Sunday night, April 18, was like any other. Matt and I got in bed early and were looking forward to getting a good night's sleep. Around 12:30 am, our son woke up and came into our room. After getting him back to sleep, I got back into bed and attempted to go back to sleep myself. For some reason, I just wasn't able to settle down and sleep. Around 1:30 am as I was tossing around in bed, I felt something strange in my stomach and felt as if I had wet my pants. With my son's delivery, my water didn't break until a few hours into labor and shortly before he was born so I didn't think this was actually my water breaking. Well after wetting through a few pairs of panties, I realized that my water had really broken. Within a half hour I was having contractions that were about 7-8 minutes apart. We called my parents and had them come over so that someone could stay home with our son. About an hour after my water had broken my contractions were now about 3-4 minutes apart and so we headed to the hospital (I had a 6 hour labor with my son and we were afraid of not making it to the hospital in time if we waited too long). I was settled into the hospital room around 3:00 am and was 6-7 cm dilated with contractions about 3 minutes apart. Contractions were easily manageable at this point and I was able to get through them without much work. The nurses were great and allowed me to have intermittent monitoring and they gave me total privacy and let me labor as I wanted. Around 4:00 am, my contractions had increased to about every 1.5-2 minutes and got extremely painful. I really had to work to get through these contractions. I used controlled breathing and imagery to help manage the pain. I found myself visualizing the ocean and waves crashing and this really helped to distract me from the pain. Around 4:45 am I started to feel some really intense rectal pressure and I told my husband that she was coming soon. Within a few minutes, my body took over and started pushing on it's own. It got really crazy in the delivery room at this point. The nurse was holding my legs shut and trying to get me to breathe through the contractions so that the doctor could get into the room and gowned and gloved up. The doctor finally arrived and I flipped over onto my back, pulled my legs back and in 3 pushes our baby girl made her entrance into this world. Sienna Kristine was born at 4:54 am on April 19th weighing in at 8 pounds 2 ounces and was 20.75 inches long. In my euphoric state, I could have sworn she said "ma-ma" as she laid on my chest. She stayed on my chest for almost 2 hours after the birth and took to breastfeeding right away. I had an absolutely amazing experience and couldn't imagine things going any better. I am in awe of my baby girl and completely in love.
Shelley S