Kara's fish is psychic...

Kara's fish is psychic.

Kara has her very first pet that she got before she was born, a betta fish named Optimus Prime her Mommy and Daddy got for her 2 days before Christmas, and he was very depressed when we brought him home from the pet store. I tried to give him some betta Prozac and told him hilarious jokes, but nothing seemed to work. He would just float stagnant in his bowl and never swam around like normal fish do. Until the wee hours of December 30th...

Honig and I had an appointment with one of our midwives on Monday, Dec. 29th, and of course my gigantic belly was measuring 42 weeks when I was only almost 39 weeks so the midwife told us she wanted to do another estimated fetal weight ultrasound on the following Monday, the day before our due date, and we might have to induce if Peanut was looking like a little chunka munka. And she also said I was only dilated to a 1 and barely 50% effaced and my cervix wasn't softening at all so it didn't look like the big show was going to be happening anytime soon.

Fast forward to that night.

Our friend came over for a while that night to chat, and then she left at 12:45AM. Honig and I sat around our living room chatting, and while chatting we noticed that Optimus Prime was going nuts in his bowl, swimming everywhere as quickly as he could and he went nonstop for the entire time we were watching him. We thought it was really odd that he went from depressed and inactive Optimus to crazy-go-nuts hyperactive Optimus so we joked that he was either telling us there was going to be an earthquake or that we were going to be having our baby tonight.

How right he was. Kara's fish IS psychic.

After watching Optimus go ballistic and freak out, we went on up to bed where we talked some more and played Phase 10 and I promptly won, which I almost never do. Skip Bo is my forte. Next thing we know it's 2:15A.M. and we're getting pretty sleep so I get up and go potty for the 79th time that day before calling it a night, and just as I walk back into our room, my water breaks everywhere. And it wasn't a "Did I just go tinkle?" kind of feeling; it was a "The Hoover Dam just burst and it is all over our carpet and still coming" kind of a feeling. There was no mistaking it. So I said "Um, my water just broke" in an alarmed tone and just stared down at the insane amount of fluid that was still leaking from my body, and Honig jumped up out of bed and ran over to me because he knew I used my serious voice on that one. He looked down at all the fluid, looked at me, looked at the fluid again, and then we gave each other a big hug and commenced going into shock together. We called the midwives and the midwife that was on call called me back after they paged her, and she said I needed to come into the hospital to get checked in. Honig and I ran around like chickens with our heads cut off getting stuff together because we were slackers and didn't have our hospital bags ready, and we called some of our family and friends and woke them up to let them know the big show was starting. We also called our friend Jeff to come over to help give me a blessing before heading off to the hospital, and thankfully he was awake when we called due to some not so fun insomnia.

So we arrived at the hospital at 3:15A.M. and were triaged and they confirmed I'm definitely in labor which I obviously know because I was already having contractions and still leaking fluid when walking. The nurse told me I'm only dilated to a 2 and still 50% effaced at 3:30A.M. So they move me back to our birthing room which was amazing. It was this gorgeous corner room that was twice as big as the other birthing rooms we'd seen during our tour of the birthing center so I don't know what we did to get in their good graces to be lucky enough to get such a nice room but you'd better believe we'd do it again.

So I'm loving life and loving feeling the contractions which aren't bad when the nurse comes in and tells me I tested positive for Strep B and they'll have to have me on antibiotics throughout labor. Bummer. I have the world's cruddiest veins and after a few attempts to start an IV for the antibiotics, the nurse finally finds one just to the side of my left wrist and tapes the heck out of it which means that I can barely bend my wrist. Bummer again.

Once I'm all IV'd up, we start walking the halls to hopefully get labor going some more and to dilate even more. We'd go walk, come back to our room to use the potty and return phone calls and texts, go walk some more. I discovered that apparently other laboring women weren't as enthusiastic and excited as I was when I tried to be nice and talk to them in the halls because some of them weren't so nice and chatty! So we keep walking and walking and then we decide to go back to the room to do some nipple stimulation in the shower because I'd heard that really works, and also the nurse recommended we do it. Not my favorite thing in the world to do but at least I got to wash my hair and not feel so greasy so I'll consider it a win.

Contractions were coming on stronger throughout the morning, but they were pretty erratic. When my midwife checked on me at 11AM, I was still only at a 2 and only 70% effaced so that was another bummer. She recommended we start Pitocin to get things going even more because I was progressing way too slowly for already being in labor 9 hours. Originally we didn't want to do any drugs because I was managing just fine, but since things were going so slowly we agreed and so we started it.

