Salutations: the big day

Everyone loves to tell the birth story of their children. I never understood that... I get it now. It is an intense experience and the culmination of what you have been waiting 9 months for! While some things fade out of your memory, there are some moments that you will never forget!

Here is the timeline and story of how Miss Marra came into the world...

I had my 39 week visit with the doctor... I was miserably uncomfortable, I think it was about 90 plus degrees outside, I was full fledge waddling and knew that I could NOT go one more week with this baby inside my belly... here is a glimpse of how GIANT I was at 39 weeks....

I am not sure if I emphasized how many people were in shock at the size of my stomach and found it hard to believe that I only had one baby inside... people are crazy and made me feel like a beast... needless to say it was all about to make sense.

At the doctor, my blood pressure was really high and that alarmed the doctor. I was 4 cm dilated and she decided I needed to go to Labor and Delivery and be examined.... they might send me home she said... luckily the hospital is about 1 mile from our house so, this was not inconvenient.

Around 3:30pm on Tuesday June 25 we walked into the hospital casually, were admitted to triage, hooked up to heart rate/contraction machine... and never went home!

I was having contractions, oddly enough I was not really feeling them!

Around 6:30pm my doctor arrived and decided she wanted to break my water. This was getting serious.... Reason #1 that I had a LARGE belly... I was carrying a very large water bag.... OMG was there a lot of water... it just kept coming out... I had not laughed this much in a long time. Everyone was laughing, Dr, nurse, husband... I have a feeling this baby is going to be a good swimmer, because she was living in a large pool!

I began walking the halls to keeping things moving along... here is how the rest of the time went:

8pm- checked into Delivery Room
Walked and walked and walked some more...
9:15pm- 5cm
Hung out on the exercise ball-ate grape popsicles- did cross word puzzles
10:30pm- 6cm
walked, hung out with sister in law, listened to oldies music
12:45am- requested epidural
7cm
1:30am- waiting for anesthesiologist- big thunderstorm happening outside
1:50am- epidural completed- tried to sleep
at some point in this time they started petocin...
3:30am- 8cm
4:00am- 9cm
6:00am- told to start pushing... I felt nothing... I didn't know if I was pushing or what was happening...
They decided to wait a little bit for the epidural to wear down...
7:30am- told the following all in about 1 minute:
- Its time to start pushing, the new nurse and new doctor will be in shortly..... "wait- what!?" Yep, after all those hours my doctor was not going to deliver my baby... her shift was over and she doesn't work on Wednesdays... WTF.... ok so I am still bitter, but at the time I didn't have time to think about it....

8:00-9:59am- pushing in many positions... lots and lots of pain and horror thinking that I might not make it out of this alive.....

on Wednesday June 26 at 9:59am after 3 long horrific hours of pushing- we welcomed our daughter! It was an amazing moment... She was perfect and healthy.
Reason # 2 that I had a large belly- our beauty was a hefty 9lbs 2oz! I never imagined that we would have a big baby, but we are thankful that we did!