Erica's birth story

Erica's birthday is tomorrow! eek!! i cant believe TWO YEARS HAVE GONE BY!
I'm also very busy trying to get things together.

So, i'm gonna cheat... When erica was born, i typed out the "story" of how things happened. I'll give you an abridged version, but here's some background: erica was 'due' march 24; i went into preterm labor the first friday in February and was put on bed rest. She was born March 9, 2005-- early but not too early...


I'll begin with Sunday-- we had our birthing class. (Good thing!) Then, Monday I had all kinds of appointments- doctor, a mortgage meeting about our new house, and a credit class. The whole day I kept saying, "After today, I can have the baby any time!"

Well, I woke up Tuesday and headed into the bathroom. As I was leaving it then, I noticed a little gush. I was embarrassed at myself! Well, after it continued for a bit of time, I realized that something was amiss! Yes, my water had broken. But, I wasn’t having any contractions. This was at 830 am.

Well, first thing I did was call Andrew. And of course, he wasn’t at work. So, I waited a bit, wondering what to do. I tried getting a hold of Andrew again. He was out of the office still, so I called his cell phone. Of course, he didn’t have it on. So, I called his work again and talked to the receptionist. I told her that I needed to get a hold of him because my water broke. She called someone who was in a mtg w/ andrew. Well, Andrew got home at 9:45. I was incredibly calm - go figure. But he was running around like a chicken with his head chopped off!

First we stopped at my OBGYN office and they sent us to the hospital. We were checked in at 10:30 AM. Then they had me walking around, trying to get the contractions started. They started a bit, only lasting a few seconds, maybe fifteen, and I thought "ouch, they hurt." If only I knew then what was to come! Well, by 3 or so, my contractions hadn’t picked up any. So, the doctors started giving me medicine to make the contractions start. They slowly added more and more, and wow did the contractions start. Andrew and I were trying the breathing techniques. At first they helped. Then, it just got ugly. Around five or six, I said, GIVE ME AN EPIDURAL! It was like an hour or two later till I finally got it though. But, once I had it, I felt great.

Well, pretty great. The time was going by so fast, even though we had been there so long. They tried letting me push around 10 pm. But, my contractions weren’t strong enough or lasting long enough. So, they upped the medicine.

At 11, they said I’d start pushing again, but we actually didn’t start till midnight. I'll leave out details... aren’t you lucky! All I’ll say is that I didn’t think the baby would ever get out.

Then, an hour and forty five minutes later, my baby was born! Andrew said, “It’s a girl, it’s a girl!” And I said, “Are you sure?”