She's Here!! (Part One: Labor and Delivery)

Well, technically, she's been here for over five weeks...but who's counting?

Baby Helgerahn (aka Eliza Caroline Helgerson-Rahn) was FINALLY born after what seemed like 12 years of pregnancy. I'm not going to lie, being pregnant was awful (and I say this after having a very normal, healthy pregnancy). I was not prepared for how HUGE I would get (see below) and I was definitely not prepared for childbirth (despite the abundant amount of books I read and moms I interviewed). Check out mega-Kate:



Eliza was not interested in providing us with a very needed 2010 tax break. I'm not sure she realizes how freaking expensive her daycare is going to be. Perhaps if she knew, she would have made more of an effort to be born. Unfortunately, she appears to have inherited my stellar procrastination skills. During my late December prenatal appointment, the nurse practitioner offered an induction date of 1/1/11 (one week after the 12/25/10 due date). Had I known what an induction entailed, I might have waited to see if Eliza would arrive on her own. Live and Learn!

Here is a quick and dirty description of my induction: show up, lay in a hospital bed, get all kinds of crap hooked up onto (and inside of) your body, no ability to get out of bed, waking up every 15 minutes thanks to the blood pressure cuff, 20 hours of contractions that resulted in only 6.5cm of dilation (yes...I opted for the epidural after 2 hours of pitocin-induced INTENSE contractions that happened every 1 to 3 minutes), then ultimately a C-Section. To protect the reader, I'm not going to comment on the barfing, the starving, the crying, the bitching, the catheter, and the body parts and body fluids that my mom and Thad got to witness. Believe me...it's for your own good. Below is a photo that captures the above experience (it was taken about 14 hours into the whole ordeal):



Guess how puffy and swollen you get after 20 hours of IV fluid intake? Words can't describe it...that's how puffy you get. Okay...so my pregnancy, labor, and delivery experience really sucked...that has probably become very apparent by now. As I anticipated, however, the whole experience was surely worth it. Little lady Eliza Caroline was born with 10 fingers and 10 toes and an overall bill of good health. Thad got to see her and hold her first, which was to be expected with a C-Section delivery. He was initially concerned about her purple skin tone, but his worries subsided after a few minutes when her purple skin turned a sweet shade of pink.





The hospital stay was uneventful, but we were BEYOND happy to be discharged and I was beyond happy to take a shower (because seriously, could the bathrooms in a hospital be any more ridiculous?). We are forever grateful to Grandma T and Grandpa Aaron for house-sitting and pet-sitting while we were in the hospital. Kona and Buster are especially grateful and were super-depressed when they went back to Wisconsin.

For more photos of beautiful Eliza, check out her Shutterfly page:
ELIZA!!
This page will be updated about every two weeks with new and exciting photos!!