One year ago...

5:45 am...we had just been admitted into the hospital. I was still 4cm at 9:00am and starting "active labor" but had been laboring since 9:00 the night before. Little did I know I had 12 more hours to go.

The night before, we took a long walk around the neighborhood counting the time between contractions. We were excited and anxious at the same time, and neighbors were looking at us funny. We came home, called our families to give them a heads up and finished packing our bags. We watched some late nite TV of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and tried to sleep, but I kept timing my contractions. When they were 5 minutes apart I called the midwife and she said to wait until they were stronger. Well I never really slept and neither did Matt, and I didn't know what to compare the pain to and was afraid I would give birth to Hannah at home, the hospital is 30 minutes away. So I loaded the dishwasher, of course, tidied up the house, took a shower, and we hopped in the car to get to the hospital. The drive to the hospital was really quiet, we held hands and listened to music and was able to see the sun coming up.

When we got to the hospital and realized I was not about the give birth (silly me), I tried walking around the hospital to speed things along, but it was still slowly progressing. At 11am I had moved to 6cm. I was doing fine for the most part, I stayed on the birthing ball most of that time and was able to have family come in and chat . We watched golf and the food network (all the nurses thought I was crazy to watch food since I couldn't eat but it didn't bother me). It was actually relaxing. Then at 1:30 my midwife broke my water to speed things along. WOW! That made a difference as far as the contractions go. I could feel Hannah's little head moving down my spine with every contraction, no more cushion from the water. Matt held my hand through every contraction, and my doula, Violet would massage and put warm compresses on my lower back, and give me orange popsicles. :) It really didn't speed up my labor too much, it took another 4 hours to move from 6cm to 7cm and I was completely exhausted, I had been awake for over 36 hours and laboring for 19 hours. I literally could not control my body. I saw no end in sight and they wanted to give me pitocin to speed things up, so after a lot of deliberation between Matt and I, I decided to get an epidural. They gave me and epidural and I definitely had some relief, but I could not feel a thing. I could only see the contractions on the monitor. It made me feel disconnected from everything that was going on. It took another 4 hours to get to 10cm and then it was time to push! 19 minutes later, baby Hannah was in the world! 7 pounds even, blessed to be perfectly healthy. It was pure joy! I was able to hold her right away and then I remember watching them clean her up, and I drank like 3 cartons of orange juice back to back.

After that our families, who had drove from TN to wait in the waiting room all day (sorry guys), were able to come in and meet Hannah. I felt so much joy and love than I ever thought I would. Seriously I did not imagine It would be that amazing, but it was and it still is. Our labor experience is something I will always cherish because Matt and I grew closer during those intense moments. The encouragement from the doula and our nurses was awesome and I'm so thankful I had those ladies surrounding us to make our experience a good one. There are several things I will try to do differently next time because I would like to give birth naturally, if there is a next time. Like I will stay at home longer than last time, try to let my water break naturally, and try to sleep!

All in all everything worked out perfectly. Hannah was healthy during and after labor and that is the most important thing. The reason I can remember all the details is, thankfully, Violet, my doula, wrote down everything for me. I was not in the mind set to do so. I can remember other random things, but the times and dilations were not fresh on my mind.

I have lots more to say this week so stay tuned for more posts and pictures of our one year old...