Freya's arrival

Freya decided that she was quite comfortable where she was and didn't want to come out. My doctor didn't want me to go too far past 41 weeks, so we checked into Maple Grove hospital on September 14 to start my induction. I got all set up in their amazingly huge labor/delivery room and they started the induction process. They told me to get plenty of rest. Yeah, right! I don't think I slept for more than 10 minutes that night. The next morning at 9am they started me on Pitocin to bring on my contractions. The contractions started almost immediately and came every 3-4 minutes for the rest of the morning, afternoon and evening. Even with all my contractions I hadn't progressed at all since the night before.

Around 6:30pm I decided to get an epidural in hopes that it would help me relax enough to make more progress. After they placed the epidural (holy crap, was that painful) I tried to rest a little, but the fetal heart rate monitor they had on Freya kept going off. During every contraction I had her heart rate was dropping very low. They had increased my pitocin in hopes of helping me progress, but it wasn't working and Freya wasn't handling it well. At 8:00pm my doctor came and talked to me about having a C-section because of the stress on the baby. I freaked out because I didn't want surgery and was terrified that something would go wrong, but she assured me that it was better to have her come now before it turned into an emergency situation. I felt so disappointed in my body but I knew I had to do what was best for the baby.

The process was very quick since I already had the epidural in place. They wheeled me in to the operating room around 8:30pm and little Freya arrived at 8:40pm. Justin was right by my side the whole time and watched when they pulled her out. Turns out that she was stuck in a sideways position in my pelvis and had one of her feet stuck in my ribcage. She weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce and was 20 inches long. I'll never forget the sounds of her little squawks that quickly turned into a full-blown cry. Justin cut her cord and held her hand as she got wrapped up and cleaned up, then they brought her over to me and we had our first moments together as a new family of three.