Baby Gabrielle

I still can't believe we are halfway through the month of February and I'm already sitting next to my baby. I thought this baby was going to come in March for sure. Although I think maybe in my gut I secretly knew. Last week I felt an urgency to get everything done that I wanted to get done. I worked myself ragged, maybe that's what brought on the early labor. Last Thursday at my appointment my doctor told me I was dilated to a 2 and 50% effaced. I didn't think too much about it because I knew you could be dilated for weeks.

On Friday I was sitting at the computer catching up and finishing up my cloth diaper blog post. I got up and my lower back was killing me. I complained to Scott as I got drink of water and then my water broke--that was around 2:00PM. In case you are wondering what that feels like, when it happens to me I just feel like I am peeing my pants. I sprung a leak as Jen would say. This same thing happened with Corbin and judging from that experience I knew that there was no real need to rush to the hospital; this baby wasn't going to be coming any time soon. So we slowly got everything packed up and headed to the hospital. We had some time to kill so I walked the halls for an hour trying to speed up the labor even though I knew it would do nothing. I had already jogged/speed-walked 2 miles that morning and I wasn't anymore dilated than I was the day before. After that I got in the jacuzzi. By this point the nurse said they could induce me around 7:30PM. The best news was they told me I could get the epidural at the same time. I was stoked! Last time I had to suffer for hours before they gave me the epidural. This time around I hardly felt any of my contractions. It was awesome. I basically laid in bed until around 12:30AM when I could feel the baby starting to move down. I told the nurse and I had dilated from a 4 to a 10 in the space of about 45 minutes. I felt like I almost had to cross my legs to wait for the doctor to get to the hospital or the baby was just going to push her way out. He got there and I pushed like 10 times and she was out. It was crazy. The actual delivery was so calm and peaceful--it was not stressful at all. My doctor was gone for Corbin's delivery and so the on-call doctor delivered him. My doctor was so much better. Everything about this labor and delivery was easier and better than with Corbin. We were also much more prepared this time around. We brought snacks and Scott brought our TV and his video games. I brought my DVD player and movies. This made the hospital stay much more enjoyable.

So far nursing is working out pretty well. I feel like it's an answer to my prayers. Gabby is an excellent eater. When the lactation specialist came and checked in with me she said that she was the best sucker of the bunch. I'm still pretty anxious about having problems but I'm hopeful and excited to get through the first few weeks especially. So far Gabby pretty much sleeps all day and all night. I wake her up to feed her and then she goes back to sleep. She is so sweet and cute and little. Corbin has been at my parents' house, so we've really been able to rest up. We will be getting him back in a couple of days. That will be interesting. We miss him, he is so cute and funny. Things are going well.

This pretty much sums up my labor.