The birth of Avery Danielle Pinder

(if you don’t want to read all the details skip to the pics at the bottom)

On Friday March 8th, I stayed at school until about 5:00 cleaning my classroom and getting things ready for Monday. I joked with the other teacher that I wanted to make sure things were ready just in case the baby came early. I was 38 weeks and 1 day. Avery was due March 21. I had to hurry home because Bryce and I had been invited to dinner at his friend’s Scott’s. Scott had won free costa vida for 20 people so we were pretty glad to be included in that 20 and get free dinner! Also, I had planned on going to a movie with my sister Becky at 7:00.

I came home and we quickly went to Scott’s for dinner. While at dinner I was feeling like I was wetting my pants. I went to the bathroom a couple times and it looked like my water had broke. But I thought it was kind of weird that it wasn’t a ton. I finished my delicious dinner then before I left to go to the movie I told Bryce I thought my water had broke. He pretty much didn’t believe me :) His phone wasn’t working so I got his friend Jason’s number before I left.

On the way to the movie I called my doctor’s office and they said that I needed to go to the hospital just to make sure. I called Bryce and told him to meet me there. Unfortunately I had already bought my movie ticket and Becky was inside the theatre saving me a seat. I even asked my doctor’s office if I could wait a few hours to go in so that I could go to the movie first. They of course said no.

I checked into the hospital at about 7:00 and by the time I had gotten there it definitely looked like I had wet my pants. They checked me in and my nurse Nicki came to see if my water had actually broke. The little test they give wasn’t that strong indicating that my water had broke so she decided to check to see if I was dilated at all. Well when she checked me, she lifted up Avery’s head and the rest of the fluid came out in a gush. Avery’s head was blocking the fluid from coming out which is why I wasn’t sure if my water had broke.

By this time my mom had already started booking a flight and planned to fly out the next morning at 6. The labor had begun! At first my contractions weren’t too bad. But then by about 9:30 or 10 pm they were pretty strong. My doctor came in to talk to me and she said if I knew I wanted to get an epidural to go ahead and get it so that I could get some rest and be ready to push in the morning. I was all for getting the epidural as soon as they would let me so the anethesiologist came in and gave me the epidural at 11:00pm and finally by 11:30 I was virtually pain free. I did not at all like the feeling of not being able to feel my legs, but it was worth not feeling the pain.

At this point I was probably dialated to about a 4. From there Bryce and I tried to get some sleep. They had given me some pitocin to get things moving along but Avery’s heart rate kept dropping so they decided the contractions were too instense for her, so they took me off pitocin. At 2am I was dialated to a 6. The night went pretty quickly, I was able to get a little sleep. The nurses kept coming in to turn me over to see if that would help Avery’s heart rate stabalize. Needless to say I think Bryce got a little more sleep than I did. So at 6am, I was hoping that I would be about ready to have this baby but I was still only dilated to a 6. I was pretty discouraged that in 4 hours I had not made any progress. They thought maybe they should give me a little bit more pitocin. At 6:45am, the heart rate monitor had disconnected from Avery so the nurse came in to put it back on (they attach it to her head). When she came to put it on I was dilated to a 9. YAY!! I had gone from a 6 to a 9 in 45 minutes. The nurse said that Avery’s head was swollen because she was trying to descend and stick her head through when I was only dilated to a 6. She was quite anxious to come!

I had Bryce text my mom who I knew was just getting on the plane and tell her that I was a 9. That made her flight pretty anxious since she figured I would probably have the baby or be close before she landed.

From there things progressed quickly. Shortly thereafter I was a 10 but they decided to wait a little bit and let my contractions do some of the hard work. I was fine with this. She seemed pretty eager to get out of there so she did most of the work for me! At 7:30am I was ready to push but was in a significant amount of pain so they got the anethesiologist to give me an extra dose. I figured if I was going to have the epidural I might as well have it work!

It took until about 8:10 for the pain to go away and then I was ready to start pushing! After the first contraction of pushes, Bryce could already see Avery’s head. I only pushed for a few minutes when the nurse decided to have me stop until the doctor could get there. My doctor was on her way, but Avery wasn’t waiting for her! Finally at about 8:30 the nurse went and got the other doctor because she was afraid Avery would just come out on her own. The doctor got all suited up and right as I was about to push, my doctor came in. So then my doctor got suited up (all this while I haven’t been pushing, which I was okay with, it was a nice break!…even though I had the epidural I could feel when I needed to push but simply resisted the urge). With one contraction and one set of pushes little Avery was born! 

On that last set of pushes, Bryce as counting to ten and got emotional as he saw his baby girl being born. So of course then I start crying. It was such an amazing and overwhelming experience. In the 2 1/2 years I have known Bryce I have never once seen him cry. Leave it to little Avery to bring him to tears!

Bryce was such a proud dad with our camera around his neck taking pictures of sweet little Avery. I had a little skin to skin with Avery then they took her away to have her first bath. Luckily Bryce took lots of pictures (until our camera strap broke and our nice expensive camera that he got me for Christmas fell to the ground and broke…luckily my mom had her camera to document the rest of the time there).

I was pretty lucky as far as birth stories go. Avery was just so anxious to come that she made it easy for me.

My mom got to the hospital about an hour after Avery was born and has been a saint ever since. She has been my maid, my cook, my butler, my nanny, my chauffeur and my emotional support. It has been such a blessing to have her here with me. My sister is scheduled for a C-section on the 21st so had Avery come later, my mom wouldn’t have been able to spend as much time with me. So I’m so glad she can be here for me and my sister!

We had brought a few names with us to the hospital and Bryce kind of left it up to me to decide. I wanted my first daughter to have my middle name because I wanted her name to have some meaning and Avery Danielle just seemed to go well together. I also felt like Avery fit her the best. Once we officially named her that, it just seemed to fit more and more. We love our little Avery!

Here are some pictures of her birth.

 

Grandma Pinder                                          Grandma Morris                                     Great Grandma Landon

           

                     Aunt Kate                                                                               Aunt Malory