Introducing Emma Grace Motal

Anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little girl.

Emma Grace Motal was born at 3:54pm on 11/5/08.

She is 21 1/2 inches long and weighs 7 lbs 12 oz.

Events leading to her arrival:

We had started the induction process the night before Emma was born, but at 5 am on the 5th I was not any farther along. So...the doctor came in at 7am and broke my water to try to get things started. Emma had decided that she was ready to take a poop earlier than we would have liked and when my water broke there was a lot meconium in the amniotic fluid. This changed things a bit and we had to watch out sweet bundle a bit more closely as the labor progressed. I got some Pitocin to speed things up and started having stonger contractions and by 11am I had decided that I had hit a 5 on the pain scale and did not want to discover what a 6 felt like. I asked for an epidural and was able to relax for a couple of hours. It was amusing hearing my mom and Travis discuss the heights/intensity of my contractions. I would hear, "Oh, that was a big one...it was off the charts." I was very thankful that I was not feeling them based on their observations. At about 2:45pm I started feeling a lot of pressure and felt like it was time to push. Dr. Irvin came in at about 3:20pm and we started pushing soon after. After 21 minutes of pushing Emma Grace was here. She was checked out by the neonatal drs and nurses and checked her lungs for meconium. She got a clean bill of health and Travis and I were able to say hello to our little girl. It was quite an amazing moment.

We had been induced b/c at week 37 we were told that baby motal was measuring 7 lbs 13 oz. Thank goodness they were off. I cannot imagine her being any bigger than she was!!!