Our Little Teeter Tots: It's a . . .

GIRL!

           Ava Paige Teeter came in to the world at 9:38 am on Monday, February 18. She weighed 7 lbs 12 oz and was 20 inches long. (I know, very surprising for those of you who remember that our first daughter, Olivia, was 10 lbs and 23 1/4 inches long.) We were really surprised too! It made for a much shorter and easier delivery.
            We went to the hospital for a scheduled induction on Sunday night about 7pm. We left Olivia at home with my mom and sister so they could take her to school on Monday morning and then head to the hospital to wait for Baby Teeter to arrive. They didn't have to wait long, actually, they had to rush to make it there in time.
              On Sunday night, they doctor found that I was 2 centimeters dilated, but the baby was still really high. They had planned to use a medicine to hopefully get me to start having contractions in order to dilate more during the night. After being hooked up to the monitor, they found a couple of dips in the baby's heart rate after some contractions. So they decided to use the same medicine we used when Olivia was born--it did not work with her, so I had little hope that it would be successful.
              So we set in for a long night of chasing a very active baby around on the heart monitor, having a lot of contractions, and very little sleep. I got up about 6 am and got a shower. When the doctor checked me then, I was 4 centimeters dilated, about 50% effaced, but still very high. The doctor broke my water at 7am hoping to get things moving along with the help of a little pitocin.
             Apparently, that was all it took. I started having very intense contractions within an hour and decided I was ready for an epidural. My nurse then informed us that we needed to move to another labor and delivery room because my room had some plumbing work that needed to be done that day. And we were assuming that we had a while before anything would be happening. My contractions were getting really intense and I was starting to feel a lot of pressure so the nurse said she would check me as soon as we got down the hall to the new room where the anesthesiologist was waiting to give me the epidural.
               Once I got the epidural, the nurse found that I was 9 centimeters dilated and called the doctor. The anesthesiologist told me if I would have waited 5 minutes longer, it would have been too late to get it. Once they made sure I no issues with the epidural, I was ready to push. My sister just made it for starting to push. I only pushed about 10 times before our beautiful baby girl arrived at 9:38! She came out crying really loud and her bottom lip quivering so adorably!