I was super anxious for her to come and was disappointed that it was now the day before her due date (4/14/11) and she still wasn't here. I was pretty convinced that I'd end up having to be induced and would be pregnant for at least another week. I felt nothing. No obvious signs of labor and she never did drop much. I went to bed that night just as normal and about 1:30 AM I woke up to some fairly uncomfortable stomach cramps (similar to period-type cramps). I had experienced these once before so I wasn't going to put too much thought into it. They kept coming pretty regularly and I knew that if they were labor pains I didn't want to be laying down (let gravity do its work!). I got up and started bouncing on my yoga ball. I also started timing the "contractions." They were about 10 minutes apart and were lasting not quite a minute. I did this for about an hour and once I was pretty convinced this was labor, I woke up Shawn..that was at 2:30 AM. The contractions by that point were pretty clearly contractions and were coming on stronger and getting closer together. They were about 4-5 minutes apart and lasted anywhere from 40 seconds to just over a minute.
We decided we should call Melissa (Shawn's sister) at 3 AM so she could be at the house with Aiden when we had to go to the hospital. She arrived at around 3:30 AM. The contractions again were just getting stronger, closer together, and lasting longer. At 4:00 Shawn and I decided we should call the doctor and head on to the hospital. We knew this labor could potentially be just as quick as Aiden's was and didn't want to wait too long at home. We told the doctor we were on our way to the hospital and since the doctor on call wasn't my regular doctor Shawn made sure to let her know that my last labor was very quick.
The drive to the hospital was VERY painful. I felt every bump in the road and the drive felt like an eternity. Once we got to the hospital my contractions were very close together. I had two just walking the short distance from the parking lot to the front door. The nurses were ready for us, but I don't think they were prepared for how fast everything would go. The nurse had to check me to see how dilated I was and that was VERY painful on top of the painful contractions I was already experiencing. She said I was at 8 cm. They kept saying the doctor was on her way, but when I said I felt like I needed to push about 15 or so minutes after arriving the nurse said she had to check me again so that she would know "whether to tell the doctor she needs to run or if she can take her time." (no joke!) Shawn at that point just said, the doctor needs to get here NOW! She managed to try to check me again, but she was taking WAY too long so I pushed her away at some point.
The urge to push was very strong at that point and I just kept asking if the doctor was there, and Shawn kept telling me no. At what I'm guessing was a little before 5 AM, they told me to go ahead and push. Two pushes later she popped out....without the doctor. Thank God she was perfect and there were no complications. The doctor showed up about 10 minutes later.
It took what seemed like an eternity before they let me hold her. She was and still is just this perfect little beauty. It was one of the most painful moments of my life, but it was all worth it in the end. Here are some pictures taken shortly after she was born. Enjoy!
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