The Parkinson Pencil: April 2013

Well, it's been a full 2 months and 19 days since my last post on this blog. I've given myself the excuse of "first time mother."

I will do a brief birth story for McKindrey, since I can't possibly call this blog complete without one. And everyone does one for their first child. Who knows if I will be continuing this blog into our second, third, fourth... children.

On Sunday January 27th around midnight (so technically the 28th) I started having really bad stomach cramps... or so I thought. I went to the bathroom and went back to bed. But they continued and I couldn't sleep. I realized that they felt like the worst cramps of my life, and that's how some people describe labor. Could I possibly be going into labor? I hardly believed it, especially since so many of my friends had false labors, AND I had convinced myself I would probably have to be induced. Either way, I decided to try to sleep through it, even if it was true labor. Ha! It wasn't working.

So, I've always heard that laying in bed awake doesn't help you fall asleep and that I should get up and do something (maybe return to bed later). Surprisingly, the dishes were already done, so I just surfed the web, read a Martha Stewart book, and watched Downton Abbey. At some point, I downloaded an app to track my contractions. I was having them every 7 minutes when I started tracking them. Around 3am I decided to take a hot shower in case we did go to the hospital today, and to ease the pain of the contractions. That woke David up and he came in and asked, "Are you in labor?" I said "Maaaaaayybeee...."

He decided to stay up with me, and we watched some movies, finished packing our bags, and David cleaned the snow off the car (it was snowing pretty hard).

Around 6am I called the on-call midwife, because I had been having contractions about 4 minutes apart since 3am. She recommended I try to stick it out at home longer. So I made a goal to wait until 8am when the midwife delivering babies that day came on duty.

I made it to 8am, and boy were those contractions hurting by then! The only thing that got me that far was Aunt Boni's advice that "You can stand any pain for 1-2 minutes." Anyways, the on-call midwife wasn't available when I called, so I spoke to her nurse who said I could either go to the clinic to be checked or head to the hospital. I decided to got to the hospital, because if it was real labor, I wanted an epidural ASAP.

David and I got to to Timponogos Hospital around 9:00 and got checked in. The nurse Deb came in for the moment of truth-- how far progressed was I? Turns out I was fully effaced and 5 cm dilated! I was so happy to be in labor and already half way dilated! I asked for my epidural and the nurse had to give me a liter of fluid before I could get it, so we got that pumping in and an hour later the anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural. I have scoliosis, which made it really tricky for him, and he had to poke me twice for the epidural. But man once it was in, I was so happy! I was once again happy to be having a baby!

I kept progressing on my own, and once I reached 10cm around 1:30 we allowed for rest and descent another hour. By then my initial bolus of anesthesia from the epidural had worn off and I was thinking of pressing the magic button to get more numbing, but my midwife told me not to so I could feel in order to push effectively. That was a rough hour of hard core contractions!

I started pushing around 2:30! I was on my left side, but McKindrey's heart rate was going down, so they flipped me to my right side and gave me some O2 and all was good. Then around 2:59pm, McKindrey was born! I loved holding her warm little body right up against me while David cut the cord.

Summer got to be there for everything, and was an incredible support and photographer. We got to see Shaun and McKay that night. My mom got there the next day (it was still snowing hard outside so travel was difficult). I enjoyed 2 days in the hospital eating great food I didn't have to prepare, and holding my beautiful little girl!

I can't believe she is 9 weeks old now! Slowly we are figuring things out. Baby's are a BIG investment of time and patience, and even physical stamina! She is a joy, though, and smiles A LOT. Her full name is McKindrey LeAnne Parkinson. McKindrey is from the Shelley family tree, and LeAnne is David's maternal grandmother's name. McKay pointed out that she has 5 capitals in her name. That was not on purpose! We just liked the combination of names.

Born January 28, 2013 at 2:59pm
20.5 inches long
7 lbs 14 oz.
born at 41 weeks, a week past my due date

Well, David will be finishing his Bachelor's degree in chemical engineering here at BYU in the next 3 weeks! We will be moving to New Mexico, too. It will be a very busy next couple of weeks. We can't wait for all the great things that await our little family of three!