Birth Story Saturday: No time for an epidural!

If you had told me at the beginning of the March Madness final game that I would have a baby before the game was over....ha! Here's how Monday went:

My mom flew in around noon and we hung out with Ben and Uncle Johnny. At 5pm we went to dinner (with Aunt Lindsey, too). At 6pm we went to Uncle Dan and Aunt Molly's house for Family Home Evening. Nick was at home because we had a great opportunity to get all the molding up in the basement. At 7pm we turned on the basketball game.

Around that same time, I started to feel cramps, so I knew those were contractions. They were about 7 minutes apart so we started timing them for awhile. By 8pm I was feeling uncomfortable and wanted to go home to get PJ's on and relax more. The contractions were getting stronger in the car and very uncomfortable. By the time we got home, I knew we needed to leave for the hospital. I threw some stuff in a bag (we didn't even have one ready yet, oops!) and Nick and I left while Mom put Ben to sleep.

I just laid in the backseat - contractions were now coming every couple minutes and my body really felt like it wanted to push. We got to the hospital just after 9pm. We came right up to the 5th floor (luckily I had pre-registered with the hospital) and checked in with the nurse there.

It took a couple minutes to answer a couple questions and sign something. She directed us to my room and I felt a contraction coming so I told Nick I needed to lay on the lobby couch for a minute until the contraction passed. As I tried to lay down, my water broke adn I felt Julia's head and the need to push (along with a lot of pain).

Nurses quickly showed up with a wheelchair. After I finally could get sitting in the wheelchair they rushed me to my room. I wanted an epidural so badly. They said they'd see, but there might not even be time.

They checked and said I was fully dilated and the doctor was on his way. Luckily he lives across the street and he just ran over and was there within 5 minutes. Until he got there, they told me to try as hard as possible not to push. It was very difficult not to.

Once Dr. Wolsey arrived they said I should now push. It hurt (no epidural remember) and I probably almost broke Nick's hand off (at least I didn't throw up on him this time!). :)

But after only 3 pushes, Julia was born!! She's sooo beautiful! It was amazing.

I got to my room at 9:15 pm and Julia was born at 9:35pm. And it's fun now to say I had her all naturally - no pain medication (though that was NOT by choice).

It's actually much nicer to be in more pain for a very short amount of time than to be uncomfortable and in a little pain for a long time (with Ben I was in labor for 10 hours, but was able to have an epidural).

We're just glad Julia is here and healthy (and that we didn't have her in the car on the way to the hospital!)

ood thing we didn't leave 5 minutes later! :)