we wanted and we could get some sleep. yes, please!

what a wonderful day sunday, january 31st turned out to be.

part 3 coming tomorrow!