We got the big old exercise ball and I did some hip rolling and found different positions that would alleviate the pain from each contraction. The contractions were getting pretty intense by now but were still all over the place. One contraction would be just fine and completely manageable and I could easily talk through it and then then next one would absolutely knock my socks off and I would have to just focus and close my eyes and breathe to make it through it. And the timing of them was completely unpredictable. I would have two huge contractions back to back with maybe 15 to 20 seconds reprieve in between and then the next contraction wouldn't happen for 8 or so minutes. Not normal at all.

So we keep doing the ball and Honig sat in a chair behind me and I would lean back on him in between his legs and one of the things he would do that helped ease the pain with the contractions was squeeze on my hips with his knees for the entire contraction so he got a nice workout of his adductors. He did that for every contraction for an hour and a half and never complained, and he was one sore boy for the next couple of days. He felt like he'd ridden a horse too long. I had no idea he was dying every time he squeezed with his legs because he's such a great husband and was willing to do whatever he needed to do to help out his laboring wife.

Now comes 4:30PM. Our midwife comes in and checks me and I'm at a 3. I ONLY DILATED FROM A 2 TO A 3 OVER 14 HOURS!!!!! Not ok. The thing I didn't understand was that my contractions were way too intense for only being at a 3, and were still very erratic. It turns out that Kara was asynclitic which means that her head was cockeyed (asynclitic is when their head is turned and they look like they're trying to look over their shoulder or they have their head tilted and they are trying to put their ear on their shoulder). The crazy contraction patterns I was having were due to Kara not being positioned in a way that dilated my cervix evenly and effectively and since the uterus wasn't able to evenly constrict on her, my contractions when I was only at a 3 felt like what contractions feel like when you're at a 6 or a 7. I knew I wasn't a baby and wasn't making things up in my mind with how bad my contractions were.

Since it had been 14 hours and I'd only progressed 1 cm, and you only have 24 hours to have your baby once your water breaks due to risk of infection for the baby, time obviously wasn't on our side and I was going to have her in a week at the rate I was progressing. The midwife said we could keep doing what we were doing but we would almost definitely end up in a c-section because progression just wasn't happening, or we could do an epidural so that they could crank the Pitocin at a much quicker rate than they are allowed to do on non-epidural patients, and hopefully the Pitocin would produce contractions strong enough and and frequent enough to move Kara down in my pelvis. I didn't want to have an epidural because of the pain, I felt I was managing my contractions and could breathe my way through them, but I knew that having the epidural and cranking the Pitocin was my only shot at having her vaginally so I opted to have the epidural.

Once the epidural was in place I did some hands and knees time and when I was done with that and my legs were almost deadweight, I would just lie on my side and would have to turn over every 20 minutes to my other side with a little help from the nurse. At 7 P.M. they checked me and I was only at a 5. Yikes. Then at 11 P.M. I as only at a 7. You'd better believe we started some serious praying at that point because we only had 3 more hours before I was going to have to have a c-section.

Finally at midnight I started to have that lovely "I need to go potty" feeling. All you mom's who've gone through labor know what I'm talking about. So I dealt with the world's worst feeling of "constipation" and having to push for that for over an hour. And then it changed into the real feeling of needing to push our baby out around 1:30A.M. They turned the epidural down, and I had almost full use of my legs and could completely feel the urge to push. When I first got the epidural I was absolutely freezing and nothing could make me feel warm enough, and it completely changed to feeling like I was on the surface of the sun when I started to have the urge to push. Honig had to fan me with a notebook nonstop for over an hour an a half. Poor guy. I don't remember it because I was so tired but apparently I would say "I'm sorry" over and over after pushing through a contraction because I thought I wasn't doing enough to get her out and I apparently said I was glad I wasn't a pioneer.

Finally after pushing for an hour and I was so exhausted from being up for 43 straight hours and 24 and a half of them were in labor, it came down to the final push to get Kara out. As I did the final push I remember looking down at the mirror I had them place at the foot of the bed and the midwife hurried and turned around and grabbed the scissors and I watched her give me an episiotomy. A little bit after that, Kara Faith Sheldon quietly entered the world and was laid on my belly. All she wanted to do was quietly stare at my face and make sure I was her mommy, and of course I was crying from sheer joy and love for this new little angel that Honig and I created together. She stared at my face for at least 30 seconds and decided that I was definitely her loving mommy, then she let out the most beautiful cry I have ever heard. I can still remember that first minute of her life perfectly.

The moment Kara was born was the most spiritual and perfect moment of our lives, and our love for her was instantaneous and indescribable. I remember thinking the second she was laid on my stomach that I would do it all again and then some for her. She has blessed our lives more than we ever thought possible, and she is our perfect little peanut. We are so thankful we are an eternal family with our little baby. Eternity wouldn't be complete without our little Kara.

I made this movie for Kara for when she is older. Make sure to have your music on when you watch it to get the full effect. I couldn't have found a more perfect song to go with it. I still cry when I watch it because of the amazing memories and feelings it stirs up. Enjoy.