Birth!

It is a miracle indeed, here's a little bit about my first...

The basics:

I had an epidural in the hospital and Amelia was born one day before her due date and weighed 7.2 pounds and was 20 inches long! a perfect little girl...

The story:

I woke up at 6 30 am on the on nov. 30th with some lower back pain and I said to myself "this is the day". I was having contractions pretty much all day and was on the phone with one of my best friends every ten minutes making sure everything i was feeling was really labor (she had just had her baby boy 4 months earlier). Sure enough things were progressing! i was having a contraction about every 15 minutes for most of the day. It was not until the early evening that they started moving closer together and they became very painful. I was so relieved that I didn't feel scared, i was just welcoming the pain bc i was so excited to meet my baby. Thankfully, my water didn't break and so i was able to stay at home all day and let the contractions get really intense before heading to hospital, which is the only part of my "birth plan" that i really stuck to. other parts of it included getting in the bathtub at home, having a stiff drink ( yes, an alcoholic one), to calm my nerves, haha. It turned out I didn't feel like doing any of that stuff. I just tensed up and tried to breathe through each contraction. At about 8 30 pm, we arrived at the hospital (Paul, Meg and I). My contractions were pretty much non stop by that point, and i like to describe the pain as "mind numbing" I was "at a 5" as they say, when the nurse checked me the first time. She asked me if i wanted to order the epidural I apprehensively said yes and it took about another hour before i actually got it after hooking me up to various machines and IV's and what not. Immediately after I received the epidural (which was a little scary but not very painful) I was "at an 8". So things were moving fast! After the epidural it was pretty much a party in there, the mood was lightened and Meg and I were talking and having laugh attacks (fun!) and THAT'S why I am so glad i got it. In my case it did not slow down my labor at all, which I was nervous about and would have been my only reason to not have one. Beautiful Amelia was born at 1 09 am, only about 4 hours after we were in our room! She was hollerin' away and was just perfect. When I was planning my birth my first priority was delivering my baby safely, with every available option in case she needed anything at all. Turns out I probably could have had her on a yoga mat on my balcony and she would have been fine, but I'm glad we played it safe.

Looking back:

I'm so thankful! I feel my birth experience was just about perfect, I'm so glad that I got to have the painful contractions so far into my labor because it made me feel like I was moving her along, AND i got to benefit from the pain relief which allowed me to really just relax a little bit and have some fun, ya! It's fun to birth babies! The hospital staff was great, the nurses were sweet and helpful. (Amelia was born at Dallas Baylor).

My feelings about "no drugs":

Sure! do it! and good on ya, but getting an epidural, in my case, did not make me "miss out" on any part of my birthing experience. And ya, I still felt like superwoman anyway...

My feelings about home births or birthing centers:

Ya! put that plastic sheet on your bed and get to work! In my case, with two doctors in my ear, I wanted to be at a hospital where there was every available resource if anything serious were to happen. I know that midwives nowadays are equipped to handle a lot and in most cases they will have everything you need, but for me it made sense to just be at the place the baby would need to be if something serious were to happen.

and now some photos...

before epidural

after.

(haha, terrible faces i know...)

Oh my gosh wow! she made it...

sweet proud daddy...

I cry every time i look through these, especially now as I know her more it is even more amazing that SHE was the one, that whole time, in my belly. Truly, so awesome.

p.s. I breastfeed Amelia and plan on doing so for the first year of her life, it has gone wonderfully for me and I never considered doing otherwise.