All in a Day's Work...: Lil miss is 1 !!!!

Our sweet girl is 1 today!!!! I can't believe it, fastest year of my life! Now I sound like one of those parents saying "They grow up so fast" but wow it's true, it happens fast and it makes me wish I could freeze time sometimes. In honor of her birthday I thought I'd share her birth story :) I always love reading other people birth stories so here's mine! ( And don't worry it won't be gross :) :)

On September 10th, 2011 (2 weeks before my "due" date) we went down to the hospital/birthing center to have a check up cause I had noticed a little strangeness the day before. The sweet nurse asked if my water had broken and I replied "No of course not". I mean come on, haven't you seen the movies?!? You can TELL when someone's water breaks......usually everyone can lol. So then I felt dumb when they came back and told me it actually had. Okay well it's my first baby I have no clue what to expect! Since my beta strep test thing hadn't even come back from the lab yet they wanted me to come back around 7:30 pm so they could start me on antibiotics and treat me as if it had been positive. I wasn't very excited about that idea since I wasn't really having any contractions or feelings of labor and I wanted things to go as natural and least intrusive as possible. So we went for a LONNNNNNNG walk around Ikea. Again, and again and again. Not sure I can ever go back there and see it the same again haha! We walked a ton trying to get things to start and then headed back to the hospital.

Once they got us all set up around 8:15 pm the midwife came in and told me, "I'm only on shift for the next 12 hours so I will probably not be delivering your baby. Since this is your first baby and your happy and smiling it's going to be a while." A while after she left we decided to go on a walk again (let me just say, my legs were DEAD from walking so much with a heavy belly!) and I was really starting to feel uncomfortable (don't you love how people always use that word?!? I always want to say, NO I'm not uncomfortable, I'm in PAIN). Okay, so I was in pain.....but moderate pain. We went out for a walk in the garden and a contraction hit me and I remember falling onto my knees.....my poor hubby didn't know what to do. He told me he was thinking, "I don't know how we'll do this for over 12 hours!!!". Since she had told me it would be a long time and it had been an hour lets just say I felt like an INCREDIBLE wimp that I was already crying at every contraction. This is the part where I will NOT tease my husband for when he kept coming back into the room with a mouth full of sandwich cause he was worried it would take so long and he would get hungry.............mmmmmhhhmmm :) Love him :) He did such a great job. On a side note, us ladies need to remember that as hard and painful as labor is for us it's really hard for them too! To watch us be in so much pain and really be able to do nothing about it. I'm sure it's draining as well.

The nurse came back in came back in our room around 10:30 pm.......yes because they could hear me :( and the same sweet nurse said, "So you're sounding a bit uncomfortable (that word again...) lets check on things." I felt so dumb! I wasn't even in active labor and I was crying my eyes out! They knew I wanted to labor in the tub but they usually wait till you're a 4 or 5 to let you go in so it won't slow things down. She had a nice surprised look on her face when she said, "Oh, you're at a 6 lets move you over there!"

I had written out my birth plan, talked to Jeremy and talked to the midwife about how I wanted to do it naturally and labor in the tub. This is the part where I told Jeremy, "Go get her, I need something I can't do this!!!!" Poor guy just stood there since I had told him before that if I asked for drugs to not let me and just tell me I could do it! But after insisting (that's my nicest way of saying that.........) that he go get her the midwife came back in an sat with me. I remember crying and gripping the pole on the bed and telling her I REALLY wanted something for the pain. I LOVE this part of my story because she ROCKS! She told me that I could do this, that the drugs would just make me feel sick and that I was in transition and it was going so fast I didn't have time anyways.

Among the millions of things I loved about my birthing center, is the fact that they have on-call Doula's for FREE. Seriously, as amazing as my husband was, I don't think I would have made it without this girl. I can't even remember her face cause my eyes were clenched shut the whole time! But she literally got me through every contraction. Making me breath, making me relax and steady my breathing, she was amazing. I wish I knew her name so I could write her a letter.

I remember I kept saying I was really worried about all the other women walking around outside our room cause they had to listen to my not quiet voice screaming :( Oh well, what can ya do! As soon as I had a contraction in the tub I could feel her head coming down (yes OUCH!) and realized I was going to have a water birth even though the thought had scared me before! I simply wasn't going to make it out of the tub. So at 12:35 am on September 11th Juliana Marie was born weighing 7.13 and 19 in long!