Now We Are A Little Family- My Birth Story

Hi everyone! I'm back! Sorry, but I've been busy going through a life changing experience! In case you didn't know, I had my first baby and now I'm a new Mother. But, first of all, I would like to thank everyone for their support and kind words! Also, my hubby, Jon, for making his debut post. That's probably the last that you'll see of him in a while. *smile* On Tuesday, September 19, 2006 at 5:45am I had a healthy, little-cutie named Emily Marie. She was 7 lb 14 oz and 21 3/4 inches long. She is everything I can ask for and more. Wow! I can't even describe the many emotions that have been going through me. All I can say is that I am sooo proud! I'm sure Jon is proud to be a Father. While holding her, it's so adorable the way he looks at her in absolute amazement. I feel like we are a family now. Now that I can compare my labor to others, I think it was pretty easy, but during the labor I thought it was anything but that. I had so many pregnancy symptoms, so I'm not complaining about the labor. Emily was born on Tuesday morning, but all day on Monday (9/18) I experienced contractions. I tried to ignore them until they became serious enough to head to the hospital. Honestly, ignoring your first contractions is not an easy thing to do! From my Mother's advice, I didn't want to head to the hospital too early, so I waited until it was time to go. Once I started to experience longer and stronger contractions, I knew that my baby was ready to come. At one point I had to go to the bathroom and when I was getting up after I was "done," my water broke. My reaction was, "oh, man!" I tried to stay calm while running over to Jon, who was watching TV, to tell him about the latest pregnancy news. You could just tell that he was a bit excited, but tried to be confident and calm upon hearing the latest news. Right after I called my Mom and told her. Around 10-15 minutes after my water broke I was able to start tracking my contractions. To be honest I was really nervous. At this time I knew I would have quite a few hours before heading to the hospital. While experiencing contractions I was walking around, trying to stay as calm and collected as possible. Jon was helpful by packing for the hospital by using my list that I got together. We arrived at the hospital around 1:30am. I was more than ready to have Emily at this point with all the pain from the contractions, but as I entered the elevator in the hospital, I got really scared. I had a sense of fear that the elevator was going to fail while taking me to the 5th floor. I couldn't wait to get out of there. It was weird because I don't have a usual fear of elevators or heights or anything like that. When the contractions began to get stronger and closer apart (2 minutes), I began thinking about the epidural. I didn't want to get one at first, but with all the pain, it was the only thing I could think of! The contractions were so painful that I was moaning, but I didn't care. Finally, I was relieved when I was told that I was already completely effaced, fully dialated. Jon told me that the baby came soon after that within 15 minutes! At that point I had a hard preception of time. I was just so thrilled to see her for the first time and hold her in my arms! After about an hour I was able to breastfeed Emily for the first time. What an experience! We also decided to bank her umbilical cord blood and everything ran smoothly. This was an amazing experience and I'm so proud to be a Mother to Emily. I'm so happy she's here!