Brand new, gorgeous baby girl, Samantha Jean

TMI alert for portions of this entire entry.   If you’re squeamish… you may not want to read this, or try and skip over those parts.  I’ll do my best to add in TMI alert when I think it’s going to be gross or graphic.

Well, let’s see if I can get all the details without leaving anything out.  So I had gone into the hospital on Wednesday, and that turned out to be a false alarm, as I posted.  They measured my cervix, and I was still about 2 cm.  So we went about our day, and Wed night, I was having trouble sleeping yet again, so I played solitaire on my palm pilot until about 1 a.m.  I’d gotten all my swaps for the recent future done, and ready to mail, was planning on going ahead and mailing them in the morning.  So I went to bed, really exhausted, and HOPING for a good night’s sleep.  HA HA.  I woke up, must have been shortly before 5 a.m. (TMI alert) in extreme pain, and feeling like I had to poop, so I launched out of bed and went to the bathroom, just in waves of pain.  I felt like I was going to faint, and I broke out in a cold sweat (I wasn’t actually wearing much of anything, so I think I was kind of hot/cold due to the contractions).  I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t waking Jerry up with my moaning and crying, and when I went back to bed, he wasn’t there.  I was thinking, Oh no, he went to work.  I looked at the clock and it was 5 after 5 a.m.  I laid there, trying to time the contractions, and was shocked when I realized they were coming anywhere from 3-5 minutes apart.   I had a thought that maybe some tylenol would help with the pain (which now I wonder just how rational a thought THAT was) so I went downstairs, and thankfully, found Jerry asleep on the couch.  I woke him up telling him how much pain I was in, and he got me two tylenol, but when I took one, the next contraction just made me throw it up.  We called the hospital, and they told us to come in.  It is about a 30 minute drive to the hosptial, and I have no idea what time we left, but I would surmise it was probably about 5:45 to 6:00.  I told Jerry to drive carefully, lol… don’t run any stop signs, and there was an amazing amount of traffic out at that hour.  He drove behind a trucker for what seemed like ages, and I told him, "You could pass him, you really could."  As we were getting to the hosptial and about to drive into the parking lot, I had a bad urge to bear down, and could feel her head, I swear.  Jerry was like "don’t bear down, hold it in!"  LOL…
So we went to the ER, got a wheelchair, and I SWEAR I was trying to be quiet, and I just could NOT.  I just screamed every time I had a contraction, and they were coming so fast it was hard to get into the wheelchair.  They tried to get me into intake, and I just couldn’t do it.  They took me to another room, told me to undress, and I asked if I could lay down, and the nurse was just like, no, I cannot undress you on the floor!  I went on my knees in the middle of a contraction, saw my face in the mirror, and I just looked haggard, I don’t know how to explain it, my face just didn’t look like my face.  I got up, and wiggled out of my clothes, the nurse helped me put on a gown, and they took me into a labor and delivery room, so by this time it was probably 6:40.  The dr I had seen the day before was there, along with about 3 nurses.  My memory is sort of foggy about the sequence of events here, but basically, what I remember is thinking, okay, it’s PROBABLY too late for any medication, but I’ll ask anyway.  I was right, the dr told me that there was no time, and I was having her naturally.  They coached me about pushing, and the dr told me that I was wasting energy on vocalizing the pain, to which I responded, I’m trying, it hurts.  At 6:45 she told me I could have the baby by 7, if I kept pushing.  I wasn’t quite "getting it" at that point, and they told me to push like I was pooping, and at some point I said, I feel like I have to poop, and they told me that was the baby.  The dr said told me she could see her hair, and I said, she’s got HAIR????  Oh my God.  At some point, the pain seemed to go away, and I just pushed, until I could push no more, took a breath, and pushed til I could push no more, and then tried to do it again, and finally she just popped out, and she was born at 7 exactly.  Two hours pretty much, from start to finish.  I found it all really surreal, and could not believe how fast everything happened.

I’ll edit this later, I’ve got to get some sleep.