the birth

Chandler's birth story:

i went to the dr on december 28th which was my 39 week mark... he told me i was dilated to a 3 and since he was going to be out of town from january 4th (which was my due date) - january 9th, he set up my induction date for january 2nd at 4:00 am... and i couldn't complain since it was before my due date... i just didn't want to go over.

so on new years eve morning i woke up having contractions... they were 20-25 minutes apart so i didn't really think much of them. austin had gone up to brian head for the day to go skiing with his family so i didn't tell him about the contractions cause i didn't want to worry him for nothing. so my mom and i went about our day... we went to lunch and got some groceries and by the late afternoon, my contractions were 8-10 minutes apart.

austin came home around 6 and we went to dinner for new years eve... my contractions were still about 8 minutes apart so after dinner we just decided to come home and see if anything progressed more. by about 8:30 pm, my contractions were 5 minutes apart... so we timed them for about an hour at 5 minutes apart. that's when we were told to go into the hospital. but i didn't want to go in too early cause i didn't want to be there forever. so i went downstairs and took a bath... and finally around 10:30 pm, austin convinced me that we should go into the hospital to get things checked out.

when we got to the hospital, the checked me and i was at a 4... so they said they would monitor me for an hour to see if i progressed... and if i did, they would keep me... if not, i'd go home.

so after being there for an hour, i went from a 4 to a 5 which meant i was staying. i opted for no epidural and just tried to relax. austin didn't have a problem relaxing, as you can see... but i told him to sleep since there wasn't really anything he could do for my pain.

they started me on pitocin. i labored for about 7 hours and by 4:00 am, i was completely exhausted. i was just start to doze off and another contraction would start. i sat there thinking to myself, "if i'm this tired right now, there is no way i will have enough energy to push when it comes time to." i really wanted to have a natural birth, and i believe i very well could have if i hadn't gone through the whole day being up and almost all night... but i was so tired that i ended up asking for an epidural so that i could rest for a little bit before it came time to push. i definitely didn't want to push for hours.

so a few hours went by and i was progressing pretty well... around 7:00 am, my dr came in a broke my water... and by about 9:00 am i was was dilated to a 9 and almost ready to push. at 9:50 am the nurse walked me through the pushing process and told me i would push with her until my sweet baby was ready to come out. so i took a deep breath and pushed for 10 seconds. the nurse told me to stop pushing  cause my baby was ready to come out! she called my dr who came right in... i pushed for about 15 minutes and out came my sweet baby girl.

chandler kate hunt.

10:05 am

7 lbs. 11 oz.

20 inches.

mommy and chandler.

daddy holding chandler for the first time.

the sweet girl has been so much fun... she's a super calm baby (for the most part) and austin and i feel so blessed to be her parents. she loves to be held and snuggled... which is fine with me... i could snuggle this little nugget all day :)

oh and did i mention that chandler was the first baby of the new year born in the hospital in cedar city??? we got a huge basket of baby stuff and we were in 2 different newspapers... my little sunshine is famous already :)