She's here!

After a long labor, Kiona Wineer Lofi Mataafa made her entrance into the world on October 1, 2009 at 10pm. She weighed in at a feather weight of 7lbs, 1oz and measured 18 1/2 inches...teeny little thing. We love love love her so much and can't wait to see how her personality comes out. I will put my labor story at the bottom for those who want to read. For those that don't, just enjoy the pics courtesy of Harris and my sister, Dayna.

This is her before her first bath...she's very swollen and still has all the baby goo on her

She's a tough little girl. But her dad will beat up anyone who makes her cry (he's a softie for her)

Anyone who knows my mum knows she's the best ever. Read on to find out why

Harris was AWESOME the whole time. This grin shows his relief she's out and how proud he is to be a daddy and his scheming to have more kids asap

We were having chats me and my baby

She told me she was HUNGRY

And now she's tired and ready for bed.

LABOR AND DELIVERY STORY TIME!

Alright, so for anyone that's read anything previous to this post, or at least had a conversation with me you know I wanted to go natural with this pregnancy. This decision was made pretty early in my pregnancy and solidified as I took my hypnobabies class, had more discussions with my mum and sister about pregnancy. I had never grown up fearing pregnancy/labor and my mum has had 9 kids naturally and without any horror stories. It was only when I moved here that people had these bad stories that they seemed proud to have made it through. Mmmm no thanks. I'll take a simple birth and recovery thank you very much. A lot of people think natural childbirth = unnecessary painful childbirth. From yesterday's experience I can see why. From the beginning of my regular contractions to Kiona's entrance into the world was more than 24 hours and MAN were those contractions painful. My Dr wanted to induce me on Sunday and having an induced delivery doesn't always help with natural childbirth plans. It doesn't ruin them but with my hypnobabies class lessons and techniques it was going to be harder to use those when I was having these stronger, closer together contractions than my body wanted. I wanted her to come on her own so I walked EVERYWHERE, tried a few natural induction ideas but the one that worked was castor oil. Ugh that stuff is SICK. Most people mix it with a drink but I couldn't be bothered so I took it straight...never again. Just the thought of that stuff makes me want to vomit. I didn't feel anything for a couple of hours then BAM it kicked in. I took it 4 o'clock Wednesday afternoon and by about 7pm contractions started. Nothing too serious or worth noting but they were staying contsant which didn't usually happen for long with me. About 10 that night they got closer together and stronger and I couldn't go to sleep. I'd spoken with my mum who was planning on being there with me for the whole thing because she's a doula. She helped my sister through both of her deliveries and has been a huge help through my whole pregnancy anyway so I just knew she had to be there for this to go well. She asked if I wanted her to come down that night but I didn't think much would happen so I said no I'd call her in the morning. I wanted she and Harris to get as much sleep as possible before this delivery so I tried to get through the contractions on my own as long as I could and when I felt they were something worth going to the hospital for I rang my mum. It was about 4:30 in the morning and she got up, packed her bag and came down to our house by 5. My mucus plug had come out and liquid was seeping out but I wasn't sure if it was anything worth noting. We got to the hospital and I was only 3cm dilated and about 90% effaced which wasn't very promising since I'd been 75% effaced and 1+cm dilated since two weeks before. When the nurses called my Dr the Dr said I could stay and get pitocin (medicine to induce labor contractions) or just walk around the hospital for an hour and see. When the nurses checked me they realized my water had broken so I then HAD to be admitted into the hospital and we were on our way to having a baby. If your water breaks you have a higher risk of infection the longer it takes for the baby to come out due to there being a limited protection barrier between bacteria and the baby so I knew she'd have to come out soon before they started throwing words around like c-section or something. We decided to just go at this and see what happened. By about 1:30 that afternoon I had only dilated to a 5 which wasn't impressive for my Dr. If I kept going at this rate it would be hours before I'd be fully dilated to a 10 and ready to push her out therefore increasing the risk of infection. The Dr said if I hadn't dilated at least 2cm by 3pm she'd have them give me some pitocin to have my contractions closer together since they were about 5 mins apart. The birthing waves were a mission to get through. But my mum had this little machine in her bag and this machine was magical.
