FINALLY! The birth story about the arrival of our sweet Annie

As most of you know, our sweet little Annie is here! At this very moment she's lying content on a pillow on my lap.

First and foremost, all I can say is how incredibly grateful I am to have this darling little girl in my life. A few days after we brought Annie home, Johnny and I were lying in bed (Annie was in the kitchen with my Mom) and I looked at him and said, "isn't it amazing how big a spot she has carved out for herself already? I mean... try to imagine our lives without her. Pretend that you and I are the only ones in this quiet house. Doesn't it feel empty?"

It's so amazing how big a part of our lives she already is. This little 9 lb infant (she's grown a lot in the last four weeks from her birth weight of 7lb 3 oz) occupies my entire universe now. It's amazing.

I'm going to get to telling the birth story here in a few seconds, but first, I just have to say what a blessing it is to have a healthy child. I was watching the last half of the Ellen show (daytime tv... I know, I know... but what else is there to do when you're sleep deprived and trying to entertain a 3 week old with "this little piggy" for the fiftieth time today) and she was telling the story of one of her employees who has a three month old daughter. When the woman was 8 months pregnant they discovered that the baby had a heart defect and, at a minimum, would need open heart surgery immediately after birth, but might not make it at all. They showed pictures of the little baby in the hospital with huge bandages all over her little chest and I just erupted into tears, grabbed Annie, and cried for a good forty five seconds. It'll be really hard for me to find any frustration in her crying for the next few days... each one is a little reminder that we are blessed with a beautiful and healthy baby girl. Oy vay... what emotions.

But now... the birth story.

Labor started on Tuesday morning, June 15th. Johnny and I were at Mon Ami (our regular coffee hot spot). It was about 10am (Johnny having decided to take the day off work because I had been having some contractions earlier in the morning and we had a doctor's appointment that afternoon anyway).and I started having these regular contractions at about 3 minutes apart. They were becoming increasingly more uncomfortable. I was timing them, only half seriously while at the coffee shop and was shocked (and excited) when they stayed at 3 minutes apart and started getting even closer together (like 2.5 minutes). We came back home and kept timing them. After an hour of them being under 3 minutes apart (and really starting to get my attention... I couldn't talk through them anymore) we called the midwives.

We spoke with our primary midwife, Dana, and when she was talking to me she said, "I think you should stay home for another hour and then give me a call back". Right after she said it, I had another contraction and had to hand the phone to Johnny. Dana was listening to me and then told Johnny, "well, maybe you guys should go ahead and make your way to the birth center."

Johnny packed the car quickly and off we went. On the drive to the birth center Johnny said I was like two different people... Christi during a contraction was moaning and couldn't talk about anything, and then the contraction would pass, I would take a deep breath, and carry on the conversation.

We got to the birth center and it was like a blizzard had just hit... there was an inch of hail everywhere! But it was just around the birth center... no where else. so weird. They checked us into a waiting room while they finished cleaning our birthing suite. We were waiting for about an hour and my contractions were consistently about two minutes apart. The midwives seemed to be confirming what I suspected... that my labor would go quickly. No one actually said that (they know better), but they got the bath tub ready for me right away and we were soon all settled into our birth suite. It was so nice... the bed was turned down, there were candles lit everywhere, and the bathtub was wonderful. After getting undressed and into a robe they provided, I labored in the room for about an hour and then got into the tub.

I noticed that my contractions would slow down a little every time I got into the tub, so I didn't stay in there for too long at first. The midwives or one of their assistants would come in every thirty minutes to check my vitals and listen to the baby's heart rate (before, during, and after a contraction), but other than that they left us alone to labor in private. This was so nice. It was just Johnny and I, and he was so fantastic the whole time. I had no idea how dilated I was because the midwives have an unofficial policy that you don't really need to know unless the information is going to affect your actions. In my case, if they checked me and found that I was only 1 cm dilated, I would have felt deflated instead of empowered. If they checked me and found that I was 8 cm, then I might have had expectations that I should be able to push soon. But neither bit of information would have changed our actions at that time... I was at the birth center to stay for as long as it took to get the baby out... my contractions were too close together for them to send me home, so why bother checking if the information wasn't going to change anything. And so, I have no idea how dilated I was when we got there.

And so I kept laboring... and laboring... and then I saw the clock and it said 6pm. I couldn't believe I had been at the birth center that long! I knew I wasn't that far along because I didn't feel any of the pressure that they talk about you feeling when you are fully dilated. I kept thinking, "my Mom had me in 6 hours... what's taking me so long?" And so I asked Johnny to cover up the clock.

The next thing I remember was the sun going down. Aye aye aye... it was 10pm!
Hours later I told Johnny that I was getting bored (and tired) and so we downloaded some Friends episodes to watch on his iPhone. It was around 1:30am. Johnny didn't realize that the time was very clearly displayed on his iPhone every time we had to press pause on the show for another contraction (which was still happening every 2-3 minutes) and he asked me kind of smartly "what makes you so sure it's 1:30?" when I told him that I couldn't believe it was already 1:30.

During this phase of labor, for some reason, I preferred to have my contractions while standing (with my arms around Johnny's shoulders and my head buried in his chest... and moaning very very loudly). So every time I'd feel a contraction start I'd say Johnny's name, he would press pause, and we would stand up together for the next wave to hit.

