On Thursday July 31 I came home from my afternoon OB appointment and started having contractions every 5-8 minutes. So Steve and I decided to go walk around the mall for an hour to see if we could get things moving a little faster. The girls were spending the week with their Mom Mom and Poppy, so we were free to go have a free date walking around and around and around the mall.
They were coming regularly and were decently strong, but no exaggeration-- as soon as I walked out the door into the parking lot, they stopped and I didn't get ONE lousy contraction for the rest of the evening.
I went to bed sad, but not surprised that we'd had another false alarm. Or was it? At about 3:45 am I woke to really sharp contractions every 5 minutes. I timed them in bed for an hour, and woke Steve up at 5 am to tell him I was pretty sure I was in labor.
It was my due date, too, imagine that. Things were happening right on schedule for the second pregnancy in a row.
We called my doctor's office and had to wait on the OB on call to call us back. After a quick breakfast I decided not to wait around at home for the return call; the contractions were coming closer together and I had to stop and breathe through them. I also had Group B Strep, so that meant some antibiotics before delivery. We drove [across the street] to the hospital and got a call back from the OB while Steve was parking in the parking garage. We agreed with her that I should come in :)
The nurses let me skip triage (hallelujah!) and get to a room right away before all the monitors and IVs went in. I was at 5 cm and it was 6:20 by the time I was settled with the antibiotic dripping. News on the Labor and Delivery hall was that some girl in room 307 was in labor and didn't know if she was having girl #5 or boy #1-- the excitement was mounting.
To make a short story even shorter, things progressed quickly (I'm blessed that way) and Steve was soon making a hasty exit so that I could get my epidural without him having to witness it. Then the waiting came. I was close to 10 cm but they wanted me to wait until they could begin my second round of antibiotics started at 10:20. That way the baby would, technically, not have to be observed after birth. Thanks to the epidural, waiting an hour and a half to push wasn't horrible-- just kind of boring. I was paralyzed and had to lay flat on my back.
Let's get this baby out, already!
Everyone anticipated that it wouldn't take long for the baby to be born once we had reached the magic hour-- so when the doctor walked in at 10:19 as the nurse hooked up my next dose of medicine, she calmly suited up and gave me the go-ahead to do my thing. The baby was born at 10:28 so I think it took about 3 minutes to meet her once I started pushing. Did I mention that I am blessed?!
And of course, as expected, Steve announced "It's a girl!" and there was much rejoicing. I even got to cut the cord, which was a first for me. Evelyn has lots of dark hair like Leah did, and we enjoyed having a baby during the morning hours (another first for me!) so that we had all day to look at her and get to know her!
