The Birth of Our Daughter

The epidural didn't go quite as planned, as the doctor took some time getting it in, and then the effects only lasted for about an hour. After it started to wear off, they upped her dosage but Michele was still obviously in a lot of pain. Michelle stayed very tough and fought through the pain, and the baby's head dropped down low enough to push about 9 PM. We then went through a little over two hours of pushing and fighting through the pain, but just couldn't get the baby to come out. By this point Michelle was extremely tired from laboring and after talking with the doctor, we opted to get a C-Section at 11:30.

I followed Michelle into the OR and waited for them to prep her, since they were going to allow me in the room. After patiently waiting for about 15 minutes, they told me that the epidural was not working, which I had a feeling since we had problems with it during labor, and that they were going to put her under and I couldn't go into the room. That was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt in all of my life, being so helpless and not being able to protect the most important people in my life.

After about another 10 minutes, I heard the cry of my daughter and I knew at least that she was okay. I was able to be in the room they brought her to outside the OR to clean up and got to touch her and take pictures with her, which was so surreal. Cecelia Ann Befumo was born on 11/2/10 at 11:54 PM, weighing 8 lbs and 6 oz, 19.5 inches long, and had APGAR scores of 9.

Both sets of grandparents got to see her in the nursery getting cleaned up and footprints and all of that fun stuff done. We then had to wait about an hour for Michelle to come out of the OR and she was shivering from the drugs they had given her and very sore. There was a little bit of complications with bleeding afterwards, but they have monitored her for a few hours now and every thing seems okay. Michelle already spent some time with her breastfeeding (which went great!) and she got to stay the first night with us.

So we ended up with a healthy baby, a healthy mom, and a dad who can't seem to go to sleep yet because he wants to do nothing but protect them both, even operating on about 5 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. A few pics to share with you guys, I will be sure to upload more after we take more and I have had some rest.