She's here!

WARNING VERY LONG POST!

So finally after not blogging ANYTHING for 4 months I've got something very exciting to blog about. Our little girl decided she wanted to come early. Kaylor Lynn Larsen was born October 15th at 6:16pm. She weighed 7lbs and 15oz, and was 21 inches long. She has a FULL head of blond hair, it is so adorable! She already has us all wrapped around her little finger. She is such a precious gift from our Heavenly Father and we feel so lucky to be her parents. Jeff and I are excited that she is here. We were both hoping that she would either come on her due date or soon after it. I know weird. Most people want to be done with pregnancy way before the due date. I could not have asked for a better pregnancy, so I wasn't really to the point of wanting to be done. The main reason we wanted her to wait was because it's volleyball season again and this next week (Oct. 19th-23rd) is our last week of the regular season. Jeff and I are both coaching volleyball for Broomfield High School this year, so we have been very busy with that for the past 3 months. This next week my team (the freshman team) has 3 games, and Jeff's has two. Luckily we (the coaching staff) planned ahead and made sure I had a co-coach at the beginning of the season. So she will be taking over for me for the last week. I'm a little sad I don't get to finish the season, but I'm sure I'll get over it real quick. Jeff on the other hand will still be able to finish his last week. In fact the night after Kaylor was born he was already back to coaching.

Kaylor's timing was quite a surprise for us. My water broke at 2:45am and we were checked into the hospital at 4am. Contractions hadn't started yet, so they told me that they will need to start me on Pitocin if they don't start on their own after 6 hours of my water breaking. I started getting some contractions, but they were in no way consistent. So 8:30 rolls around and they decided that it's time to start the Pitocin. I REALLY didn't want to have Pitocin, but I knew that I was pretty much stuck with getting it, so I sucked it up and let them start me on it. They started me on a very low dose, and less than 30 minutes later contractions started. The contractions started out mild, and got progressively worse. They turned up the dose of Pitocin and they got stronger. After about 2 hours I wanted to see how much I had progressed. I came into the hospital dilated to a 3 so I was hoping to be a least to a 5 or 6 by then. Well the nurse checked and said that I was still the same. I told her that I needed something for the pain then, because there was no way I was going to make it to a 10 if I haven't even progressed. She left the room and came back, she apologized and said that she thought I was at a 6 previously so that's why she said I was the same. So really I had gone from a 3 to a 6 in about 2 hours. I felt much better about that. One of my goals was to get to a 6 and then labor in the tub for an hour. So I sat in the tub, Jeff sat next to me, for a full 2 hours. I had no concept of time once I was in there. Contractions were very consistent coming every 3-4 minutes and lasting for about a minute. Jeff was keeping track. He pretty much knew when I was going to turn to him to get me through the next contraction. That was the best part of my whole labor. It was still painful, but I was so relaxed in the tub, that after every contraction I pretty much would fall asleep until the next one came. After 2 hours I began to feel pressure. I had to get out of the tub so they could check me. They said I was at an 8. I labored for another hour out of the tub, I asked them to give me some Fentynal to try and take the edge off the pain (it did NOTHING). After "screaming and spitting" in Jeff's face (according to Jeff), I decided I was done. Even though I had made it to an 8-9, I just couldn't do it anymore. I said just give me the epidural, screw this trying to do it natural crap. Jeff was so relieved that I had chosen the epidural, he actually cried in relief. I didn't see him do that, which is a good thing, because I probably would have thought he was sad that I had woosed out. I was very relieved too. They had the Anesthesiologist in there in record time, he gave me the "fast acting" spinal first, then the epidural after that. Life was GOOD after that. It was just in time too. Jeff's mom and my mom showed up shortly after that. I was glad they didn't have to see me screaming and spitting in Jeff's face. 2 hours later I was ready to push. I pushed for 45 minutes (it didn't feel that long at all), and she joined us at 6:16pm. She is perfect in every way, and now we get to enjoy her at home.

So far the adventures of motherhood have been exciting, wonderful, hard, frustrating, painful, and just all around joyful. I'm loving every minute of it.