Katelyn is Born!

On Jan 8th at 1:00am Kristin started going into contractions. She kept going with contractions that were anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes apart. However, the hospital had said don't come in until they were 3 to 5 minutes apart. Around 10:00pm on the 8th, after trying to go to bed, the contractions got worse and it was clear that she couldn't sleep through them, so we headed to the hospital.At the hospital, they checked her out and her body wasn't ready to have a baby.

However, they took some blood pressure tests and found that her blood pressure was consistently high. So they diagnosed her with gestational hypertension (pregnancy-induced high blood pressure). Usually, they would induce labor at 39 weeks when a mother has this. In Kristin's case, she was already at 40 weeks and 2 days (it was around 2:00am on the 9th by now). So they decided to induce labor.

She was moved into a labor and delivery room and started getting the talks about what the process entailed. At about 4:00am they started a pitocin drip (a drug that makes her body go into labor). At this time, the doctor said it would take between 18 and 36 hours for active labor to start. So Grandpa Foster and Tony went home. Tony picked up some stuff and headed back while Grandpa stayed behind to get some quality sleep to prepare for the events to come. But Kristin wanted to get that baby born!

By 6:00am she was ready to get an epidural (a little sooner than planned). Once that was in place and mom was riding the happy train, the doctors started losing the signal on the baby's heart beat. The baby was doing fine, they just couldn't get the signal. So the doctors decided to put a monitor on the baby's head.

However, at around 8:00am when they reached down to put the monitor in they realized Kristin was fully dilated and ready to have a baby! At this point Tony called Grandpa and told him to come back if we wanted to see his granddaughter born. Luckily, he got there in time and by 10:06am Katelyn Loraine Illig was brought into this world.We spent 2 days in the hospital and then came home on the 11th. Mom and Katelyn were released with a clean bill of health. What a blessing this all has been!