Madeline Grace Hobin was born on April 1st 2008 at 3:32 pm via c-section. The Dr. told Tanner to stand up, look over the curtain and announce the birth. After moving the umbilical cord out of the way all I heard was “Its a girl” and then a big yell! YEAH!!! Maddie was out and healthy! We were so excited we were both crying and in complete shock! The nurse took Daddy with the baby to get weighed and get pictures. I still needed to be put back together. Tanner walked in with Maddie in his arms to meet me. It was the most special moment of our lives. She weighed 6 lb 6 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long. She was healthy and beautiful. Time to go share the news!!

Everything was moving along great. Almost too great! This is of course where reality was about to set in. At 11:30 am I wasn’t progressing past 7 cm so they decided to break my water. This was exciting as we were hoping this would get the ball rolling again. We knew epidurals could slow labor but stopping it wasn’t going to help us deliver the baby! Well, everything started going downhill from here… once they broke my water they realized there was meconium in the waters when they broke it. This meant NICU was going to be in the room for delivery. At 12:20 after no progression they put me on potosin. I was ok with this but it wasn’t great. At 12:38 I began spiking a fever (99.7) which concerned the staff. Again, not a panic moment but not great. The baby was starting to get “tired” from labor and started having fetal distress every time I contracted (basically the heart rate dropped dramatically with each contraction). I then went to internal monitoring and put on O2. It was started to not look good for both mom and baby. at 1:30 I was taken off the potosin as the risks to the baby were becoming too great. The emotional decision was made that we would be having a c-section to get the baby out and quick. This was very scary and emotional for both Tanner and I. They very quickly drugged me up and took me in for surgery. We were very scared but knew we were in good hands. Right before we went into surgery we got a huge surprise… Tanner’s sister CC flew in to St. Louis on a whim for the birth. She got to see us before we went in and gave us comforting words.

So nothing happened all day on Monday to we were convinced we were just going to be induced on Tuesday as planned. We went to the Dr. on Monday for our scheduled appointment and some good news… the contractions helped me get to 2 cm dialated! This was the first good news all day once the contraction stopped. Patty and Larry got to St. Louis and we had them over for dinner (Helen Fitzgerald’s pizza, salad and toasted ravioli). They left around 10:00 pm for the night to get some sleep as tomorrow’s induction would be a big day. Around 10:3o pm the contractions started again… seriously?!? 10:30pm?!? We were so tired from being up the entire night before with contractions all we wanted to do was sleep! Well, that wasn’t in the cards. In a matter of a couple of hours contractions went from 20 minutes apart to 3 minutes apart consistently…it was time to go! Tanner and I showered and left for the hospital at 3:00 am. We arrived at St. John’s right around 3:30 am. We were put into woman’s eval as labor and delivery was full! We got checked and I was still 2 cm dialated but they said it was time! We were in a lot of pain but very excited that everything was happening naturally without the induction! We called our parents on our way to the hospital. Don and Nancy were there 10 minutes after we arrived and we told Patty and Larry to get more sleep and we would call them in a few hours once things progressed! At 4:30 we got moved over to our labor and delivery room. Contractions were very strong and uncomfortable. At 6:30 am we were at 4 cm!! The big 4 meant Epidural time!! At 7:25 I was given the epidural and thought my whole life had changed. Life was good. No pain and baby was progressing! At 9:19 we were 7 cm , 100 effaced and -2! Holy cow things were moving fast. The nurse was convinced we would have the baby by noon! I couldn’t believe it.