Ready or not, here she is!!!

When I wrote that last post I did not expect that the next night I would go into labor! Here's the full story:
I woke up at 12:30 feeling pretty bad. Last Friday I had some early labor pains and then they stopped Saturday morning, but these ones Monday night were worse than those. So I came into the office to watch an episode of Friends and I sat on the exercise ball (then fell off the exercise ball because it rolled out from under me...) and I knew this was different. With the first big contraction my water broke so I went to wake up Ian. He said, "you're doing great honey," then rolled back over to sleep. At first I thought that was ok because I thought maybe it was false labor again, but that next contraction hit and I knew it wasn't kidding so I told Ian a little more forcefully to get up.

Anyway, a little while later we called our Doula, Jeannie, and she came over right away. My contractions were already really close together and feeling strong. I kept thinking, 'what do i know? These could be the easy ones!" As it turns out I was already in active labor and when contractions were coming two minutes apart we remembered to call the doctor... we're not the brightest. I think I still couldn't believe that this was actually it!

So we call Dr. Bowen, aka the best doctor in the whole world, and he told me to go to the hospital. THAT was a task. I was having really strong contractions so the car ride was a real treat...

I feel bad for the first nurse I was with at the hospital because she was trying to ask all these questions when we got there but I was so out of it. In class Jeannie described these active labor contractions as, "really requiring your full focus." I'm not sure that's an accurate description. It's more like 'all consuming'; I was totally dead to the rest of the world. So we filled out most of our admissions papers after the baby was born.

When they checked me I was 6-7 centimeters. This gave me great hope that I COULD do it! Then maybe an hour or so later I really felt like I needed to push. My doctor wasn't there yet, but the nurse said I was almost fully dilated, so I waited a little longer. And by waited I mean stood by the bed leaning on Ian (practically knocking him over I'm sure) and making enough noise to wake up the maternity ward with every contraction. Then finally they said I could push which felt great, and my doctor arrived shortly after that. It was a huge relief to push, and it felt so powerful to do that and bring Mary into the world! An hour later she was born, and even though I thought it would be gross I watched the whole thing. Each time I crouched forward to push I could see her little head. I thought I would never want to do that, but it was really cool.

She was born at 7:18 in the morning, weighing 7 pounds 3 ounces and measuring 20 inches! Here she is:
Let's start with a cute one, we took this today. She's striking a pose:


There's lots of mucus in the next few, you've been warned. Here she is right after I pushed her out:


A little blue:


My studly husband, looking like he hadn't slept in days... oh wait, that's true. Then me, looking the same:



Now for some home shots: