Brenna Grace: Brenna's birth story.

On January 30 we had been having some very unusually warm weather...like 60 degrees! So I of course started my walking - I did so every day trying to get Brenna to "move her little head farther down". I walked over three miles that day and I felt ok, just achey hips like usual, I went to bed expecting everything to be normal, but of course hoping something would happen! Dave's alarm went off at 5:15..he snoozed it a couple times and finally I got frustrated with the alarm going off so I rolled over to get away from the noise and I suddenly felt very warm down there... I sat up and turned on the light and told Dave I either peed the bed or my water broke. So I stood up, and sure enough a gush of fluid (luckily the bathroom is connected to our room!) My water broke at 5:34 AM! I told Dave just go to work, I needed to shower, shave, and blow dry my hair before going in to the hospital.

We got there at 8:00 AM - turns out my Dr. wasn't and wouldn't be there all day :(.. Since contractions hadn't started by themselves I was started on pitocin around 9:30 AM, contractions started by 10 and were just mild. By 2:00 I was in a decent amount of pain and the nurse suggested an epidural, so I said sure let's do it... I felt great for about 45 minutes to an hour and it's like the epidural faded away - and of course the contractions were even stronger at that point.

Meanwhile during all of this, Miss Brenna didn't like the fact that I had such strong contractions and no amniotic fluid left - her heart rate was dropping with every contraction. We were put on oxygen and had an intrauterine catheter to flush more fluid in. They kept mentioning a c-section if things didn't get better.

Around 4:30 -5:00 I was in so much pain I couldn't talk during contractions and felt exhausted in between...I wanted the anesthesiologist back up there to give me a second dose to see if it would help. 2 hours later when I was 5 minutes from pushing he came up with the second dose. I barely remember him being there, at that point I was crying. The pain subsided a bit after 10-15 minutes and after another 15 minutes or so of pushing out came Brenna Grace at 7:00 PM exactly weighing 7 pounds 2 ounces and 19 1/2 inches long. I was in shock that everything had just happened, seeing her for the first time was just as wonderful as everyone says :) She was my perfect little girl.

All the pain faded away and didn't matter anymore - you're kind of on cloud nine! :)