Introducing Esmé

Our baby, Esmé Lorraine Phillips, was born just after midnight on Tuesday, June 29th. And as I was laying there in the delivery room, exhausted and a bit delirious, my nurses and doctors and mothers working and hurrying about in the chaos, I couldn't believe how what I had just been through could be at once so terrible and so wonderful.

Here is the story:

Esmé decided to start her trip to earth on Sunday night, the 27th. I had some small contractions throughout the night--they were a little uncomfortable, but not so bad that I couldn't sleep. Because I had never before had any contractions throughout the pregnancy and because I was completely fed up with my fat feet, I felt especially excited that the end could be near.

Monday morning I had my first real, painful contraction which tempered my excitement somewhat because it hurt like sin. After about an hour, we decided to relocate to a relative's house in Salt Lake so we could be closer to our hospital once the contractions got closer together. By 12:30 pm the contractions were coming close enough that we headed to the hospital. As Roo wheeled me into Labor and Delivery, the realization of what was about to happen really dawned on me. I was afraid and in pain and quickly brushing away my tears while they checked me in and had me fill out the paperwork.

Once I was settled in my room and my mom had arrived, I started to feel better. Once the anesthesiologist came around, I felt even better. We spent the next few hours watching the contractions peak on the monitor and being enormously grateful that I couldn't feel any of it. When I arrived, I was dilated to a 4, and three hours later I was at a 7, so we all cheerfully anticipated that the baby would arrive in a few more hours at the most. Piece of cake.

However, once my body got to a 7, it decided to stop progressing altogether. And speaking of cake, I had not eaten since dinner on Sunday and my stomach was screaming at me--I was starving and weak! Each time the nurse came in and told me I wasn't progressing made me feel a little weaker and more anxious. By late afternoon, the doctor broke my water, assuring me that this would definitely speed things up. I don't think any of us anticipated that it would take a further six hours. Nor did I anticipate that the epidural would wear off. In the time it took to get to a 10, the medication would dull the pain on only one side and the intense pain was starting to come through. Even after getting a pain killer on top of the epidural, I was incredibly uncomfortable and had terrible stomach cramps and a headache for about six hours. As you might imagine, my emotional state was equally unstable and starting to lose patience and hope as the nurse repeatedly came in hour after hour telling me that I was still at a 9.

Finally, at 10 pm it was time to push. This is when I started to really panic because I was completely exhausted and now they were asking me to run a marathon. I was too numb to actually feel what or where I was supposed to be pushing, but not numb enough to not feel the intense charlie-horse-like cramps in my stomach. Then I threw up all over and cried because I was so embarrassed. I also developed a fever. I was in agony. This lasted for two hours. By then it was Tuesday morning and all the breathing exercises and focus points I'd been taught to help me get through labor had been long forgotten. I had seriously started to question whether anything could possibly be worth this and whether I could actually do this without dying. But finally after some intense pushing and intense cutting on the doctor's part, little Esme was born. She was 7 lbs 14 oz and 20 inches long.

I was too exhausted to do anything but cry. Esme, however, was not crying. She was completely tangled in the umbilical cord and I could see the doctor frantically trying to free her. He managed to get her untangled and the nurses took her away.

I couldn't believe it was over. From my first contraction Monday morning it had been sixteen long hours. Probably the worst sixteen hours of my life. But as I laid there and looked at my little baby, I knew they were the most important hours of my life so far.

Photographic proof of how beat up/delirious I felt