And she's amazing!
Annika Joan was born at 12:40 am on May 29th, two weeks early! She was 8 pounds (so glad she was early!) and 20.5 inches long.
I had a doctor's appointment the morning before she was born. Luckily I convinced Scott to come to the appointment with me instead of going straight to work. The doctor said something like, "I think you're in labor. You need to go to the hospital now and this baby needs to come out." So we changed our plans, played hooky from work, and went to have a baby instead.
First, though, we went to this store/restaurant across the street to get an egg sandwich, since I'd heard they wouldn't let me eat at the hospital. The service was SO slow -- it's hard to be patient when you're in labor!
Eventually, though, we got our sandwich and sat in a traffic jam before finally making it to the hospital.
Once we got to the hospital, we waited for hours in an exam room because there were no free labor and delivery rooms. As you can see from this picture, I was ready to pop. Although I was bored, the pain wasn't very bad at that point. My sister Carly snuck in some pizza and kept us company. In the end, I was glad I had to wait for the labor room because it made the labor seem really fast.
The labor room was great -- nicer than a lot of hotel rooms! I took a shower and we all hung out for awhile. Carly got a final pregnant photo of me:
Shortly after this I had an epidural, which was amazing. I never felt any pain worse than stubbing my toe. At one point I feared that the labor wasn't progressing and that they would kick me out of the comfortable room, but a nurse reassured me that the contractions were coming strong. Scott took a nap to rest up for what we thought would be a long night and day, but it was all much faster than we anticipated. 
Shortly before midnight the doctor came in and told me to start pushing. The pushing was intense, but fun in a way. The doctor and the nurse were screaming at me, "C'mon, Jennifer, push Jennifer!" over and over.
About an hour later, Annika arrived!
Congratulations Jen, it sounds like you had a pretty good experience with your labour and delivery. It reminds me of my experience with Noah. He too was two weeks early, and I also had to wait in triage before getting a room. I was having pretty intense contractions though, and it wasn't very much fun. I'm glad you had a better time with it. It sounds like you are already having a lot of fun with Annika. I saw the pic of you two at the Father's day fun run/walk. I'm very impressed.
ReplyDelete