Say Hello to Brooklyn!

Here are just a few pictures and videos...

Video #1 - First time with mommy...

Video #2 - Coming home for the first time...

I want make sure I remember everything, so today (7/17/08) I am documenting my experience. This is how it happened:

I was having contractions for several weeks (BH contractions really) but they began to be more and more crampy and closer together for the last week or so. The day before baby was born, I layed down about noon with pretty strong crampy contractions and they were coming every 5 minutes or so. I thought they would stop as they had before, but they continued for three hours. I recvd a call from Melissa who convinced me that it would be a good idea to go the hospital now as the admittance takes a while and then the epidural takes a while to kick in. I took her advice and called Matt at work to come home and take me to the hospital. I jumped in the shower; Matt was surprise to find me in the shower. He arrived home rather quickly expecting to find me waiting in the driveway. We got to the hospital around 5pm. They checked me and I was still a 4 dilation, but my contractions were consistantly 2-3 minutes apart. They just weren't strong enough to dilate me. They gave us three options before admitting me: go walking for 2 hours; go home; or be induced. We chose to go walking. We went downstairs at about 7pm and got a smoothie and ate some crackers, then we walked outside around the hospital district in downtown for the next 1 1/2 hours. Everyone we passed knew exactly what we were doing, because I looked as though I was having contractions. Back at the hospital, they check me again and I had progressed 1 whole centimeter dilation - so they admitted me. We labored from that point (9pm) till 5am - on the dot (when she was born). They did give me some pitocin to encourage stronger contractions, and then they gave me an epidural when the contractions starting really hurting. My water bags broke on their own during my labor. It as rather surprising as all of the sudden we heard a "pop" and my blanket moved, and then it was wet. I progressed to a 10 dilation around 3:30am and they left me at a 10 for a whole hour so as to make sure baby came down as much as possible before I pushed. I started pushing at 4:55 and pushed 3 times and she was out. They did use a vacuum to assist as they were concerned about my heart and did not want me to strain too much. She was very healthy (despite a slight gurgling, which they took care of in the nursery with some suction and oxygen) and she had latched on right after they rubbed her down and cut the cord. I did rip to a stage 2 (as they did not give me an episiotomy). I also ended up losing a lot of blood. My blood (hemaglobin?) level was at 7. They suggested a transfusion, but gave me a choice - I chose to wait it out, which was the right choice in the end. My recovery was long and hard as I was very anemic for several weeks afterwards (plus I still had PUPs pretty bad for the 8 weeks following), but with Matt home the first week and my Mom there for the next 3 weeks, I was well taken care of.