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Our daughter was born at 22 November 2004. She arrived in all her glory at 4:10 am at Darnell Army Hospital, weighing in at 7 lbs 10.2 oz and measuring 19 inches long.
She was known by the nursing staff as "the ER baby". Apparently ER staff on had not actually delivered a baby for 2 years. So understandably there was a lot of excitement when we arrived early Monday morning....
It all started about 1 am. I couldn't sleep because I was having some intermittent contractions. They really weren't very bad, so I decided to sleep in the living room so I wouldn't bother my husband. I figured that he could use all the sleep he could get since MAYBE this wasn't going to be a false alarm again and we might go to the hospital later that day.....remember, I was in labor with kid #1 for 14 hours...I didn't think there was anything going to happen for a while yet.
I got bored at about 2:30 am and called my sister for a while. I was thinking that maybe I would wake my husband up soon, but I didn't want to jump the gun....after all, I did have 2 false alarms already..... Finally I woke him up at about 3 am and told him that we should think about going to the hospital. "But," I said, "there is no rush. It's no big deal." Ahem...Famous Last Words. Minutes later, I started having contractions back to back. by the time we were driving down the road, I was doing everything I could NOT to push. I was sure that my body was going to pop this baby out whether we were at the hospital or not...
Matt humored me as I tried not to rip the door handle off everytime we hit a bump in the road. Due to the recent flooding, we had to drive a mile around the flooded out bridge to drop Connor off at a friend's house and then out a side road and around to the other gate. A trip that usually takes 5 min took what felt like years.....
We flew through the main gate without stopping...we had the emergency flashers on and Matt just waved his ID card as we headed to the hospital. We pulled up to the ER at 4:04 and Matt went in to get a wheelchair....I didn't dare try to walk in. As it was, my water broke and the baby crowned as I got out of the car. I guess gravity does work! I yelled, "my water broke and the baby is crowning" as we wheeled through the doors.....and they started jumping.
It would have been more amusing if I hadn't been so concerned with getting to a bed before she was born. They were arguing about sending me up to labor and delivery when a midwife showed up.... Fortunately, she put a stop to any ideas about moving me and just told me to go ahead and push. She was the only voice of sanity in the entire room....everyone else was a little hyperactive and panicked. At 4:10 Madeline made her debut after only 6 minutes from the time we pulled up to the ER.
So my plan was to have a natural, drug-free birth with no IVs for me and not being strapped down to the bed by tons of monitors came true...just not exactly how I planned it.
I have to admit that I think it worked out this way because of my good friend Ginger. (A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU!!!) She showed me how to use hypnosis for pain control....maybe that's why I didn't think labor was such a big deal until showtime actually arrived! So for all moms-to-be out there....I highly recommend hypnobirthing classes if you can find them and a fast driver!