Our dear sweet baby Annabella arrived on August 19, 2010 at 1:15 am. Born 11 days before her due date, she weighed in at 7 pounds 14 ounces and was 20 1/4 inches long. Her birth was a rather speedy process from start to finish it took about 3 and a half hours. If you are interested, you can read about the experience below.
My water broke at 9:45 Wednesday evening. I was going to the bathroom, heard a popping sound, and a trickle of fluid started leaking out. I wasn’t sure if my water had really broken, so I went and laid down in bed.
After a few minutes, I had a real contraction. I figured Annabella would be coming sometime soon, so I went in and took a shower. At 10:45 I was starting to have more contractions, and the trickle of fluid was still running, so I decided it was time to call the midwife.
I called my parents first, and they said they were on the way, I then called the midwife. She said to stay home and come to the hospital if the contractions became 5 minutes apart lasting for a minute each or sometime between 5 and 6 on Thursday morning.
My parents got to our house and the contractions really started ramping up. Finally about 11:45 I called David (he was upstairs finishing up some work) and told him it was time to head for the hospital.
I was having contractions about 3.5 minutes apart and there were lasting longer than a minute. I had one on the way out to the car. I was kneeling on the driveway breathing through the contraction in front of the car while baby frogs jumped around me.
The car ride to the hospital, albeit only 10 minutes (actually I think it was faster than that because there was no traffic), was excruciating. I had at least two contractions. Between contractions, I told David that we had been anticipating Annabella’s arrival and now it was surreal that we were about to be meeting our little girl.
We pulled up to the door of the hospital about 12:15. We made it up to Labor and Delivery at the hospital, they checked us in, and moved us to a triage room to evaluate our progress. The whole time I am having one contraction after another.
The midwife came in and checked my cervix. It was 6 cm dilated and the baby was at station 0. David told the midwife, “It won’t be long before the baby is here.” I don’t think they realized how seriously they should take his comment.
The nurse came with a wheel chair and took me to the labor room. She got me onto the bed and said she wanted to start an IV and do some blood work. I was thinking, “Good luck.”
While she was collecting her supplies (David called it dillydallying) she looked at me and asked if I felt like I needed to push. I nodded yes (at least I think I nodded) and she said that she would check my cervix again.
Well, she didn’t get to check my cervix because I was already pushing. She called the midwife in who was also wanting to check my cervix, but when she got there and looked she saw a tuft of dark baby hair and knew the baby was on her way out.
I think I only pushed two or three times and out came our baby girl.
