Adrianna Kinzie Stemme's birth story

On Tuesday, July 21 I went to my regular OB appointment and I was more than a little peeved. I was now 39 weeks and 2 days pregnant and I had done everything I could think of to naturally induce labor. Now, I know that some of you will roll your eyes and say, “The baby will come when she is good and ready.” To which I rebuttal, I would normally agree with this but when your husband works out of town 4 days/week and you are having mini-panic attacks at the thought of him missing your child’s birth because he couldn’t get back in time, I think my impatience was warranted. Anyway, when I went to my OB’s office, my blood pressure was slightly elevated (133/88) and after I told her (for the 12th time) my concerns about Greg being gone, etc. we began talking about an induction. After much back and forth with the hospital on the date/time, we settled on Thursday, July 23rd at 1pm. This was perfect. I could have Greg come home on Wednesday night and my doctor was on-call starting Thursday night at 5pm so she would most likely deliver my baby!
I immediately called Greg to let him know and he was just as relieved as me to realize that he could make it back in time and not have to fly down I-70 to do so. I got home and began doing some last minute cleaning, double checked our suitcase, & re-evaluated my pre-baby to-do list. By the time I went into work on Tuesday night, I was exhausted! But, I made it through my last shift and got the last few things done there that I had been meaning to get done (leave paperwork, etc.). Greg got into town on Wednesday afternoon and we picked Brock up and decided that we were going out to dinner in “bachelor-party” style to celebrate Brock’s last night as an only child. We went to IHOP (which is fitting because that’s where we went after our wedding in our wedding clothes) and Brock had a blast! By the time we got home that evening, we were both tired and I was sure that neither of us were going to get any sleep, but thanks to modern pharmaceuticals, we both slept like babies (which is a terrible misnomer, by the way).

On Thursday morning, we woke up, took Brock to school, did last minute checks of everything (again) and left for the hospital at noon. But before we got there, we stopped by Bass Pro to use a gift card that Greg had gotten and we ended up buying the kids some new camo clothes (Adrianna got a pink/camo hat). We arrived at the hospital at 1pm on July 23rd to register for our induction. After they drew blood and took a urine sample, we were taken upstairs to our L&D room. After we met our nurse and chatted for a few minutes, we found out that we actually knew her through some friends of ours! I actually felt bad for the poor woman because she stuck me twice for an IV and my veins blew both times and now I have a left hand that rivals that of the Michelin Man and a hellacious bruise on my left forearm. At 2:20pm, the doctor came into the room and broke my water and said they would give me an hour to determine if my contractions were going to pick up in frequency or intensity. At 3:15 they started IV Pitocin to help my contractions along and holy crap. Contractions on Pitocin is like . . . well, I cannot even think of a good simile right now. But, trust me, they suck. Anyway, I was beginning to make some progress and they checked me just before 5pm and I was 5cm and 50% effaced.

Just after 5pm the anesthesiologist came in to start my epidural and Greg left to “get a soda”. In all honesty, the nurse and I kicked him out because he was getting a little pale when they were putting the IVs in my hand and we didn’t want him to pass out during the epidural. Once my epidural was in, the doctor gave me a quick dose to get my contraction pain under control. About that time her phone rang and she excused herself to answer it. The nurse and I continued about our business and my contractions subsided fairly quickly. Greg and I were taking bets about what time our little lady would make our appearance. We both guessed somewhere between 9pm and midnight.

About an hour later, I began feeling contractions again and they were getting pretty strong. I paged the nurse and when she came in the room, she told me to hit my pain button. When I did I saw this look of terror on her face. I knew immediately what had happened. My anesthesiologist had gotten a phone call and had forgotten to hook my epidural up. All of the pain medication that I was “getting” (besides the bolus dose she had given me) had ended up on the floor. So the nurse re-paged the doctor and she came back, apologized, and gave me another quick dose to get me over the hump. Just before my epidural kicked in, the resident checked my cervix and I was 6cm and 70% effaced. The epidural dose immediately helped with the contractions and Greg and I continued talking. He was actually reading me excerpts from a funny book that he had brought to read while we were there.

At 7pm the nurses had shift change and our original nurse (Sue) brought in our new nurse (JoAnn, maybe?) and told her what had been going on, etc. Sue and JoAnn were kind of laughing about the last couple of times Sue handed a patient off to JoAnn, the patient went into labor ::snaps fingers:: like that. We just all kind of laughed about it and Greg and I just looked at each other and I thought, “Well, we will probably break that lucky streak tonight.”
Seriously 15 minutes later, my OB came into the room and said that I was having contractions back to back and she wanted to check me again. Greg and I kind of rolled our eyes at each other both thinking, “Okay, we have been down this road before” and we just knew that I hadn’t made any progress. After all, at this point it was only about 7:30pm. Well, when the doctor checked me she looked up at me and didn’t say anything. I just looked back at her with my eyes wide open and said, “You are kidding me!” She said, “You’re 10cm and 100% effaced. Are you ready to have this baby?” Holy crap. Greg and I both panicked a little, but things began to happen so fast we didn’t really have too much time to think about it. By 7:40 our room was a flurry of activity. There were about 7 staff members in our room breaking down the bed, setting up the bassinet, setting up the table of instruments, etc. By 7:50 they had me doing a test push and I must say, everybody was impressed with how productive my pushing was. In 3 short contractions Adrianna Kinzie Stemme had arrived. She was born at 7:53pm and weighed 7lbs, 3 oz and was 20 ¾ inches long. She scored 8 and 9 on her 1 and 5 minute Apgars and is absolutely beautiful! And I’m pretty sure that Greg and I do not make children; we make clones. Adrianna and Brock look so similar as babies, it is pretty scary.











Getting ready to leave for the hospital









Our beautiful daughter
















Brock opening all of his gifts from "sissy"

Proud mama & papa!