This TENS machine is the greatest thing ever made. It has a little dial on it so you can turn up the power and increase the electropulses to match the intensity of the contraction and in turn, I couldn't feel the contraction, just these small pulses from the machine. I kept praying that I'd be even more dilated than a 7 by 3pm (preferably a 10 since I was so tired by this point) but when the nurse came to check me I was only at a 6. How disappointing. She went and called my Dr who asked that they start me on the pitocin but while she went away to get it I started to get some pushy birthing waves. My mum called the nurse back in and I had dilated to a 7 in those few minutes. Woo-hoo I didn't have to get the pitocin! So I kept pacing around my room with this little machine attached to me increasing my electropulses (electric shocks by the amount of power I was putting them on to match my birthing waves) and felt GREAT. I could smile more at people, carry on conversations, stand through these 2 minute long waves (remember waves are my nice word for contractions) and just enjoy the experience. At some point the waves turned from dilating my cervix to me wanting to push. My husband called the nurse's station and my nurse's were in another room so it was a different one who came in and I was at 9 1/2 cm. I don't know how long it took me to get from a 7 to 9 1/2 but it was only a couple of hours TOPS. We were all pretty excited that we were finally going to see this little girl. My nurse came back in and she called the Dr who was making her way down. It was probably about 5 or so by this point and my Dr had another patient who was also delivering just down the hall so she alternated between the two of us. That patient delivered her baby and the Dr was able to spend the rest of the time with me. Which would have been fine had I gone from a 9 1/2 to a 10. But here I was again, stuck. The Dr said she could have them give me some pitocin to have the contractions closer together so I could get that last half centimeter and also help my baby down. She wasn't able to dip underneath the pubic bone and have her head crown. By this point I figured why not if it meant I could push since I was having the urge to push for the last hour+ and the TENS machine had stopped working therefore the pain was back. My mum and husband were cheering me on, getting me through these 5+ min long pushy contractions and man did they kill since I couldn't really push my baby past that point - she was stuck. They gave me some pitocin and around 7pm I started some heavy duty pushing. Each time a wave came I had to push for the 2/3 mins it lasted and try and get her under the pubic bone so she could be ready for crowning and the last part of pushing to get her out. This intense pushing lasted 3 hours.... :( I was so tired by this point, I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before and my uterus just didn't have it in it to keep contracting more frequently. She kept getting closer to getting under that dip but just as the contraction would end, her head would go back up the canal. I felt like I really wasn't getting anywhere with all my pushing but I knew I had to keep going. My body wanted her out, she almost wanted out and everyone was just so anxious to meet her! After 3 hours of this hard work I pushed hard and long (like I had been the whole time) and felt like her head hadn't gone back up and I just had to push even though I wasn't contracting. Her head was right there and I knew she'd be out soon. My husband could see her head and the Doctor seemed pretty ready to deliver so with one half-pie contraction I pushed and I felt the Doctor push against me. I couldn't figure out why she was pushing against me like she was trying to stop my baby from coming out. Little did I know she was actually helping my baby UP and next thing I knew my baby was on me! I couldn't believe that after 3 hours of getting her to get under that pubic bone in one push she was OUT! I was so excited and relieved. That last push to get her whole body out wasn't any sort of hard work, my body just had to do it. Harris was so excited that she was actually out and everyone was so proud that she had made it out. I just lay there in disbelief that after 9+ months of pregnancy, 24+ hours of labor, 3 hours of pushing our baby had arrived. And now here I sit next to my baby so proud of her for making a healthy entrance into this world. I love her so so much and am so proud to be her mum. I'm also so blessed to have the mother I have - and I would never have been able to get my baby into this world naturally like I did without her. She is the BEST mum, grandma and whatever other title she holds in the whole world. Lastly, but definitely not least is my husband, Harris. He was so afraid of everything involved with the delivery before we went into this but yesterday he stepped up and was awesome. He's loved our baby since before I was pregnant, has loved everything about her while I was pregnant (including my growing tummy) and now loves her even more in person. He will be a wonderful father and I just hope I can do right by her and him. Life's great.