Our sweet angel arrived on July 21, 2012 at 10:41 am weighing 6 pounds 6 ounces and measuring 18 inches long.
3 weeks before Molly was due to join us, Jordan discovered that her blood pressure was creeping up. As a precaution, her doctors decided to place her on modified bed rest. That meant maternity leave came 2 weeks early. She never had any significant symptoms other than boredom and excitement. When moms develop gestational hypertension (high blood pressure) it is standard of care to induce labor 1 week prior to the due date, which left us scrambling to make sure we were ready. Also, as a result of the blood pressure, she underwent close monitoring including checking Molly's heart rate on the monitor twice a week and watching the amount of amniotic fluid present (both to watch for stress on the baby). While monitoring her amniotic fluid, Jordan was found to have borderline low fluid (called oligohydramnios) which can be a sign of stress on the baby or even cause some stress on her. Since the fluid was at least close to low and she was technically full term (38 of 40 weeks), we decided to induce!
The induction started at about 3pm on July 20th and went fairly smooth from there. Jordan was a champ and dealt with the pain of contractions and latent labor for the rest of the day well into the night until about 3 am when her epidural was placed. The next morning, her doctos checked her progress and found she was ready to start pushing and that we were going to have a baby! Jordan was very numb from the epidural and could not feel her legs. Even still she was able to push incredibly well and 20 minutes after starting the process of pushing, our beautiful, precious, baby girl was born! We have spent the rest of the time since learning to be parents and care for a newborn. It has been the most incredible experience and we are truly blessed with a happy, healthy family.
