Happy Halloween!!

McKenna was a flower for Halloween...the CUTEST flower! However, we only got as far as Grandma & Grandpa Boone's house to show off her costume this year.

McKenna's delivery (9.25.09)

Recently I have been reading friends' blogs who have just recently had babies and reading their delivery stories. As I read them, I realized that I had typed McKenna's delivery story up two weeks after she was born, and totally forgot to actually post it. SO, only 6 months late, here is the story of my labor and delivery, and McKenna's birth. I promise it's not graphic or too detailed, but it may be boring to others. So, just know that this is for my record, others are welcome to read it, of course, but don't feel obligated by any means. :)

McKenna Fenn
Born: Friday, September 25, 2009 @ 2:07 a.m.
Weight: 7 lbs. 14 oz
Length: 19 inches

Thursday, September 24th, I was already 6 days past my due date and I had been having contractions for a good part of the day, however, they started getting increasingly worse by the afternoon. Curtis was at work, waiting for any kind of news, and finally at 4:00 p.m. they were getting so bad that I called and told him to come home, that we were going to the hospital. He came home, we put all our bags in the car and headed to the hospital. We got to the hospital and checked in at about 5:00 p.m., and as soon as we were all checked in, my contractions completely stopped. The nurse hooked me up to monitors anyway, and said she wanted to monitor me for about an hour just to make sure the baby was healthy, and from there she would either send us home, or call the doctor to see how he wanted to proceed.

I was hooked up to the monitors for about 2 1/2 hours when the nurse (Melody, who was aboslutley amazing)came in and said she didn't love the look of the baby's heart rate. She said that for the most part it looked good, but that there were spots where her heart rate would increase and then instantly drop lower than before. She said she was going to call the doctor and have him come take a look. That was at about 7:30 p.m. Not 15 minutes after that our doctor showed up to take a look at the baby's heart rate. He said her heart rate was fine, but since I was already a week past my due date, he would go ahead and get labor started (not even mentioning to me that he was going out of town two days later and wouldn't even be there for my normal induction date). (**As a side note... for the prior three weeks before this, I was already dilated to a 2 1/2 and 75% effaced. My doctor kept telling me for three weeks that she could come at any time...and then I was a week overdue.**)


At 8:00 p.m. my doctor went in and broke my water and the nurse hooked me up to the pitocin. The doctor said that it would be about 12 hours before I was ready to deliver, as it takes a while to dilate to a 10, and so he would be back at 8:00 a.m. the next morning to begin the delivery. I was dilated to a 3 when my water was broken at 8:00 p.m.



At 8:30 I received the epidural. :)


At 11:00 p.m. my nurse came in to check me. She said at that point I should be dilated to about a 5, but to her surprise, I was already at a 7, and she could see the baby's head. Since I was already so far along, she said she would check me every hour after that. An hour later, at midnight, I was fully dilated to a 10. She said at that point she was going to take me off the pitocin and let my body push the baby the rest of the way like it's trained to do, and in about an hour she'd call the doctor to start delivery. At 1:30 a.m. the nurse came in and started prepping the room. She had just called and woken up my doctor who was thoroughly confused by her phone call. She had told him "Mariah is ready for you", and because I wasn't supposed to be that far along, he said, "for what?!" So he came in, and a short 37 minutes later, our sweet little McKenna was born. Labor and delivery all together was about 6 hours long, and I only had to push for about 15 minutes total, which I am told is very short and very good. :)

McKenna came out with red curly hair, and the biggest most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen. She also came out sucking on her little fingers. The doctor and nurses first comments were on how well she sucked and said she was going to be a great little eater. The sad part was, right after she came out and they took her over to measure her and clean her up, she had been having a little trouble breathing, so they had to stick tubes down her throat... twice. Curtis said that while they were sticking the tubes down her throat, she was gagging uncontrollably, but anytime she could gain control of her gagging reflex, she would start sucking on the tubes that were down her throat like they were a binki or something. It was the saddest thing I'd ever heard, and I was so glad I didn't have to see it.

McKenna, since day one, has been a fabulous little eater, and pretty dang good sleeper (with exeptions here and there). She smiles a lot, laughs and whines in her sleep, can roll from her back to either side without any help, still sucks on her fingers (or anything else she can get ahold of), LOVES taking baths, and is the sweetest little girl in the whole world! We absolutely love her and are so grateful that she is a part of our family.



McKenna had a really bad cone head when she was born (as you can seen in the picture above), and she turned really red when she cried (picture below). The doctors thought there was something wrong because she would turn bright red, so they had to do a couple of blood tests to make sure she was ok.