The birth story.

Mama sure does love this blog. It serve as an excellent tool for spreading Turner cuteness propaganda and keeping in touch with our friends and family all over the world. But primarily, it's mama journal so that we can always look back at all of the memories we've made as we've grown into a family.

So bear with us, as this is going to a be a particularly wordy post about how Georgiana came to be with us. Mama wants to get it down soon, before all of the sleepless nights and chaos starts to blur her memories.

It's no secret that being a week overdue was really wearing on mama. She was really getting grumpy and on Tuesday afternoon, she broke down and called the doctor to beg him to induce her. She did not take the news well when he told her that the first available time for induction was on Thursday morning. Tuesday night was a rough night for her. On Wednesday morning, she thought she'd give it another try. She called Dr. Hearn and he said that one of the scheduled inductions for Wednesday had already delivered. Now Dr. Hearn also knew that you can't just throw in an induction on top of an already busy nurse's schedule and expect them to be happy about it. so he suggested to mama that maybe she drive to the hospital, visit him in his office (which is already in the hospital) and if she was any further than 3 centimeters dilated, he'd just admit her with early signs of labor. Deal. She and papa were in the car and on their way (after a stop at the Village Baker for pain au chocolat).

When she had her exam, she was already 4 centimeters dilated and the exam was enough to start a few contractions. They went upstairs, checked in, and settled down into the delivery room. It was about 10am. For the next two hours, mama was hooked up to an IV and monitors and allowed to her to progress on her own. She continued to have regular contractions, but they weren't very painful or productive. She spent most of it out of bed trying to move things along.

Dr. Hearn told her she'd most likely have to start on pitocin. It's no secret mama is not a fan of pitocin and being induced. So she requested her epidural early. At noon, the anesthesiologist (a UW-Madison grad!) hooked her up and she had to spend the rest of labor in bed. Soon after Dr. Hearn examined her (5 cm) and decided to break her water to get things moving before they tried pitocin. When they broke her water, there was very little amniotic fluid, so they hooked up Georgie via an internal monitor.

This pitocin started and everyone took a nap. Papa was tired because he was up half the night trying to get ready for his classes that were starting on Thursday, expecting that he'd spend Thursday in the hospital, not Wednesday. Mama's blood pressure kept dropping because of the epidural, so she spent most of the afternoon in a light-headed daze. They had to keep giving her medicine to get her blood pressure back up. Around 2, the nurses told mama that Georgie's heart rate kept fluctuating. It's supposed to stay in the zone between 120-160. But after every contraction, it would drop down to almost 60. They monitored it for an hour. Dr. Hearn decided that the low aniotic fluid was probably to blame. Georgie was lying on the umbilical cord and cutting off her blood and oxygen supply. In an effort to ease some pressure, Dr. Hearn actually hooked up an IV into mama's uterus pump in saline to "float" Georgie and give the cord some relief. This worked for a while and Georgie's heart rate stabilized. At this point, mama had cords and lines coming from everywhere. She should have had papa take a picture.

It's probably a good thing that she was in a daze, because watching the monitors was pretty nerve wracking. It's no fun watching someone's heart rate fall and not being able to do anything about it.

Around 5:45, Dr. Hearn checked mama and she was 8 centimeters dilated, but Georgie still hadn't dropped all the way down into the birth canal. not wanting to wait any longer, Dr. Hearn thought maybe mama should try pushing. Up to this point, mama could feel the pressure of her contractions, but they didn't hurt at all. While they staff was busy getting the room ready, Georgiana knew it was her time to do some work and mama had 3 big contractions that HURT (even with the epidural). You may remember that June's delivery was the same. The three contractions did their job. It only took three contractions, with three pushes during each and Georgiana Mae was born.

Now Dr. Hearn did not tell mama until afterwards, but he did have an operating room ready in case mama took longer than 10 minutes to deliver. And he told them that most other doctors probably would have just ordered the c-section much earlier. We are very grateful that Dr. Hearn kept a close watch on the situation and managed to get us through without major abdominal surgery- which was NOT part of the birth plan.

Georgie's birth was a very emotional moment. Obviously, there was a great deal of relief that any danger was now past. Mama was also very surprised at how dumbfounded she was that she FINALLY had the baby! Seriously, we'd all just about given up on the idea that a baby was coming at all; it took so long to happen. Papa was pleased that, for the third time, he was right about guessing (though he insists there was no guesswork involved) the gender. And everyone was sure mama was having a boy.

This birth experience was so different that mama's other two and of course, didn't go as planned. Henry's birth was the all-natural, drug-free (except pitocin), 9 and a half pound baby, "I-can't-believe-people-want-to-continue-having-children", hippie Irish-Russian doctor sitting on the delivery table in a snowstorm experience. June was born after mama and Henry both came down with a nasty virus and spent all day sick until mama got so dehydrated June decided to bail out because the ship was going down.

Because she's in pretty good shape and it's her third kid, we all got talked into the idea that there was no way she as going to go overdue. Much less a week overdue. She didn't intend on being induced and hooked up to every machine in the hospital. But she is grateful that she avoided a c-section and that Georgie arrived safely and healthy.

And here's the stats for those of you who have been waiting:

Georgiana Mae Turner

born August 18th, 2010 at 6:10 pm

8 pounds 2 ounces

20 3/4 inches long

13 3/4 inches head circumference