Cora's Entrance into the World

Cora Marie Osterhage is here!

She arrived at 11:21am on Tuesday, May 18th.

I had been having contractions without pain since Saturday but knew that there was no chance I was actually in labor yet. After Adeline, I knew just how bad the contractions would get! The guessing work of when to go to the hospital was taken care of for us when my water broke in bed at 12:25am on Tuesday. That was certainly an experience! We called my parents since my mom was going to the hospital with us and my dad was going to watch Adeline. Since they live about 45 minutes away, I actually had time to straighten my hair and put make-up on while Jared finished getting the last minute items together. I also ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich since I knew I would be cut off from eating once I got to the hospital. At the hospital, we were able to bypass triage and go straight to a labor and delivery room since the reason we were there was because my water had broken. Lynn, the midwife on-call when we got there, said I was about 3 to 4cm dilated. She gave us three options: 1. Rest since contractions were not really going yet, 2. Walk the hall to try to get things moving, or 3. Start a "whiff" of pitocin to bring on the action. We opted for 1 and 2. Me, Jared and my mom tried sleeping some and then began walking back and forth down the labor and delivery hall. For every hour out of bed, I had to get back in bed for 20 minutes to have the baby monitored. We did two one-hour long stretches of walking. My contractions were about 3 to 5 minutes apart and getting strong enough that I had to stop walking when one would start. Unfortunately, as soon as I got in bed, they would slow to about 7 to 12 minutes apart. As with Adeline, it appeared that my body did not want to get contractions going on it's own! At 8:15am, Lynn checked me and said I was about 5cm. She suggested the whiff of pitocin to get contractions about 2 minutes apart and it could be shut off at any point once I was having contractions on my own regularly. We talked about it and agreed that this sounded like the best option because we knew we didn't want to be there all day. The pitocin was started around 8:30 and had to be increased after an hour or so because contractions were still only about 4 minutes apart. That increase seemed to do the trick! After feeling the urge to push during a contraction, my mom went out and got the midwife to come in. Lexie, who was now the midwife on call, checked and said I was 7 to 8cm and completely thinned out. Her and the nurse said it was a race between my and the girl in the room beside me because we were both at the same point. They agreed that I would win because I didn't have an epidural. We aren't really sure how much time passed since things were extremely intense at that point, but it feels like after about 30 minutes I was feeling the urge to push all the time. The midwife and nurse came back in to check me. Lexie confirmed that I was ready to push! About 5 to 6 minutes later, little Cora was born! She weighed 7lbs 3oz and was said to be 18.5in long (this was proven to be an incorrect measurement at Cora's one week appointment today when she measured 20in). We were immediately in love!

This was Adeline's first time meeting her baby sister! She didn't seem to fully understand at first, but it didn't take long for her to fall in love with Cora!

Our family was all waiting to meet the newest addition so we spent the rest of the day in our room visiting and enjoying the company. Fortunately only a one night stay was required and we were back home the next day enjoying our family of four!!!