After two or three more hours of this, I'm exhausted and Johnny is falling asleep in the chair. I tried walking around the room for a little while and would have to wake him up at each contractions so he could come over to me and hold me during the next one. He tried making some coffee, but after a while he confessed that he needed just a 30 minute cat nap in order to keep it up. So I told him to go ahead and lay down. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow and immediately started snoring (ha ha). To his credit, he really only did sleep for thirty minutes during the entire 30 hours. And he was absolutely amazing for the entire thing... constantly giving me support, telling me how amazing I was, and that I could do this. I couldn't have done it without him. I decided to get in the bath tub thinking that I might be able to catch a few cat naps in between contractions if I could get them to slow down enough. They slowed down to about 1 every 8 or 9 minutes, so I was able to sleep just a little bit in the tub. But when they slowed down, they also got more intense... as though my body was making up for lost time by hitting me harder with the slower contractions.

The next thing I remember is seeing the sun come up through the blinds in the room. I couldn't believe it... I was STILL IN LABOR! Our midwife Dana came in around dawn and asked me how I was doing. I told her that I wanted her to check on my dilation progress and she agreed. I figured that at this point, the information would definitely be useful. If I was only 3 cm dilated, I was going to cry, but at least it would tell me that I needed to mentally prepare myself for another two days of this. But if I was more like 8 cm dilated, then it would give me hope that I was almost done. So she checked me and I was 7.5cm dilated. Not great for being in labor for almost 20 hours, but not bad either. She suggested that Johnny and I take a walk around the block and then walk up and down the stairs a few times. And so we got dressed (it was really cold outside I remember) and took a walk. I had three really strong contractions outside, and didn't care that I was moaning and screaming into Johnny's chest in front of perfect strangers.
The next thing I remember clearly is being back in the bathtub and beginning to feel incredibly painful hip pains during the last half of each contraction. My contractions would last about three long breaths. The first one would be pain in my abdomen; the second would be my low back, and the third would be my hips. The pain was so intense that it felt like someone was sticking a large skewer directly into each hip bone and then prying them apart. It stayed like this for a few hours until around noon when they checked my dilation again and said that I was fully dilated and could start pushing. I got back into the tub (Johnny got in too) and started trying to push. But every time the contraction would come, I just couldn't push through the hip pain. Instead of bearing down I would start closing my knees and trying to just avoid the pain (or run away from it). Dana noticed me doing this and told me that I needed to really push through the entire contraction rather than letting up at the very end. We decided to get out of the tub and try a few different pushing positions... I won't go into the details here.

The midwives gave me a small saline injection just under my skin at my low back which is a technique that can sometimes lessen the pains of back labor. It provides a little temporary relief (for about an hour). It did help the back pain a little bit, but it didn't do anything for the hip pain.

Finally I found that standing and swaying my hips while holding on to one of the posts on the bed somehow allowed me to dislodge from the hip pain and push through it. AND... I got really mad. I was sick and tired of being in labor and I just wanted it to F***ing be over with! The baby was finally descending down and they set me down on a birthing stool to finish pushing. Johnny told me that I pushed her out in three contractions (which I thought was ridiculous) and the midwives confirmed that it was more like thirty minutes (once I was on the birthing stool). They had a mirror on the floor beneath me so that I could look down and see the progress but after a short while I didn't want to look anymore. I remember thinking, Oh My God she must be almost out now (because I felt like I was so stretched) and then I looked down and could just barely see a tiny tiny bit of her head. And then I thought, "Oh my God I have to get so much bigger!!" And so I stopped looking.

Johnny was standing/kneeling behind me while I on the birth stool... holding and supporting me... telling me how wonderful and beautiful I was and how good I was doing. He watched the whole thing and even helped the midwives keep my knees apart (I was still wanting to clamp them shut because of the hip pain).

Finally, after 30 hours or so of labor, our sweet angel was FINALLY born. She came out pink, healthy, and crying just a little bit. Once she was in my arms she calmed right down and we all spent the next two days getting to know each other at the birth center before coming home.

The last four weeks have been both blissful, and trying. I am relishing this short time while she's so small, and absolutely love the feeling of her sleepy body in my arms as she nurses. She's a wonderful little eater and regained her birth weight in just one week... after four weeks she has gained nearly two pounds above her birth weight. She's well on her way to being a chubby baby, just like her mommy and daddy were.

Most people to visit take one look at her and say "She looks just like Johnny", and I have to agree. Sometimes I see a little of myself in her sweet face, but mostly I see Johnny. She definitely has his eyes... big and bright. It's looking like they're going to be blue, but we'll have to wait five more months to know for sure.

That's all for now... it's taken me 4 weeks to write this entry, but hopefully it won't be that long until the next one. For now, motherhood suits me perfectly. I am so in love with this little girl, I could go on and on.

Oh... one more surprising thing... she has pretty much lost her new born smell, but I couldn't believe how intoxicating she was for the first week after she was born. I just couldn't get enough of her smell... sometimes she smelled so sweet that I asked Johnny if he thought she smelled like Fruit Loops... it's the only thing I could think of that reminded me of how sweet she smelled. What a surprise about baby-hood... I've heard of people talking about the baby smell but never fully understood it. Now I know. She just smelled SOOOooo good.

More news to come... every day is different... and I'm loving every one of them.