June's Birth Story...

We checked into Plano Presbyterian at 7:30am on August 9, 2012 excited and anxious to meet our sweet baby girl! We were in delivery room 304 and our incredible nurse, Nancy, quickly got me started with an IV and Pitocin drip by 8:30am. I was already dilated 3 1/2 cm prior to starting the Pitocin. At 9am, Dr. Riegel arrived. He examined me and I was dilated to 4 cm, but my cervix was still tilted back quite a bit. He went ahead a broke my water. After my water broke, I really started feeling the contractions, so the anesthesiologist was called in to give me an epidural. By 10am my epidural was in (Praise the Lord)! Once the medicine kicked in about 20 minutes later, I was feeling good so we got to relax a bit and enjoyed watching the 2012 London Olympics!

Nurse Nancy checked me at noon...I was dilated 7 cm, my cervix had straightened, and baby girl had dropped! Around 1pm, I was feeling a lot of low pressure and a hot spot started on my right side. It hurt so bad that I couldn't talk through the contractions....and they were coming a lot closer together by that point. The anesthesiologist gave me a good dose of meds at 1:15pm to help with the pressure/hot spot. At 1:30pm I was 10 cm and it was time to start pushing! I really struggled with pushing because of the additional medicine they gave me for the hot spot. I just couldn't feel anything from my waist down, so all my pushing was coming from my head and chest. After 45 minutes of pushing, I was completely exhausted, frustrated and almost ready to give up. Come to find out, baby girl was in the posterior position (aka: sunny side up) and having a tough time passing my pelvic bone. My doctor told me that delivering a baby naturally in the posterior position is the hardest way to deliver....definitely possible, but tough. Just what I wanted to hear after 45 minutes of pushing with no results! A few more nurses were called in to help, which made me even more nervous and frustrated and I could tell that Dr. Riegel was getting a little frustrated/worried as well. Baby girl's heart rate started rising (190 bpm was the highest it got), so we had to get her out quickly or most likely move to an OR for a C-Section. At that point, I have never been more determined in my life to get this baby out naturally. Thankfully, my medicine started wearing off, so I could actually push correctly for those last 10 minutes that she was inside of me. Even with effective pushing, they still had to use the vacuum (3 times!) to finally get her out. At 2:37pm baby girl was here!! Hearing her cry for the first time was the absolute best sound in the world...Josh and I were so relieved to see her face, 10 little fingers and 10 little toes! Dr. Riegel said that it was one of the toughest deliveries he had experienced in his 27 year career of delivering babies. We're just thankful for a healthy baby girl!

Poor girl's battle wounds from the vacuum...

8 lb 8oz | 20 7/8" long

Holding my baby girl for the first time...

While baby girl and I snuggled skin to skin and she breastfed for the first time, Josh and I started discussing names. We really wanted to have a name decided on before we introduced her to our family. We narrowed it down to June and Molly for the first name and Marie for the middle name. It took us about 45 minutes to decide on June Marie! We both really liked the name June and we were married in the month of June (6.17.05). Marie was my Gran's name (my mom's mom) and my middle name. Welcome to the world, June Marie. We love you so much and we're tremendously grateful that you are now a part of our family. Thank you Jesus for this amazing blessing!

June's first video after she was born...